vitriol, _atramentum sutorium_).[79] This was a satisfaction to men’s feelings, and it gave a hope of the possibility that things would still change for the better. But for all that, they remained as they were: the knights were intimidated; the courts of justice were no better, nor were any fruits whatever of their independence yet to be seen. The utter worthlessness of those who were in power is strikingly shown in the war of Jugurtha, which Sallust, with his fine tact, has therefore made the subject of his historical work. But we must first speak of the conquests of the empire. FOREIGN CONQUESTS DOWN TO THE WAR WITH JUGURTHA. In Spain, few events of any importance happened between the time of Tib. Gracchus and the war with Jugurtha. The Balearic isles were subdued by one of the four sons of Metellus Macedonicus, all of whom were consuls. The Metelli were plebeians, but one of the most powerful families which formed the aristocracy; and they were truly great characters: Metellus Numidicus also, notwithstanding the reproaches which have been brought against him, is one of the most spotless of men. Another son of Metellus conquered the Dalmatians, who from henceforth remained subject to the Romans; so that one might now go by land to Greece round the Adriatic. Soon after the death of Tib. Gracchus, the Romans made their first expedition into Transalpine Gaul. They were masters of nearly the whole of Spain, and of Italy almost as far as the Alps (Aosta did not yet belong to them); but in Gaul itself, between the Alps and the Pyrenees, they had not yet even tried to gain a firm footing: all that they did, was to secure for the Massilians, their old allies, in the beginning of the seventh century, a strip of country along the coast against the Ligurians. The first occasion for their establishing themselves there, was a war of the Salluvians or Salyans against the Ligurians: the Salluvians, who dwelt from Aix to Marseilles, were conquered by them. This tribe had been supported by the Allobroges, one of the greatest peoples of Gaul, who had their abodes in Dauphiné and Savoy, as far as Lyons; and when these had likewise been defeated, the Romans turned their arms against the Arvernians, a race governed by rich and powerful kings, which as far back as the second Punic War, held the supremacy in Gaul. These last were utterly routed on the banks of the Rhone near Vienne, in the days of C. Gracchus. Bituitus, of whose wealth various accounts have been preserved, was at that time their king: he tried to make his peace with the Romans, and the generals, Q. Fabius Maximus (who was afterwards surnamed Allobrogicus), and Cn. Domitius, sent him to Rome to beg the mercy of the senate. Without having come _in deditionem_, he went thither, trusting to the good faith of those who were in power; but they arrested him, and kept him a prisoner to the day of his death at Alba on the lake Fucinus, where Syphax and Perseus had died.