a region over the coast of which the culture of Greece had managed to stray, centuries before, through the accident of a Greek colony having been founded at Marseilles.  In this province a Roman might live and feel that he was still as good as in Italy.  But beyond lay what was known as “Long-haired” Gaul, sometimes “Trousered” Gaul, so called from the distinguishing externals of its inhabitants, who wore breeches, let their hair grow long, and on their faces grew only a moustache—­three things which no Roman did, and from which, even in these districts, the nobles, who were the first to romanize, were beginning to desist.

The peoples of these Gaulish provinces preferred, like all early Celtic communities, to give their adherence only to clans or tribes, and to unite no further than impulse or expediency dictated, forming no towns larger than a village, living for the most part in poor huts scattered through forests, hills, marshes, and pasture land, and content to sleep on straw, if only they could wear a fine plaid and boast of a gold ornament.  The names of many such tribes still remain in the names of the towns which grew up from the chief village of each canton.  Such were the Ambiani, who have given us Amiens, and the Remi, who have given us Rheims.  Paris and Treves denote the administrative villages of the Parisii and Treveri.  Nevertheless the country had its corn-lands and was rich in minerals and cattle, from which the hides came regularly down the Rhone to be carried to the Mediterranean markets.  “Long-haired” Gaul was at this date rude and superstitious, with that weird druidical religion which the Emperor Claudius had done his best to suppress.  Its chief vice was that of drunkenness.  As with the French, who have largely descended from them, the proverbial passions of the Gauls were for war and for the art of speaking; but at our date the former passion was decaying and the latter gaining ground.  The Gaulish provinces united at a point on the Rhone, near which necessarily arose the largest city of that part of the world, namely, Lugdunum, or Lyons, which speedily became not only a seat of administration but a noted school of eloquence.

Of Britain there is as yet little to say.  For the last twenty years the Romans had done their best to conquer the Celtic tribes, who suffered, as Celtic tribes were always apt to suffer, from their own disunion.  They had now reached the Trent—­or rather a line from Chester to Lincoln—­had just punished Boudicca (or Boadicea) for her vigorous effort at retaliation and her slaughter of 70,000 Romans or adherents of Rome, and were following the true Roman practice of securing what they had won by building military roads and establishing strong posts of control, as at Colchester, Chester, and Caerleon-on-Usk.  Some amount of iron-working was being done in Britain, but its chief exports were, as they had long been, tin, salt, and hides.  The British themselves had no towns.  The places so called were nothing more than collections of huts, surrounded by rampart and ditch, in some easily defensible spot amid wood or marsh.