Nor was war Rome’s only weapon against her enemies.  Besides the ability of her generals and the discipline of her legions, she had the sagacity of her Senate.  The Gauls were not wanting in intelligence or dexterity, but being too free to go quietly under a master’s hand, and too barbarous for self-government, carried away, as they were, by the interest or passion of the moment, they could not long act either in concert or with sameness of purpose.  Far-sightedness and the spirit of persistence were, on the contrary, the familiar virtues of the Roman Senate.  So soon as they had penetrated Cisalpine Gaul, they labored to gain there a permanent footing, either by sowing dissension amongst the Gallic peoplets that lived there, or by founding Roman colonies.  In the year 283 B.C., several Roman families arrived, with colors flying and under the guidance of three triumvirs or commissioners, on a territory to the north-east, on the borders of the Adriatic.  The triumvirs had a round hole dug, and there deposited some fruits and a handful of earth brought from Roman soil; then yoking to a plough, having a copper share, a white bull and a white heifer, they marked out by a furrow a large enclosure.  The rest followed, flinging within the line the ridges thrown up by the plough.  When the line was finished, the bull and the heifer were sacrificed with due pomp.  It was a Roman colony come to settle at Sena, on the very site of the chief town of those Senonic Gauls who had been conquered and driven out.  Fifteen years afterwards another Roman colony was founded at Ariminum (Rimini), on the frontier of the Bolan Gauls.  Fifty years later still two others, on the two banks of the Po, Cremona and Placentia (Plaisance).  Rome had then, in the midst of her enemies, garrisons, magazines of arms and provisions, and means of supervision and communication.  Thence proceeded at one time troops, at another intrigues, to carry dismay or disunion amongst the Gauls.

Towards the close of the third century before our era, the triumph of Rome in Cisalpine Gaul seemed nigh to accomplishment, when news arrived that the Romans’ most formidable enemy, Hannibal, meditating a passage from Africa into Italy by Spain and Gaul, was already at work, by his emissaries, to insure for his enterprise the concurrence of the Transalpine and Cisalpine Gauls.  The Senate ordered the envoys they had just then at Carthage to traverse Gaul on returning, and seek out allies there against Hannibal.  The envoys halted amongst the Gallo-Iberian peoplets who lived at the foot of the eastern Pyrenees.  There, in the midst of the warriors assembled in arms, they charged them in the name of the great and powerful Roman people, not to suffer the Carthaginians to pass through their territory.  Tumultuous laughter arose at a request that appeared so strange.  “You wish us,” was the answer, “to draw down war upon ourselves to avert it from Italy, and to give our own fields over to devastation to save yours.  We have no cause to complain of the Carthaginians or to be pleased with the Romans, or to take up arms for the Romans and against the Carthaginians.  We, on the contrary, hear that the Roman people drive out from their lands, in Italy, men of our nation, impose tribute upon them, and make them undergo other indignities.”  So the envoys of Rome quitted Gaul without allies.