e sword were driven forth from the land, and this tribe was
erased from the list of the Italian nations (471). In the case of a
people subsisting chiefly on its flocks and herds such an expulsion
en masse was quite practicable; and the Senones thus expelled from
Italy probably helped to make up the Gallic hosts which soon after
inundated the countries of the Danube, Macedonia, Greece, and Asia
Minor.

The Boii

The next neighbours and kinsmen of the Senones, the Boii, terrified
and exasperated by a catastrophe which had been accomplished with so
fearful a rapidity, united instantaneously with the Etruscans, who
still continued the war, and whose Senonian mercenaries now fought
against the Romans no longer as hirelings, but as desperate avengers
of their native land. A powerful Etrusco-Gallic army marched against
Rome to retaliate the annihilation of the Senonian tribe on the
enemy's capital, and to extirpate Rome from the face of the earth more
completely than had been formerly done by the chieftain of these same
Senones. But the combined army was decidedly defeated by the Romans
at its passage of the Tiber in the neighbourhood of the Vadimonian
lake (471). After they had once more in the following year risked a
general engagement near Populonia with no better success, the Boii
deserted their confederates and concluded a peace on their own account
with the Romans (472). Thus the Gauls, the most formidable member of
the league, were conquered in detail before the league was fully
formed, and by that means the hands of Rome were left free to act
against Lower Italy, where during the years 469-471 the contest had
not been carried on with any vigour. Hitherto the weak Roman army had
with difficulty maintained itself in Thurii against the Lucanians and
Bruttians; but now (472) the consul Gaius Fabricius Luscinus appeared
with a strong army in front of the town, relieved it, defeated the
Lucanians in a great engagement, and took their general Statilius
prisoner. The smaller non-Doric Greek towns, recognizing the Romans
as their deliverers, everywhere voluntarily joined them. Roman
garrisons were left behind in the most important places, in Locri,
Croton, Thurii, and especially in Rhegium, on which latter town the
Carthaginians seem also to have had designs. Everywhere Rome had most
decidedly the advantage. The annihilation of the Senones had given to
the Romans a considerable tract of the Adriatic coast. With a v