While he was completing the conquest of Belgic Gaul, one of his lieutenants, the young Publius Crassus, detached, after the battle of the Sambre, into Normandy and Brittany, reduced to submission the peoples of those provinces, so that at that time the greatest part of Gaul acknowledged the authority of the Republic: the effect of Cæsar’s victories was such that the Ubii, a German people from beyond the Rhine, established between the Maine and the Sieg, sent their congratulations to the conqueror with the offer of their services. Before leaving for the Cisalpine, Cæsar sent a legion into the Valais, to chastise the inhabitants of those Alpine valleys, who, at the beginning of the year, had attacked in their march the two new legions on their way from Italy; it was his aim also to open easy communications with the Cisalpine by the Simplon and Saint-Bernard. But his lieutenant Galba, after a sanguinary battle, was obliged to retreat and take up his winter quarters in Savoy. Thus Cæsar’s designs could not be realised. It was reserved for another great man, nineteen centuries afterwards, to level that formidable barrier of the Alps. [Sidenote: Return of Cicero.] II. Let us now resume the account of events in Rome subsequent to the Calends of January, 697 (20th of December, 696). The consuls who entered upon their office were P. Cornelius Lentulus Spinther and Q. Cecilius Metellus Nepos; the first, a friend of Cicero; the second, favourable to Clodius from hatred to the celebrated orator who had offended him.[579]