ded among the enterprises which aimed at
the subjugation of the west. Long as Spain had obeyed the Romans,
its western shore had remained substantially independent of them
even after the expedition of Decimus Brutus against the Callaeci(1),
and they had not even set foot on the northern coast; while
the predatory raids, to which the subject provinces found
themselves continually exposed from those quarters, did no small
injury to the civilization and Romanizing of Spain. Against these
the expedition of Caesar along the west coast was directed.
He crossed the chain of the Herminian mountains (Sierra de Estrella)
bounding the Tagus on the north; after having conquered their
inhabitants and transplanted them in part to the plain, he reduced
the country on both sides of the Douro and arrived at the northwest
point of the peninsula, where with the aid of a flotilla brought
up from Gades he occupied Brigantium (Corunna). By this means
the peoples adjoining the Atlantic Ocean, Lusitanians and Callaecians,
were forced to acknowledge the Roman supremacy, while the conqueror
was at the same time careful to render the position of the subjects
generally more tolerable by reducing the tribute to be paid to Rome
and regulating the financial affairs of the communities.

But, although in this military and administrative debut of the great
general and statesman the same talents and the same leading ideas are
discernible which he afterwards evinced on a greater stage, his agency
in the Iberian peninsula was much too transient to have any deep effect;
the more especially as, owing to its physical and national peculiarities,
nothing but action steadily continued for a considerable time could
exert any durable influence there.

Gaul

A more important part in the Romanic development of the west
was reserved by destiny for the country which stretches between
the Pyrenees and the Rhine, the Mediterranean and the Atlantic Ocean,
and which since the Augustan age has been especially designated
by the name of the land of the Celts--Gallia--although strictly
speaking the land of the Celts was partly narrower, partly much
more extensive, and the country so called never formed a national
unity, and did not form a political unity before Augustus.
For this very reason it is not easy to present a clear picture
of the very heterogeneous state of things which Caesar encountered
on his arrival there in 696.

The Roman Province
Wars and Revolts Th