Vespasian came to Rome very late, which had led to not a few bad consequences: the city was all this while under the rule of a most profligate and tyrannical youth, who showed himself even then to be what he afterwards turned out. Some of the senators, especially Helvidius Priscus,—a man who, however, was not at all in keeping with his time,—allowed themselves to be drawn into an altogether ill-timed “_fronde_” against the government, a plot alike unfortunate for themselves, for Vespasian, and for the empire. Under these circumstances, a feeling began to gain ground in Gaul, the symptoms of which already displayed themselves before. As early as in the reign of the emperor Tiberius, there had been a most senseless rising of the Ædui under Julius Sacrovir; then came that of Vindex, in which a national Gallic feeling manifested itself, being very likely the reason why Virginius Rufus had him murdered and his army of Gauls scattered: the act of that Roman general thus appears morally in a very bad light. The death of Vindex must be looked upon as an event, which did not quell the national spirit of the Gauls, but rather kindled it still more. We have not indeed any complete or adequate notion of the state of Gaul under the Romans: that country cannot possibly have been otherwise than in a thriving condition, even from the times of Cæsar; of southern Gaul, this is certain. All our knowledge of Gaul is limited to the few things said about it in history, and to what we are told in Pliny and Strabo: these two, however, only speak of the _civitates_, without making any mention whatever of the smaller places; and they leave us without the least information as to their internal affairs. Here we trace them merely from the beginning of Tacitus’ account; for otherwise they are not to be met with in history until the end of the third century, which is treated of by the wretched _Scriptores historiæ Augustæ_: the itineraries also give only a few places on some of the high roads. For this reason, Gaul on our maps looks like a newly cultivated country with a few towns: this, however, is merely the accidental effect of the scantiness of our information. The East, on the other hand, being constantly spoken of in history from the Macedonian era down to the fifth, and sixth centuries, the maps of Asia Minor and Syria are dotted all over with towns. Gaul was under the Romans a well tilled and thickly peopled country: there are found in many parts of France ruins of very considerable towns, the names of which are quite uncertain or altogether unknown. Thus a short time ago, in the neighbourhood of Montbeliard, magnificent ruins were discovered of a place which very likely is only to be met with in an itinerary, and even there with a doubtful name only: the excavations near Valenciennes, and in Normandy and elsewhere, betoken towns of great extent, and evidently of much population. To fill up the gaps of the