rth. But at the same time the importance
of these Gallic possessions for the mother country was continually
on the increase. The glorious climate, akin to that of Italy,
the favourable nature of the soil, the large and rich region lying
behind so advantageous for commerce with its mercantile routes
reaching as far as Britain, the easy intercourse by land and sea
with the mother country, rapidly gave to southern Gaul an economic
importance for Italy, which much older possessions, such as those
in Spain, had not acquired in the course of centuries; and as
the Romans who had suffered political shipwreck at this period sought
an asylum especially in Massilia, and there found once more Italian
culture and Italian luxury, voluntary emigrants from Italy also
were attracted more and more to the Rhone and the Garonne.
"The province of Gaul," it was said in a sketch drawn ten years
before Caesar's arrival, "is full of merchants; it swarms with Roman
burgesses. No native of Gaul transacts a piece of business without
the intervention of a Roman; every penny, that passes from one hand
to another in Gaul, goes through the account books of the Roman
burgesses." From the same description it appears that in addition
to the colonists of Narbo there were Romans cultivating land
and rearing cattle, resident in great numbers in Gaul; as to which,
however, it must not be overlooked that most of the provincial land
possessed by Romans, just like the greater part of the English
possessions in the earliest times in America, was in the hands
of the high nobility living in Italy, and those farmers and graziers
consisted for the most part of their stewards--slaves or freedmen.

Incipient Romanizing

It is easy to understand how under such circumstances civilization
and Romanizing rapidly spread among the natives. These Celts
were not fond of agriculture; but their new masters compelled them
to exchange the sword for the plough, and it is very credible
that the embittered resistance of the Allobroges was provoked in part
by some such injunctions. In earlier times Hellenism had also
to a certain degree dominated those regions; the elements
of a higher culture, the stimulus to the cultivation of the vine
and the olive,(8) to the use of writing(9) and to the coining of money,
came to them from Massilia. The Hellenic culture was in this case
far from being set aside by the Romans; Massilia gained through
them more influence than it lost; and e