François Guizot - History of France from the Earliest Times (Vol. 1-6)

The Gauls of the Alps demanded succor of the Transalpine Gauls, applying to a powerful chieftain, named Cincibil, whose influence extended throughout the mountains. But the terror of the Roman name had reached across. Cincibil sent to Rome a deputation, with his brother at their head, to set forth the grievances of the mountaineers, and especially to complain of the consul Cassius, who had carried off and sold several thousands of Gauls. Without making any concession, the Senate was gracious. Cassius was away; he must be waited for. Meanwhile the Gauls were well treated; Cincibil and his brother received as presents two golden collars, five silver vases, two horses fully caparisoned, and Roman dresses for all their suite. Still nothing was done.

Another, a greater and more decisive opportunity offered itself. Marseilles was an ally of the Romans. As the rival of Carthage, and with the Gauls forever at her gates, she had need of Rome by sea and land. She pretended, also, to the most eminent and intimate friendship with Rome. Her founder, the Phocean Euxenes, had gone to Rome, it was said, and concluded a treaty with Tarquinius Priscus. She had gone into mourning when Rome was burned by the Gauls; she had ordered a public levy to aid towards the ransom of the Capitol. Rome did not dispute these claims to remembrance. The friendship of Marseilles was of great use to her. In the whole course of her struggle with Carthage, and but lately, at the passage of Hannibal through Gaul, Rome had met with the best of treatment there. She granted the Massilians a place amongst her senators at the festivals of the Republic, and exemption from all duty in her ports. Towards the middle of the second century B.C. Marseilles was at war with certain Gallic tribes, her neighbors, whose territory she coveted. Two of her colonies, Nice and Antibes, were threatened. She called on Rome for help. A Roman deputation went to decide the quarrel; but the Gauls refused to obey its summons, and treated it with insolence. The deputation returned with an army, succeeded in beating the refractory tribes, and gave their land to the Massilians. The same thing occurred repeatedly with the same result. Within the space of thirty years nearly all the tribes between the Rhone and the Var, in the country which was afterwards Provence, were subdued and driven back amongst the mountains, with notice not to approach within a mile of the coast in general, and a mile and a half of the places of disembarkation. But the Romans did not stop there. They did not mean to conquer for Marseilles alone. In the year 123 B.C., at some leagues to the north of the Greek city, near a little river, then called the Coenus and nowadays the Arc, the consul C. Sextius Calvinus had noticed, during his campaign, an abundance of thermal springs, agreeably situated amidst wood-covered hills. There he constructed an enclosure, aqueducts, baths, houses, a town in fact, which he called after himself, Aquae Sextice, the modern Aix, the first Roman establishment in Transalpine Gaul. As in the case of Cisalpine Gaul, with Roman colonies came Roman intrigue and dissensions got up and fomented amongst the Gauls. And herein Marseilles was a powerful seconder; for she kept up communications with all the neighboring tribes, and fanned the spirit of faction. After his victories, the consul C. Sextius, seated at his tribunal, was selling his prisoners by auction, when one of them came up to him and said, “I have always liked and served the Romans; and for that reason I have often incurred outrage and danger at the hands of my countrymen.” The consul had him set free—him and his family—and even gave him leave to point out amongst the captives any for whom he would like to procure the same kindness. At his request nine hundred were released. The man’s name was Crato, a Greek name, which points to a connection with Marseilles or one of her colonies. The Gauls, moreover, ran of themselves into the Roman trap. Two of their confederations, the AEduans, of whom mention has already been made, and the Allobrogians, who were settled between the Alps, the Isere, and the Rhone, were at war. A third confederation, the most powerful in Gaul at this time, the Arvernians, who were rivals of the AEduans, gave their countenance to the Allobrogians. The AEduans, with whom the Massilians had commercial dealings, solicited through these latter the assistance of Rome. A treaty was easily concluded. The AEduans obtained from the Romans the title of friends and allies; and the Romans received from the AEduans that of brothers, which amongst the Gauls implied a sacred tie. The consul Domitius forthwith commanded the Allobrogians to respect the territory of the allies of Rome. The Allobrogians rose up in arms and claimed the aid of the Arvernians. But even amongst them, in the very heart of Gaul, Rome was much dreaded; she was not to be encountered without hesitation. So Bituitus, King of the Arvernians, was for trying accommodation. He was a powerful and wealthy chieftain. His father Luern used to give amongst the mountains magnificent entertainments; he had a space of twelve square furlongs enclosed, and dispensed wine, mead, and beer from cisterns made within the enclosure; and all the Arvernians crowded to his feasts. Bituitus displayed before the Romans his barbaric splendor. A numerous escort, superbly clad, surrounded his ambassador; in attendance were packs of enormous hounds; and in front; went a bard, or poet, who sang, with rotte or harp in hand, the glory of Bituitus and of the Arvernian people. Disdainfully the consul received and sent back the embassy. War broke out; the Allobrogians, with the usual confidence and hastiness of all barbarians, attacked alone, without waiting for the Arvernians, and were beaten at the confluence of the Rhone and the Sorgue, a little above Avignon. The next year, 121 B.C., the Arvernians in their turn descended from the mountains, and crossed the Rhone with all their tribes, diversely armed and clad, and ranged each about its own chieftain. In his barbaric vanity, Bituitus marched to war with the same pomp that he had in vain displayed to obtain peace. He sat upon a car glittering with silver; he wore a plaid of striking colors; and he brought in his train a pack of war-hounds. At the sight of the Roman legions, few in number, iron-clad, in serried ranks that took up little space, he contemptuously cried, “There is not a meal for my hounds.”

The Arvernians were beaten, as the Allobrogians had been. The hounds of Bituitus were of little use to him against the elephants which the Romans had borrowed from Asiatic usage, and which spread consternation amongst the Gauls. The Roman historians say that the Arvernian army was two hundred thousand strong, and that one hundred and twenty thousand were slain; but the figures are absurd, like most of those found in ancient chronicles. We know nowadays, thanks to modern civilization, which shows everything in broad daylight, and measures everything with proper caution, that only the most populous and powerful nations, and that at great expenditure of trouble and time, can succeed in moving armies of two hundred thousand men, and that no battle, however murderous it may be, ever costs one hundred and twenty thousand lives.

Rome treated the Arvernians with consideration; but the Allobrogians lost their existence as a nation. The Senate declared them subject to the Roman people; and all the country comprised between the Alps, the Rhone from its entry into the Lake of Geneva to its mouth, and the Mediterranean, was made a Roman consular province, which means that every year a consul must march thither with his army. In the three following years, indeed, the consuls extended the boundaries of the new province, on the right bank of the Rhone, to the frontier of the Pyrenees southward. In the year 115 B.C. a colony of Roman citizens was conducted to Narbonne, a town even then of importance, in spite of the objections made by certain senators who were unwilling, say the historians, so to expose Roman citizens “to the waves of barbarism.” This was the second colony which went and established itself out of Italy; the first had been founded on the ruins of Carthage.