nce of this that, as already mentioned(24) in free Gaul
itself, e. g. among the Arverni, the Roman language was not unknown
even before the conquest; although this knowledge was presumably
still restricted to few, and even the men of rank in the allied
canton of the Haedui had to be conversed with through interpreters.
Just as the traffickers in fire-water and the squatters led the way
in the occupation of North America, so these Roman wine-traders
and landlords paved the way for, and beckoned onward, the future
conqueror of Gaul. How vividly this was felt even on the opposite
side, is shown by the prohibition which one of the most energetic
tribes of Gaul, the canton of the Nervii, like some German peoples,
issued against trafficking with the Romans.

Celts and Germans

Still more violent even than the pressure of the Romans
from the Mediterranean was that of the Germans downward from the Baltic
and the North Sea--a fresh stock from the great cradle of peoples
in the east, which made room for itself by the side of its elder
brethren with youthful vigour, although also with youthful
rudeness. Though the tribes of this stock dwelling nearest
to the Rhine--the Usipetes, Tencteri, Sugambri, Ubii--had begun to be
in some degree civilized, and had at least ceased voluntarily
to change their abodes, all accounts yet agree that farther inland
agriculture was of little importance, and the several tribes
had hardly yet attained fixed abodes. It is significant
in this respect that their western neighbours at this time hardly knew
how to name any one of the peoples of the interior of Germany
by its cantonal name; these were only known to them under the general
appellations of the Suebi, that is, the roving people or nomads,
and the Marcomani, that is, the land-guard(25)--names which were
hardly cantonal names in Caesar's time, although they appeared
as such to the Romans and subsequently became in various cases
names of cantons.

The Right Bank of the Rhine Lost to the Celts

The most violent onset of this great nation fell upon the Celts.
The struggles, in which the Germans probably engaged with the Celts
for the possession of the regions to the east of the Rhine, are
wholly withdrawn from our view. We are only able to perceive,
that about the end of the seventh century of Rome all the land
as far as the Rhine was already lost to the Celts; that the Boii,
who were probably once settled in Bavaria and Bohemia,(26) were h