In the following year, the Romans crossed over the Apennines into the country of the Boians, who immediately submitted. In 529 and 530, the war was in the Milanese territory, the land of the Insubrians. These were supported by the Transalpine Gauls, and they offered a stout resistance: that such an open country, which had but one stronghold, was defended in this manner, does honour to the bravery of these tribes. The Romans were forced at the confluence of the Po and the Adda to retreat. The Cenomanians, between the Adda and the Lago di Garda; the Venetians, whose capital was Patavium; and the Euganeans, were friendly to the Romans: the Venetians were a people of quite a different race from the Tuscans, being probably of Liburno-Pelasgian descent; they possessed the country between the Adige and the four eastern rivers, and were highly civilized. The Insubrians afterwards sued in vain for peace: the Romans did not trust them, and wished for their destruction. In 529, C. Flaminius gained a great battle against the Insubrians, north of the Po, in which he is unjustly reproached with bad generalship. In the fourth year of the war, the Romans reduced their only fortified place, Acerræ, and utterly routed them near Clastidium. The great captain M. Claudius Marcellus slew with his own hand the Gallic chief Virodomarus. After this campaign, Milan was taken, and the Insubrians made their unconditional submission, having been all but exterminated. In the Capitoline Fasti, we find that Marcellus had triumphed _De Gallis Insubribus et_ GERMANIS. I cannot say positively whether the piece of stone on which the _er_ stands, has been put in at a later period or not, often as I have examined that monument. The stone is broken at the _r_, thus much is certain: but whether the restoration is new, or whether the piece which was broken off, was again fastened in, I do not venture to decide. It cannot be _Cenomanis_, the _G_ being distinct; _Gonomanis_ does not occur among the Romans. The thing is not quite impossible. This would then be the earliest mention of our national name. In the age of Julius Cæsar, the Germans in all likelihood dwelt only as far as the Main, or the Neckar at most; but in earlier times, they lived further to the south, and were pushed back by the Gauls. Those Germans in the Valais who were known to Livy,[13] are remnants of that migration. After the victory at Clastidium, between Piacenza and Alessandria, the Romans immediately founded two colonies, Placentia and Cremona, on both banks of the Po: the boundary was pushed on to the Ticinus. There is every reason to think that Modena also was fortified; but it was afterwards lost again for some time, during a fresh insurrection of the Boians. The Ligurian tribes in Piedmont were still independent by rights, though not in reality.