he way into
Italy after he had crossed the Pyrenees (Livy xxi. 29). The first group
of immigrants is said to have crossed the Pennine Alps (Great St
Bernard) into the valley of the Po. Finding the district already
occupied, they proceeded over the river, drove out the Etruscans and
Umbrians, and established themselves as far as the Apennines in the
modern Romagna. According to Cato (in Pliny, _Nat. Hist._ iii. 116) they
comprised as many as 112 different tribes, and from the remains
discovered in the tombs at Hallstatt, La Tene and other places, they
appear to have been fairly civilized. Several wars took place between
them and the Romans. In 283 they were defeated, together with the
Etruscans, at the Vadimonian lake; in 224, after the battle of Telamon
in Etruria, they were forced to submit. But they still cherished a
hatred of the Romans, and during the Second Punic War (218), irritated
by the foundation of the Roman colonies of Cremona and Placentia, they
rendered valuable assistance to Hannibal. They continued the struggle
against Rome from 201 to 191, when they were finally subdued by P.
Cornelius Scipio Nasica, and deprived of nearly half their territory.
According to Strabo (v. p. 213) the Boii were driven back across the
Alps and settled on the land of their kinsmen, the Taurisci, on the
Danube, adjoining Vindelicia and Raetia. Most authorities, however,
assume that there had been a settlement of the Boii on the Danube from
very early times, in part of the modern Bohemia (anc. _Boiohemum_, "land
of the Boii"). About 60 B.C. some of the Boii migrated to Noricum and
Pannonia, when 32,000 of them joined the expedition of the Helvetians
into Gaul, and shared their defeat near Bibracte (58). They were
subsequently allowed by Caesar to settle in the territory of the Aedui
between the Loire and the Allier. Their chief town was Gorgobina (site
uncertain). Those who remained on the Danube were exterminated by the
Dacian king, Boerebista, and the district they had occupied was
afterwards called the "desert of the Boii" (Strabo vii. p. 292). In A.D.
69 a Boian named Mariccus stirred up a fanatical revolt, but was soon
defeated and put to death. Some remnants of the Boii are mentioned as
dwelling near Bordeaux; but Mommsen inclines to the opinion that the
three groups (in Bordeaux, Bohemia and the Po districts) were not really
scattered branches of one and the same stock, but that they are
instances of a mere similarity of n