DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61893#0115
Ch. I.
THROUGH ITALY.
87
track or path practicable? Of these tracks, that
which we are now pursuing seems to have been
one of the most ancient and most frequented.
The first people who passed it in a body were
probably the Gauls; that race ever restless, wan-
dering, and ferocious, who have so often since
forced the mighty rampart, which nature raised
to protect the fertile provinces of Italy from the
rapacity of northern invaders. Of a tribe of this
people, Livy says, * that in the consulship of
Spurius Posthumius Albinus, and Quintus Marcus
Philippas, that is, in the year of Rome 566, they
passed the Alps by roads till then undiscovered,
and entering Italy, turned towards Aquileia.
Upon this occasion, contrary to their usual prac-
tice, they came in small numbers, and rather in
the character of suppliants than of enemies. But
the most remarkable army that ever crossed these
mountains was that of the Cimbri, who in less
than a century after the above-mentioned period,
climbed the Rhetian Alps, and rushed like a tor-
rent down the Tridentine defile. The first suc-
cesses and final destruction of this horde of sa-
vages are well known. At length Augustus, ir-
ritated by the lawless and plundering spirit of
some of the Rhetian tribes, sent a Roman army
L, xxxix. 22.
THROUGH ITALY.
87
track or path practicable? Of these tracks, that
which we are now pursuing seems to have been
one of the most ancient and most frequented.
The first people who passed it in a body were
probably the Gauls; that race ever restless, wan-
dering, and ferocious, who have so often since
forced the mighty rampart, which nature raised
to protect the fertile provinces of Italy from the
rapacity of northern invaders. Of a tribe of this
people, Livy says, * that in the consulship of
Spurius Posthumius Albinus, and Quintus Marcus
Philippas, that is, in the year of Rome 566, they
passed the Alps by roads till then undiscovered,
and entering Italy, turned towards Aquileia.
Upon this occasion, contrary to their usual prac-
tice, they came in small numbers, and rather in
the character of suppliants than of enemies. But
the most remarkable army that ever crossed these
mountains was that of the Cimbri, who in less
than a century after the above-mentioned period,
climbed the Rhetian Alps, and rushed like a tor-
rent down the Tridentine defile. The first suc-
cesses and final destruction of this horde of sa-
vages are well known. At length Augustus, ir-
ritated by the lawless and plundering spirit of
some of the Rhetian tribes, sent a Roman army
L, xxxix. 22.