History of Julius Caesar Vol. 1 of 2. Napoleon III

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СКАЧАТЬ and in the centre of the peninsula, agriculture and the breeding of cattle were the principal sources of wealth. It was there that were made the says (vests of flannel or goats’ hair), which were exported in great numbers to Italy.273 In the Tarraconese, the cultivation of flax was very productive; the inhabitants had been the first to weave those fine cloths called carbasa, which were objects greatly prized as far as Greece.274 Leather, honey, and salt were brought by cargoes to the principal ports along the coast; at Emporiæ (Ampurias), a settlement of the Phocæans in Catalonia; at Saguntum,275 founded by Greeks from the island of Zacynthus; at Tarraco (Tarragona), one of the most ancient of the Phœnician settlements in Spain; and at Malaca (Malaga), whence were exported all sorts of salt fish.276 Lusitania, neglected by the Phœnician or Carthaginian ships, was less favoured. Yet we see, by the passage of Polybius277 which enumerates the mercantile exports of this province with their prices, that its agricultural products were very abundant.278

      The prosperity of Spain appears also from the vast amount of its population. According to some authors, Tiberius Gracchus took from the Celtiberians three hundred oppida. In Turdetania (part of Andalusia), according to Strabo, there were counted no less than two hundred towns.279 Appian, the historian of the Spanish wars, points out the multitude of petty tribes which the Romans had to reduce,280 and during the campaign of Cn. Scipio, more than a hundred and twenty submitted.281

      Thus the Iberian peninsula was at that time reckoned among the most populous and richest regions of Europe.

      Southern Gaul.

      IV. The part of Gaul which is bathed by the Mediterranean offers a spectacle no less satisfactory. Numerous migrations, arriving from the East, had pushed back the population of the Seine and the Loire towards the mouths of the Rhône, and already, in the middle of the fourth century before our era, the Gauls found themselves straitened in their frontiers. More civilised than the Iberians, but not less energetic, they combined gentle and hospitable manners with great activity, which was further developed by their contact with the Greek colonies spread from the maritime Alps to the Pyrenees. The cultivation of the fields and the breeding of cattle furnished their principal wealth, and their industry found support in the products of the soil and in its herds. Their manufacture consisted of says, not less in repute than those of the Celtiberians, and exported in great quantities to Italy. Good sailors, the Gauls transported by water, on the Seine, the Rhine, the Saône, the Rhône, and Loire, the merchandise and timber which, even from the coasts of the Channel, were accumulated in the Phocæan trading places on the Mediterranean.282 Agde (Agatha), Antibes (Antipolis), Nice (Nicæa), the isles of Hyères (Stœchades), Monaco (Portus Herculis Monœcei), were so many naval stations which maintained relations with Spain and Italy.283

      Marseilles possessed but a very circumscribed territory, but its influence reached far into the interior of Gaul. It is to this town we owe the acclimatisation of the vine and the olive. Thousands of oxen came every year to feed on the thyme in the neighbourhood of Marseilles.284 The Massilian merchants traversed Gaul in all directions to sell their wines and the produce of their manufactures.285 Without rising to the rank of a great maritime power, still the small Phocæan republic possessed sufficient resources to make itself respected by Carthage; it formed an early alliance with the Romans. Massilian houses had, as early as the fifth century of Rome, established at Syracuse, as they did subsequently at Alexandria, factories which show a great commercial activity.286

      Liguria, Cisalpine Gaul, Venetia, and Illyria.

      V. Alone in the Tyrrhene Sea, the Ligures had not yet risen out of that almost savage life which the Iberians, sprung from the same stock, had originally led. If some towns on the Ligurian coast, and especially Genoa (Genua), carried on a maritime commerce, they supported themselves by piracy287 rather than by regular traffic.288

      On the contrary, Cisalpine Gaul, properly so called, supported, as early as the time of Polybius, a numerous population. We may form some idea of it from the losses this province sustained during a period of twenty-seven years, from 554 to 582; Livy gives a total of 257,400 men killed, taken, or transported.289 The Gaulish tribes settled in the Cisalpine, though preserving their original manners, had, through their contact with the Etruscans, arrived at a certain degree of civilisation. The number of towns in this country was not very considerable, but it contained a great abundance of villages.290 Addicted to agriculture like the other Gauls, the Cisalpines bred in their forests droves of swine in such numbers, that they would have been sufficient, in the time of Strabo, to provision all Rome.291 The coins of pure gold, which in recent times have been found in Cisalpine Gaul, especially between the Po and the Adda, and which were struck by the Boii and some of the Ligurian populations, furnish evidence of the abundance of that metal, which was collected in the form of gold sand in the waters of the rivers.292 Moreover, certain towns of Etruscan origin, such as Mantua (Mantua) and Padua (Patavium), preserved vestiges of the prosperity they had reached at the time when the peoples of Tuscany extended their dominion beyond the Po. At once a maritime town and a place of commerce, Padua, at a remote epoch, possessed a vast territory, and could raise an army of 120,000 men.293 The transport of goods was facilitated by means of canals crossing Venetia, partly dug by the Etruscans. Such were those especially which united Ravenna with Altinum (Altino), which became at a later period the grand store-house of the Cisalpine territory.294

      The commercial relations entertained by Venetia with Germany, Illyria, and Rhætia, go back far beyond the Roman epoch, and, at a remote antiquity, it was Venetia which received the amber from the shores of the Baltic.295 All the traffic which was afterwards concentrated at Aquileia, founded by the Romans after the submission of the Veneti, had then for its centre the towns of Venetia; and the numerous colonies established by the Romans in this part of the peninsula are proofs of its immense resources. Moreover, the Veneti, occupied in cultivating their lands and breeding horses, had peaceful manners which facilitated commercial relations, and contrasted with the piratical habits of the populations spread over the north and north-eastern coasts of the Adriatic.

      The Istrians, the Liburni, and the Illyrians were the nations most formidable, both by their corsairs and by their armies; their light and rapid barques covered the Adriatic, and troubled the navigation between Italy and Greece. In the year 524, the Illyrians sent to sea a hundred lembi,296 while their land army counted hardly more than 5,000 men.297 Illyria was poor, and offered few resources to the Romans, notwithstanding the fertility of its soil. Agriculture was neglected, even in the time of Strabo. Istria contained a population much more considerable, in proportion to its extent.298 Yet she had, no more than Dalmatia and the rest of Illyria, attained, at the epoch of which we are speaking, that high degree of prosperity which she acquired afterwards by the foundation of Tergeste (Trieste) and СКАЧАТЬ