ile army. But the superiority of the
Roman arms and of Roman discipline achieved the victory, and the army
cut its way through: once more the Roman tactics had redeemed the
blunders of the general. The victory was due to the soldiers and
officers, not to the generals, who gained a triumph only through
popular favour in opposition to the just decree of the senate. Gladly
would the Insubres have made peace; but Rome required unconditional
subjection, and things had not yet come to that pass. They tried to
maintain their ground with the help of their northern kinsmen; and,
with 30,000 mercenaries whom they had raised amongst these and their
own levy, they received the two consular armies advancing once more in
the following year (532) from the territory of the Cenomani to invade
their land. Various obstinate combats took place; in a diversion,
attempted by the Insubres against the Roman fortress of Clastidium
(Casteggio, below Pavia), on the right bank of the Po, the Gallic
king Virdumarus fell by the hand of the consul Marcus Marcellus. But,
after a battle already half won by the Celts but ultimately decided
in favour of the Romans, the consul Gnaeus Scipio took by assault
Mediolanum, the capital of the Insubres, and the capture of that town
and of Comum terminated their resistance. Thus the Celts of Italy
were completely vanquished, and as, just before, the Romans had shown
to the Hellenes in the war with the pirates the difference between a
Roman and a Greek sovereignty of the seas, so they had now brilliantly
demonstrated that Rome knew how to defend the gates of Italy against
freebooters on land otherwise than Macedonia had guarded the gates of
Greece, and that in spite of all internal quarrels Italy presented as
united a front to the national foe, as Greece exhibited distraction
and discord.

Romanization of the Entire of Italy

The boundary of the Alps was reached, in so far as the whole flat
country on the Po was either rendered subject to the Romans, or, like
the territories of the Cenomani and Veneti, was occupied by dependent
allies. It needed time, however, to reap the consequences of this
victory and to Romanize the land. In this the Romans did not adopt
a uniform mode of procedure. In the mountainous northwest of Italy
and in the more remote districts between the Alps and the Po they
tolerated, on the whole, the former inhabitants; the numerous wars,
as they are called, which were waged with the L