aesar
were surprised in the region of the Rhine by the custom of manuring
with marl,(12) and the primitive Celtic custom of preparing beer
(-cervesia-) from barley is likewise an evidence of the early
and wide diffusion of the culture of grain--but it was not held
in estimation. Even in the more civilized south it was reckoned not
becoming for the free Celts to handle the plough. In far higher
estimation among the Celts stood pastoral husbandry, for which
the Roman landholders of this epoch very gladly availed themselves
both of the Celtic breed of cattle, and of the brave Celtic slaves
skilled in riding and familiar with the rearing of animals.(13)
Particularly in the northern Celtic districts pastoral husbandry
was thoroughly predominant. Brittany was in Caesar's time
a country poor in corn. In the north-east dense forests, attaching
themselves to the heart of the Ardennes, stretched almost without
interruption from the German Ocean to the Rhine; and on the plains
of Flanders and Lorraine, now so fertile, the Menapian and Treverian
herdsman then fed his half-wild swine in the impenetrable oak-forest.
Just as in the valley of the Po the Romans made the production
of wool and the culture of corn supersede the Celtic feeding
of pigs on acorns, so the rearing of sheep and the agriculture
in the plains of the Scheldt and the Maas are traceable
to their influence. In Britain even the threshing of corn
was not yet usual; and in its more northern districts agriculture
was not practised, and the rearing of cattle was the only known mode
of turning the soil to account. The culture of the olive and vine,
which yielded rich produce to the Massiliots, was not yet prosecuted
beyond the Cevennes in the time of Caesar.

Urban Life

The Gauls were from the first disposed to settle in groups;
there were open villages everywhere, and the Helvetic canton
alone numbered in 696 four hundred of these, besides a multitude
of single homesteads. But there were not wanting also walled towns,
whose walls of alternate layers surprised the Romans both by their
suitableness and by the elegant interweaving of timber and stones
in their construction; while, it is true, even in the towns
of the Allobroges the buildings were erected solely of wood.
Of such towns the Helvetii had twelve and the Suessiones an equal number;
whereas at all events in the more northern districts, such as among
the Nervii, while there were doubtless also towns, the