The deputation returned with an army, succeeded in beating the refractory
tribes, and gave their land to the Massilians. The same thing occurred
repeatedly with the same result. Within the space of thirty years nearly
all the tribes between the Rhone and the Var, in the country which was
afterwards Provence, were subdued and driven back amongst the mountains,
with notice not to approach within a mile of the coast in general, and a
mile and a half of the places of disembarkation. But the Romans did not
stop there. They did not mean to conquer for Marseilles alone. In the
year 123 B.C., at some leagues to the north of the Greek city, near a
little river, then called the Coenus and nowadays the Arc, the consul
C. Sextius Calvinus had noticed, during his campaign, an abundance of
thermal springs, agreeably situated amidst wood-covered hills. There he
constructed an enclosure, aqueducts, baths, houses, a town in fact, which
he called after himself, Aquae Sextice, the modern Aix, the first Roman
establishment in Transalpine Gaul. As in the case of Cisalpine Gaul,
with Roman colonies came Roman intrigue and dissensions got up and
fomented amongst the Gauls. And herein Marseilles was a powerful
seconder; for she kept up communications with all the neighboring tribes,
and fanned the spirit of faction. After his victories, the consul
C. Sextius, seated at his tribunal, was selling his prisoners by auction,
when one of them came up to him and said, "I have always liked and served
the Romans; and for that reason I have often incurred outrage and danger
at the hands of my countrymen." The consul had him set free,--him and
his family,--and even gave him leave to point out amongst the captives
any for whom he would like to procure the same kindness. At his request
nine hundred were released. The man's name was Crato, a Greek name,
which points to a connection with Marseilles or one of her colonies. The
Gauls, moreover, ran of themselves into the Roman trap. Two of their
confederations, the AEduans, of whom mention has already been made, and
the Allobrogians, who were settled between the Alps, the Isere, and the