ho in the last year of
the war had roused all his countrymen to insurrection, who had cut off
Roman detachments, and brought Caesar himself to the extreme of peril at
Alesia--he, too, had finally succumbed, had been led captive in Caesar's
triumph, and had then been butchered in cold blood in a Roman dungeon.

It was true that Rome was no longer the great military republic which
for so many ages had shattered the kingdoms of the world. Her system of
government was changed, and, after a century of revolution and civil
war, she had placed herself under the despotism of a single ruler. But
the discipline of her troops was yet unimpaired and her warlike spirit
seemed unabated. The first year of the empire had been signalized by
conquests as valuable as any gained by the republic in a corresponding
period. It is a great fallacy--though apparently sanctioned by great
authorities--to suppose that the foreign policy pursued by Augustus was
pacific; he certainly recommended such a policy to his successors
(_incertum metu an per invidiam_: Tac., _Ann_., i. 11), but he himself,
until Arminius broke his spirit, had followed a very different course.
Besides his Spanish wars, his generals, in a series of generally
aggressive campaigns, had extended the Roman frontier from the Alps to
the Danube, and had reduced into subjection the large and important
countries that now form the territories of all Austria south of that
river, and of East Switzerland, Lower Wuertemberg, Bavaria, the
Valtelline, and the Tyrol.

While the progress of the Roman arms thus pressed the Germans from the
south, still more formidable inroads had been made by the imperial
legions on the west. Roman armies, moving from the province of Gaul,
established a chain of fortresses along the right as well as the left
bank of the Rhine, and, in a series of victorious campaigns, advanced
their eagles as far as the Elbe, which now seemed added to the list of
vassal rivers, to the Nile, the Rhine, the Rhone, the Danube, the Tagus,
the Seine, and many more, that acknowledged the supremacy of the Tiber.
Roman fleets also, sailing from the harbors of Gaul along the German
coasts and up the estuaries, cooeperated with the land forces of the
empire, and seemed to display, even more decisively than her armies, her
overwhelming superiority over the rude Germanic tribes. Throughout the
territory thus invaded the Romans had with their usual military skill
established fortified posts