We have now reached much beyond the times of the development of the constitution at home, and the rest of the history has not for us the same interest which it had for the ancients. Even the wars are losing that grand character which arose from the display of native energy. What sort of a subject for description, for instance, is the battle of Magnesia, in which a well-ordered Roman army came off victorious over a horde of eastern barbarians, which did not even deserve the name of army? Some wars, like the Cimbric, form an exception. Livy from henceforth becomes more and more diffuse; for he had other interests in his history, and more than two-thirds of his work are taken up by the two centuries which now follow. We are going to adopt just the opposite plan, and are able to be more and more concise. The Insubrians had risen against the Romans. During the second Punic war, they had been quiet; except in the first years, they took no part in it, as the scene of operations was in general too far distant from them, and they kept up but little communication with Hannibal. But now they were in arms, and the Romans met with peculiar difficulty, owing to Hamilcar, an enterprising Carthaginian who had remained behind from Mago’s army, and had organised the Ligurian and Gallic forces. The Insubrians were very different from the Boians: the former made their submission after one or two campaigns; but the war with the latter lasted to the tenth year. They defended themselves with distinguished bravery, and they destroyed the fortresses of Placentia and Cremona; for they knew that the Romans were carrying on against them a war of extermination, and they therefore fought with all the energy of despair. Historians do not state as explicitly as a fragment of Cato does, that they were utterly rooted out. The fate of this people is remarkable. After their emigration from Gaul, they had either turned themselves to Italy, or had gone to the Danube: in Gaul, their seats are now hardly known; in the country near the Danube, they were probably exterminated in the Cimbric war, and hence the _desertum Boiorum_ (_Böheim_, Bohemia), which was afterwards occupied by the Marcomanni: in Italy they are said to have had a hundred and twelve cantons. That in Italy they were extirpated, and that there could therefore have been no question about them, was not at all understood by the jurists who have written on the _lex de Gallia Cisalpina_. But all the Celts south of the Po were destroyed, and the whole of their land taken up by Roman colonies: Bologna, Modena, Parma, and also Lucca, were founded at that time, and received a considerable territory. Yet even in the days of Polybius, that country was nearly without inhabitants, and it was repeopled only by slow degrees. The _Lex Julia_ united the Cispadana as to political rights with Italy.