hem.
They were intended to serve as a bulwark for the Roman settlements
south of the Po, and to ward off from Italy the incursions of the
migratory northern tribes and the aggressions of the predatory
inhabitants of the Alps, who were wont to make regular razzias in
these districts. The process of Latinizing, moreover, made rapid
progress in these regions; the Celtic nationality was evidently far
from able to oppose such resistance as the more civilized nations of
Sabellians and Etruscans. The celebrated Latin comic poet Statius
Caecilius, who died in 586, was a manumitted Insubrian; and Polybius,
who visited these districts towards the close of the sixth century,
affirms, not perhaps without some exaggeration, that in that quarter
only a few villages among the Alps remained Celtic. The Veneti, on
the other hand, appear to have retained their nationality longer.

Measures Adopted to Check the Immigrations of the Transalpine Gauls

The chief efforts of the Romans in these regions were naturally
directed to check the immigration of the Transalpine Celts, and to
make the natural wall, which separates the peninsula from the interior
of the continent, also its political boundary. That the terror of
the Roman name had already penetrated to the adjacent Celtic cantons
beyond the Alps, is shown not only by the totally passive attitude
which they maintained during the annihilation or subjugation of their
Cisalpine countrymen, but still more by the official disapproval and
disavowal which the Transalpine cantons--we shall have to think
primarily of the Helvetii (between the lake of Geneva and the Main)
and the Carni or Taurisci (in Carinthia and Styria)--expressed to
the envoys from Rome, who complained of the attempts made by isolated
Celtic bands to settle peacefully on the Roman side of the Alps. Not
less significant was the humble spirit in which these same bands of
emigrants first came to the Roman senate entreating an assignment
of land, and then without remonstrance obeyed the rigorous order to
return over the Alps (568-575), and allowed the town, which they
had already founded not far from the later Aquileia, to be again
destroyed. With wise severity the senate permitted no sort of
exception to the principle that the gates of the Alps should be
henceforth closed for the Celtic nation, and visited with heavy
penalties those Roman subjects in Italy, who had instigated any such
schemes of immigration. An attempt of