Res Gestae

All ages are most fit for military service, and the old man marches out on a campaign with a courage equal to that of the man in the prime of life; since his limbs are toughened by cold and constant toil, and he will make light of many formidable dangers. Nor does anyone of them, for dread of the service of Mars, cut off his thumb, as in Italy[*](Cf. Suet., Aug. 24, 1.) : there they call such men murci, or cowards.

It is a race greedy for wine, devising numerous drinks similar to wine, and some among them of the baser sort, with wits dulled by continual drunkenness (which Cato’s saying pronounced a voluntary kind of madness) rush about in aimless revels, so that those words seem true which Cicero spoke when defending Fonteius[*](Ammianus is the only source for these words.) : The Gauls henceforth will drink wine mixed with water, which they once thought poison.

These regions, and especially those bordering on Italy, came gradually and with slight effort under the dominion of Rome; they were first essayed by Fulvius,[*](M. Fulvius Flaccus; see Index and cf. Livy, Periochae, lx. and lxi.) then undermined in petty battles by Sextius,[*](C. Sextius Calvinus; see Index and cf. Livy, Periocha, lxi.) and finally subdued by Fabius Maximus,[*](In 121 B.C.) on whom the full completion of this business (when he had vanquished the formidable tribe of the Allobroges)[*](In 121 B.C.) conferred that surname.[*](Allobrogicus.)

Now the whole of Gaul (except where, as the authority of Sallust[*](Hist.i. 11, Maurenbrecher.) informs us, it was impassable with marshes), after losses on both sides during ten years of war the dictator Caesar subdued and joined to us in an