were perhaps small;
they were not unimportant, for amidst the chaotic obscurity,
through which we see the stream of peoples on the right bank
of the Rhine ebbing and flowing about this period, we can well perceive
that larger German hordes were preparing to cross the Rhine in the track
of these advanced posts. Threatened on two sides by foreign domination
and torn by internal dissension, it was scarcely to be expected
that the unhappy Celtic nation would now rally and save itself
by its own vigour. Dismemberment, and decay in virtue of dismemberment,
had hitherto been its history; how should a nation, which could
name no day like those of Marathon and Salamis, of Aricia and the Raudine
plain--a nation which, even in its time of vigour, had made
no attempt to destroy Massilia by a united effort--now when evening
had come, defend itself against so formidable foes?

The Roman Policy with Reference to the German Invasion

The less the Celts, left to themselves, were a match for the Germans,
the more reason had the Romans carefully to watch over the complications
in which the two nations might be involved. Although the movements
thence arising had not up to the present time directly affected
them, they and their most important interests were yet concerned
in the issue of those movements. As may readily be conceived,
the internal demeanour of the Celtic nation had become speedily
and permanently influenced by its outward relations. As in Greece
the Lacedaemonian party combined with Persia against the Athenians,
so the Romans from their first appearance beyond the Alps had found
a support against the Arverni, who were then the ruling power among
the southern Celts, in their rivals for the hegemony, the Haedui:
and with the aid of these new "brothers of the Roman nation" they had
not merely reduced to subjection the Allobroges and a great portion
of the indirect territory of the Arverni, but had also, in the Gaul
that remained free, occasioned by their influence the transference
of the hegemony from the Arverni to these Haedui. But while the Greeks
were threatened with danger to their nationality only from one side,
the Celts found themselves hard pressed simultaneously by two
national foes; and it was natural that they should seek from the one
protection against the other, and that, if the one Celtic party
attached itself to the Romans, their opponents should
on the contrary form alliance with the Germans. This course