were to have any share in it. On the contrary, the leading men of both orders had divided the possession between them, and had thus enriched themselves; and now the population which had since grown up, laid claim to its assignation, so as to establish a new and free peasantry in the room of those who had died off, or had been bought up, and to give fresh life to what was left of the old yeomanry, which had thus dwindled away. It is, however, quite a different question, whether an extensive settlement in those parts was prudent at such a time, when a war with the neighbouring Gauls was to be dreaded. Yet after all, this war must one day or other have broken out. The Gauls could not long dwell quietly in Lombardy, and it was all one, whether it came on a little sooner. Certain it is, that this settlement alarmed the Boians in what are now the districts of Modena and Bologna, probably also in that of Parma: the population in fact had recovered from its losses, and was thirsting for revenge. They were also afraid that the great men at Rome, who had lost their large estates in the Romagna, might seek for new ones in their own country. The Romans, however, did not yet think of war with the Gauls: they had cast their eyes on Spain, and they had no hope of being able to drive the Gauls out of Lombardy. It is said that at that time the Romans carried on wars against the Ligurians; but we should be sadly mistaken if we fancied that they had already invaded Liguria proper, the territory of Genoa. It was, on the contrary, the Ligurians who had spread in the Apennines as far as Casentino and Arezzo, after the might of the Etruscans and Gauls had been broken at the Vadimo; and it could have been none other than these. It was a hard struggle. The Ligurians defended every single mountain, and each of the small tribes was only mastered after having been almost entirely crushed.