cantoned in that province were themselves much changed; many barbarians had been enlisted amongst them, and did gallant service; but they were indifferent, and always ready for a new master and a new country.  There were not wanting symptoms, soon followed by opportunities for action, of this change in sentiment and fact.  In the very centre of Gaul, between the Loire and the Allier, a peasant, who has kept in history his Gallic name of Marie or Maricus, formed a band, and scoured the country, proclaiming national independence.  He was arrested by the local authorities and handed over to Vitellius, who had him thrown to the beasts.  But in the northern part of Belgica, towards the mouths of the Rhine, where a Batavian peoplet lived, a man of note amongst his compatriots and in the service of the Romans, amongst whom he had received the name of Claudius Civilis, embraced first secretly, and afterwards openly, the cause of insurrection.  He had vengeance to take for Nero’s treatment, who had caused his brother, Julius Paulus, to be beheaded, and himself to be put in prison, whence he had been liberated by Galba.  He made a vow to let his hair grow until he was revenged.  He had but one eye, and gloried in the fact, saying that it had been so with Hannibal and with Sertorius, and that his highest aspiration was to be like them.  He pronounced first for Vitellius against Otho, then for Vespasian against Vitellius, and then for the complete independence of his nation against Vespasian.  He soon had, amongst the Germans on the two banks of the Rhine and amongst the Gauls themselves, secret or declared allies.  He was joined by a young Gaul from the district of Langres, Julius Sabinus, who boasted that, during the great war with the Gauls, his great-grandmother had taken the fancy of Julius Caesar, and that he owed his name to him.  News had just reached Gaul of the burning down, for the second time, of the Capitol during the disturbances at Rome on the death of Nero.  The Druids came forth from the retreats where they had hidden since Claudius’ proscription, and reappeared in the towns and country-places, proclaiming that “the Roman empire was at an end, that the Gallic empire was beginning, and that the day had come when the possession of all the world should pass into the hands of the Transalpine nations.”  The insurgents rose in the name of the Gallic empire, and Julius Sabinus assumed the title of Caesar.  War commenced.  Confusion, hesitation, and actual desertion reached the colonies and extended positively to the Roman legions.  Several towns, even Troves and Cologne, submitted or fell into the hands of the insurgents.  Several legions, yielding to bribery, persuasion, or intimidation, went over to them, some with a bad grace, others with the blood of their officers on their hands.  The gravity of the situation was not misunderstood at Rome.  Petilius Cerealis, a commander of renown for his campaigns on the Rhine, was sent off to Belgica with seven fresh legions.