or Salluvii in the region of Aix and in the valley
of the Durance, and against their northern neighbours
the Vocontii (in the departments of Vaucluse and Drome);
and so did his successor Gaius Sextius Calvinus (631,
632) against the Allobroges, a powerful Celtic clan
in the rich valley of the Isere, which had come at
the request of the fugitive king of the Salyes, Tutomotulus,
to help him to reconquer his land, but was defeated
in the district of Aix. When the Allobroges nevertheless
refused to surrender the king of the Salyes, Gnaeus
Domitius Ahenobarbus, the successor of Calvinus, penetrated
into their own territory (632). Up to this period
the leading Celtic tribe had been spectators of the
encroachments of their Italian neighbours; the Arvernian
king Betuitus, son of the Luerius already mentioned,
seemed not much inclined to enter on a dangerous war
for the sake of the loose relation of clientship in
which the eastern cantons might stand to him.
But when the Romans showed signs of attacking the
Allobroges in their own territory, he offered his
mediation, the rejection of which was followed by
his taking the field with all his forces to help the
Allobroges; whereas the Haedui embraced the side of
the Romans. On receiving accounts of the rising
of the Arverni, the Romans sent the consul of 633,
Quintus Fabius Maximus, to meet in concert with Ahenobarbus
the impending attack. On the southern border
of the canton of the Allobroges at the confluence
of the Isere with the Rhone, on the 8th of August
633, the battle was fought which decided the mastery
of southern Gaul. King Betuitus, when he saw
the innumerable hosts of the dependent clans marching
over to him on the bridge of boats thrown across the
Rhone and the Romans who had not a third of their
numbers forming in array against them, is said to have
exclaimed that there were not enough of the latter
to satisfy the dogs of the Celtic army. Nevertheless
Maximus, a grandson of the victor of Pydna, achieved
a decisive victory, which, as the bridge of boats
broke down under the mass of the fugitives, ended in
the destruction of the greater part of the Arvernian
army. The Allobroges, to whom the king of the
Arverni declared himself unable to render further
assistance, and whom he advised to make their peace
with Maximus, submitted to the consul; whereupon the
latter, thenceforth called Allobrogicus, returned
to Italy and left to Ahenobarbus the no longer distant
termination of the Arvernian war. Ahenobarbus,
personally exasperated at king Betuitus because he
had induced the Allobroges to surrender to Maximus
and not to him, possessed himself treacherously of
the person of the king and sent him to Rome, where
the senate, although disapproving the breach of fidelity,
not only kept the men betrayed, but gave orders that
his son, Congonnetiacus, should likewise be sent to
Rome. This seems to have been the reason why
the Arvernian war, already almost at an end, once more
broke out, and a second appeal to arms took place
at Vindalium (above Avignon) at the confluence of
the Sorgue with the Rhone. The result was not
different from that of the first: on this occasion
it was chiefly the African elephants that scattered
the Celtic army. Thereupon the Arverni submitted
to peace, and tranquillity was re-established in the
land of the Celts.(3)