ii6 HORSE-SHOES AND HORSE-SHOEING. 



their ancient expeditions bear witness to an organization 

 already powerful, and to an ardent spirit of enterprise. 

 Not to speak of migrations which date back perhaps nine 

 or ten centuries before our era, we see at the moment 

 when Rome was beginning to aim at greatness, the Celts 

 spreading themselves beyond their frontiers. In the time 

 of Tarquin the Elder (Years of Rome, 138 to 176), two 

 expeditions started from Celtic Gaul : one proceeded 

 across the Rhine and Southern Germany, to descend upon 

 Illyria and Pannonia (now Western Hungary); the other, 

 scaling the Alps, established itself in Italy, in the country 

 lying between those mountains and the Po. The invaders 

 soon transferred themselves to the right bank of that river, 

 and nearly the whole of the territory comprised between 

 the Alps and the Apennines took the name of Cisalpine 

 Gaul. More than two centuries afterwards, the descend- 

 ants of those Gauls marched upon Rome and burnt it all 

 but the Capitol. Still a century later (475), we see new 

 bands issuing from Gaul, reaching Thrace by the valley of 

 the Danube, ravaging Northern Greece, and bringing 

 back to Toulouse the gold plundered from the Temple of 

 Delphi. Others, arriving at Byzantium, pass into Asia, 

 establish their dominions over the whole region on this 

 side Mount Taurus, since called Gallo-Grcecia, or Galatia, 

 and maintain in it a sort of military feudalism until the 

 time of the war of Antiochus. 



' These facts, obscure as they may be in history, prove 

 the spirit of adventure and the warlike genius of the 

 Gaulish race, which thus, in fact, inspired a general terror. 

 During nearly two centuries, from 364 to 531, Rome 

 struggled against the Cisalpine Gauls, and more than 



