keep the sea in peace, which before was not navigable, and very
tempestuous? How strong a plea may Bithynia, and Cappadocia, and
the people of Pamphylia, the Lycians, and Cilicians, put in for
liberty! But they are made tributary without an army. What are
the circumstances of the Thracians, whose country extends in
breadth five days' journey, and in length seven, and is of a much
more harsh constitution, and much more defensible, than yours,
and by the rigor of its cold sufficient to keep off armies from
attacking them? do not they submit to two thousand men of the
Roman garrisons? Are not the Illyrlans, who inhabit the country
adjoining, as far as Dalmatia and the Danube, governed by barely
two legions? by which also they put a stop to the incursions of
the Daeians. And for the Dalmatians, who have made such frequent
insurrections in order to regain their liberty, and who could
never before be so thoroughly subdued, but that they always
gathered their forces together again, revolted, yet are they now
very quiet under one Roman legion. Moreover, if eat advantages
might provoke any people to revolt, the Gauls might do it best of
all, as being so thoroughly walled round by nature; on the east
side by the Alps, on the north by the river Rhine, on the south
by the Pyrenean mountains, and on the west by the ocean. Now
although these Gauls have such obstacles before them to prevent
any attack upon them, and have no fewer than three hundred and
five nations among them, nay have, as one may say, the fountains
of domestic happiness within themselves, and send out plentiful
streams of happiness over almost the whole world, these bear to
be tributary to the Romans, and derive their prosperous condition
from them; and they undergo this, not because they are of
effeminate minds, or because they are of an ignoble stock, as
having borne a war of eighty years in order to preserve their