Beyond the Isara, we reach the extensive country of the ALLOBROGES, who were a great and extensive nation even as early as the time of Hannibal, when they occupied nearly the whole of Dauphiné and the greater part of Savoy. They allied themselves with Hannibal, and vigorously opposed the Romans in the wars of Fabius Allobrogicus and Domitius, but were overpowered; they were, however, not subdued until the war which immediately followed that of Sulla; their complete subjugation cannot be assigned to an earlier period than that of Caesar, for at the time of the Catilinarian conspiracy it was, properly speaking, not yet complete. VIENNA was no doubt a capital even in the time of Hannibal; under the emperors it was a very important town. LUGDUNUM, at the confluence of the Arar (Saone) and the Rhodanus, was a colony founded by Munatius Plancus in the earliest part of the reign of Augustus. It may have been a Gallic town before, otherwise it would scarcely have received a Gallic name; and this supposition quite agrees with the system of the ancients, to found colonies in places already existing as towns. Ancient Lugdunum was very small in comparison with the modern Lyons; but it afterwards became the residence of the Roman governor of the provincia Lugdunensis. The country north of Lyons between mount Jura and the Cevennes was inhabited by three tribes. The _Arverni_, the westernmost of them, occupied the very heart and centre of Gaul, so far as height and ramification of the mountains are concerned. That district exhibits traces of an immense volcanic activity at some remote period. On the north-east of the Arverni, we have the _Aedui_ (not _Haedui_), in Bourgogne, and the _Sequani_ in Franche Comté. In the seventh century of Rome, these three nations were the most powerful in Gaul; and the Arverni and Aedui were contending for the supremacy. The Arverni and Allobroges were allied, and Q. Fabius and Cn. Domitius, who carried on war against them, broke the power of both in two campaigns. The Arverni, like all Gallic tribes, are said to have had kings, and names of kings occur on their barbarous coins; according to some accounts which must probably be traced to Posidonius, their power was very great. After the war of Fabius and Domitius, the greatness of the Arverni was completely gone; in the wars of Caesar, they act a very subordinate part, and when the Aedui, their former rivals, were humbled, the Arverni displayed a malicious satisfaction. During the latest period of the Roman empire, however, they again rose to a certain moral importance: when the Visigoths settled in Languedoc and made Toulouse the residence of their kings, when the Burgundians and other tribes advanced from the east, when northern Gaul was isolated from Spain and Italy, and when the war extended from the north-west to the Rhone, the Arverni, who now regarded themselves as Romans, and felt the greatest aversion against the