Roman Settlements in the Region of the Rhone

As usual, the formation of new fortresses was combined with the construction of roads.  In the eastern portion the Romans chose the spot where Gaius Sextius had defeated the Celts, and where the pleasantness and fertility of the region as well as the numerous hot and cold springs invited them to settlement; a Roman township sprang up there—­the “baths of Sextius,” Aquae Sextiae (Aix).  To the west of the Rhone the Romans settled in Narbo, an ancient Celtic town on the navigable river Atax (Aude) at a small distance from the sea, which is already mentioned by Hecataeus, and which even before its occupation by the Romans vied with Massilia as a place of stirring commerce, and as sharing the trade in British tin.  Aquae did not obtain civic rights, but remained a standing camp;(4) whereas Narbo, although in like manner founded mainly as a watch and outpost against the Celts, became as “Mars’ town,” a Roman burgess-colony and the usual seat of the governor of the new Transalpine Celtic province or, as it was more frequently called, the province of Narbo.

The Advance of the Romans Checked by the Policy of the Restoration

The Gracchan party, which suggested these extensions of territory beyond the Alps, evidently wished to open up there a new and immeasurable field for their plans of colonization,—­a field which offered the same advantages as Sicily and Africa, and could be more easily wrested from the natives than he Sicilian and Libyan estates from the Italian capitalists.  The fall of Gaius Gracchus, no doubt, made itself felt here also in the restriction of acquisitions of territory and still more of the founding of towns; but, if the design was not carried out in its full extent, it was at any rate not wholly frustrated.  The territory acquired and, still more, the foundation of Narbo—­a settlement for which the senate vainly endeavoured to prepare the fate of that at Carthage—­remained standing as parts of an unfinished structure, exhorting the future successor of Gracchus to continue the building.  It is evident that the Roman mercantile class, which was able to compete with Massilia in the Gallo-Britannic traffic at Narbo alone, protected that settlement from the assaults of the Optimates.

Illyria
Dalmatians
Their Subjugation

A problem similar to that in the north-west had to be dealt with in the north-east of Italy; it was in like manner not wholly neglected, but was solved still more imperfectly than the former.  With the foundation of Aquileia (571) the Istrian peninsula came into possession of the Romans;(5) in part of Epirus and the former territory of the lords of Scodra they had already ruled for some considerable time previously.  But nowhere did their dominion reach into the interior; and even on the coast they exercised scarcely a nominal sway over the inhospitable shore-belt between Istria and Epirus, which, with its wild series of mountain-caldrons