In the remaining parts of free Gaul, the Arvernians were of old the ruling people; all the rest were dependent upon them, even as the nations of the Peloponnesus were on Sparta. And just as afterwards in Greece, Athens put up for the hegemony; so likewise the Æduans rose by the side of the Arvernians, being encouraged by the Romans, who were true to their policy of dividing: they sided with the Romans in the war which, in the year 631, the Allobroges and the Arvernians waged so disastrously against Rome. It was then that the Æduans got the name of brothers and friends of the Roman people, and they grew powerful at the expense of the Arvernians. They were now great for some time; but at length the Sequani rose in Franche Comté, and on this occasion a German tribe, the Sueves, burst into Gaul: the Arvernians never raised their heads again. Gaul was an exhausted wretched country. Owing to the many emigrations which there had been, its population may have dwindled; although, on the whole, emigrations, if they be not too extensive, will not weaken a country, even if they have drained it of two-thirds of its inhabitants, as the loss will be made up in about seventy to eighty years. What may have then induced the German tribes to cross the Rhine, is buried from us in the night of oblivion. Very likely, even before the Gallic conquest, they had once their dwellings as far as the Alps: in the Valais, according to Livy, ere yet the Gauls had settled there, there were Germans who must have been overpowered by the Celts: as conquerors, the Germans never came thither. Ariovistus, who was in the country of the Sequani, took for his Sueves part of the arable land, some of which they tilled themselves, and the rest they made the conquered inhabitants farm for them: this policy was afterwards always followed by the Germans. Against him, the Æduans and the Sequani called upon the aid of the Romans, and it was the very difficulty of the enterprise which emboldened Cæsar to engage in it. Situated as he was, he ought not to have done it; for the year before his consulship, Ariovistus had actually been acknowledged by the Roman people as a sovereign king. Cæsar marched against him notwithstanding, and won a decisive victory near Besançon: most of the Sueves were destroyed, and the remnant again crossed the Rhine, whither Cæsar at that time was too wise to follow them. There was now, not only the whole country of the Gauls beyond the Alps under his rule, but also Cisalpine Gaul, down to the frontier of the Romagna; Illyricum, as far as Macedon; and on the side of the Barbarians, quite boundless tracts. Here he had seven legions, and all the auxiliaries he could get from the allies. We of course hear no more of real _socii_, but merely of _auxilia_, which were quite a different thing: the _socii_ were armed in the Roman manner, and were true legions; whilst the _auxilia_ were formed into cohorts, and for the most part retained their national weapons.