Character of the Gauls
Such was the end of the Celtic war: which, for the
note
desperate determination and boldness of the enemy, for the
obstinacy of the battles fought, and for the number of those
who fell and of those who were engaged, is second to none
recorded in history, but which, regarded as a specimen of
scientific strategy, is utterly contemptible. The Gauls showed
no power of planning or carrying out a campaign, and in
everything they did were swayed by impulse rather than by
sober calculation. As I have seen these tribes, after a short
struggle, entirely ejected from the valley of the Padus, with
the exception of some few localities lying close to the Alps, I
thought I ought not to let their original attack upon Italy pass
unrecorded, any more than their subsequent attempts, or their
final ejectment: for it is the function of the historian to record
and transmit to posterity such episodes in the drama of
Fortune; that our posterity may not from ignorance of the past
be unreasonably dismayed at the sudden and unexpected invasions of these barbarians, but may reflect how shortlived and
easily damped the spirit of this race is; and so may stand to
their defence, and try every possible means before yielding an
inch to them. I think, for instance, that those who have
recorded for our information the invasion of
Greece by the Persians, and of Delphi by the
Gauls, have contributed materially to the
struggles made for the common freedom of Greece. For a
superiority in supplies, arms, or numbers, would scarcely
deter any one from putting the last possible hope to the test,
in a struggle for the integrity and the safety of his city and its
territory, if he had before his eyes the surprising result of those
expeditions; and remembered how many myriads of men, what
daring confidence, and what immense armaments were baffled
-- 132 --
by the skill and ability of opponents, who conducted their
measures under the dictates of reason and sober calculation.
And as an invasion of Gauls has been a source of alarm to
Greece in our day, as well as in ancient times, I thought it
worth while to give a summary sketch of their doings from the
earliest times.
