h more defensible, than yours, and
by the rigor of its cold sufficient to keep off armies from attacking
them? do not they submit to two thousand men of the Roman garrisons? Are
not the Illyrlans, who inhabit the country adjoining, as far as Dalmatia
and the Danube, governed by barely two legions? by which also they put a
stop to the incursions of the Daeians. And for the Dalmatians, who have
made such frequent insurrections in order to regain their liberty, and
who could never before be so thoroughly subdued, but that they always
gathered their forces together again, revolted, yet are they now very
quiet under one Roman legion. Moreover, if eat advantages might provoke
any people to revolt, the Gauls might do it best of all, as being so
thoroughly walled round by nature; on the east side by the Alps, on the
north by the river Rhine, on the south by the Pyrenean mountains, and
on the west by the ocean. Now although these Gauls have such obstacles
before them to prevent any attack upon them, and have no fewer than
three hundred and five nations among them, nay have, as one may say,
the fountains of domestic happiness within themselves, and send out
plentiful streams of happiness over almost the whole world, these bear
to be tributary to the Romans, and derive their prosperous condition
from them; and they undergo this, not because they are of effeminate
minds, or because they are of an ignoble stock, as having borne a war
of eighty years in order to preserve their liberty; but by reason of
the great regard they have to the power of the Romans, and their good
fortune, which is of greater efficacy than their arms. These Gauls,
therefore, are kept in servitude by twelve hundred soldiers, which are
hardly so many as are their cities; nor hath the gold dug out of the
mines of Spain been sufficient for the support of a war to preserve
their liberty, nor could their vast distance from the Romans by land
and by sea do it; nor could the martial tribes of the Lusitanians and
Spaniards escape; no more could the ocean, with its tide, which yet was
terrible to the ancient inhabitants. Nay, the Romans have extended their
arms beyond the pillars of Hercules, and have walked among the clouds,
upon the Pyrenean mountains, and have subdued these nations. And one
legion is a sufficient guard for these people, although they were so
hard to be conquered, and at a distance so remote from Rome. Who is
there among you that hath not heard of the g