Camillus

Plutarch

Plutarch. Plutarch's Lives, Vol. II. Perrin, Bernadotte, translator. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1914.

The Gauls were of the Celtic stock, and their numbers were such, as it is said, that they abandoned their own country, which was not able to sustain them all, and set out in quest of another. They were many myriads of young warriors, and they took along with them a still greater number of women and children. Some of them crossed the Rhipaean mountains, streamed off towards the northern ocean, and occupied the remotest parts of Europe;

others settled between the Pyrenees and the Alps, near the Senones and the Celtorians, and dwelt there a long time. But at last they got a taste of wine, which was then for the first time brought to them from Italy. They admired the drink so much, and were all so beside themselves with the novel pleasure which it gave, that they seized their arms, took along their families, and made off to the Alps, in quest of the land which produced such fruit, considering the rest of the world barren and wild.