rating the brave achievements of
their illustrious men, in epic verse, accompanied with sweet airs on the
lyre. The Eubages investigated the system and sublime secrets of nature,
and sought to explain them to their followers. Between these two came
the Druids, men of loftier genius, bound in brotherhoods according to
the precepts and example of Pythagoras; and their minds were elevated by
investigations into secret and sublime matters, and from the contempt
which they entertained for human affairs they pronounced the soul
immortal.

X.

Sec. 1. This country then of the Gauls was by reason of its lofty mountain
ranges perpetually covered with terrible snows, almost unknown to the
inhabitants of the rest of the world, except where it borders on the
ocean; vast fortresses raised by nature, in the place of art,
surrounding it on all sides.

2. On the southern side it is washed by the Etruscan and Gallic sea:
where it looks towards the north it is separated from the tribes of the
barbarians by the river Rhine; where it is placed under the western star
it is bounded by the ocean, and the lofty chain of the Pyrenees; where
it has an eastern aspect it is bounded by the Cottian[50] Alps. In these
mountains King Cottius, after the Gauls had been subdued, lying by
himself in their defiles, and relying on the rugged and pathless
character of the country, long maintained his independence; though
afterwards he abated his pride, and was admitted to the friendship of
the Emperor Octavianus. And subsequently he constructed immense works to
serve as a splendid gift to the emperor, making roads over them, short,
and convenient for travellers, between other ancient passes of the Alps;
on which subject we will presently set forth what discoveries have been
made.

3. In these Cottian Alps, which begin at the town of Susa, one vast
ridge rises up, scarcely passable by any one without danger.

4. For to travellers who reach it from the side of Gaul it descends with
a steepness almost precipitous, being terrible to behold, in consequence
of the bulk of its overhanging rocks. In the spring, when the ice is
melting, and the snow beginning to give way from the warm spring
breezes, if any one seeks to descend along the mountain, men and beasts
and wagons all fall together through the fissures and clefts in the
rocks, which yawn in every direction, though previously hidden by the
frost. And the only remedy ever found to ward off entire destr