These facts, obscure as they may be in history, prove the spirit of adventure and the warlike genius of the Gaulish race, which thus, in fact, inspired a general terror. During nearly two centuries, from 364 to 531, Rome struggled against the Cisalpine Gauls, and more than once the defeat of her armies placed her existence in danger. It was, as it were, foot by foot that the Romans effected the conquest of Northern Italy, strengthening it as they proceeded by the establishment of colonies.
Let us here give a recapitulation of the principal wars against the Gauls, Cisalpine and Transalpine, ich have already been spoken of in the first volume of the present work. In 531 the Romans took the offensive, crossed the Po, and subjugated a great part of the Cisalpine. But hardly had the north of Italy been placed under the supremacy of the Republic, when Hannibal's invasion (536) caused anew an insurrection of the inhabitants of those countries, who helped to increase the numbers of his army; and even when that great captain was obliged to quit Italy, they continued to defend their independence during thirty-four years. The struggle, renewed in 554, ended only in 588, for we will not take into account the partial insurrections which followed. During this time, Rome had not only to combat the Cisalpines, assisted by the Gauls from beyond the Alps, but also to make war upon the men of their race in Asia (565) and in Illyria. In this last-mentioned province the colony of Aquileia was founded (571), and several wild tribes of Liguria, who held the defiles of the Alps, were subjugated (588).
[Sidenote: Wars of the Romans beyond the Alps.]
II. In 600, the Romans, called to the assistance of the Greek town of Marseilles, which was attacked by the Oxybii and the Deciates, Ligurian tribes of the Maritime Alps,[7] for the first time carried their arms to the other side of the Alps. They followed the course of the Corniche, and crossed the Var; but it took, according to Strabo, a struggle of eighty years before they obtained from the Ligures an extent of twelve stadia (2·22 kils.), a narrow passage on the coast of the sea, to enable them to pass through Gaul into Spain.[8] Nevertheless, the legions pushed their encroachments between the Rhone and the Alps. The conquered territory was given to the people of Marseilles, who soon, attacked again by the peoples of the Maritime Alps, implored a second time the support of Rome. In 629, the Consul M. Fulvius Flaccus was sent against the Salluvii; and, three years afterwards,[9] the proconsul C. Sextius Calvinus drove them back far from the sea-coast, and founded the town of Aix (_Aquæ Sextiæ_).[10]