t stood by no means alone. The Usipetes and Tencteri
settled on the right bank of the Rhine, weary of the incessant
devastation of their territory by the overbearing Suebian tribes,
had, the year before Caesar arrived in Gaul (695), set out
from their previous abodes to seek others at the mouth of the Rhine.
They had already taken away from the Menapii there the portion
of their territory situated on the right bank, and it might be
foreseen that they would make the attempt to establish themselves
also on the left. Suebian bands, moreover, assembled between
Cologne and Mayence, and threatened to appear as uninvited guests
in the opposite Celtic canton of the Treveri. Lastly,
the territory of the most easterly clan of the Celts, the warlike
and numerous Helvetii, was visited with growing frequency
by the Germans, so that the Helvetii, who perhaps even apart from this
were suffering from over-population through the reflux of their
settlers from the territory which they had lost to the north
of the Rhine, and besides were liable to be completely isolated
from their kinsmen by the settlement of Ariovistus in the territory
of the Sequani, conceived the desperate resolution of voluntarily
evacuating the territory hitherto in their possession to the Germans,
and acquiring larger and more fertile abodes to the west
of the Jura, along with, if possible, the hegemony in the interior
of Gaul--a plan which some of their districts had already formed
and attempted to execute during the Cimbrian invasion.(32)
the Rauraci whose territory (Basle and southern Alsace) was similarly
threatened, the remains, moreover, of the Boii who had already
at an earlier period been compelled by the Germans to forsake their
homes and were now unsettled wanderers, and other smaller tribes,
made common cause with the Helvetii. As early as 693 their flying
parties came over the Jura and even as far as the Roman province;
their departure itself could not be much longer delayed; inevitably
German settlers would then advance into the important region
between the lakes of Constance and Geneva forsaken by its defenders.
From the sources of the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean the German tribes
were in motion; the whole line of the Rhine was threatened by them;
it was a moment like that when the Alamanni and the Franks
threw themselves on the falling empire of the Caesars;
and even now there seemed on the eve of being carried into effect
against the Celts that v