The Gauls are of the Celtic race, and are reported to have been
compelled by their numbers to leave their country, which was
insufficient to sustain them all, and to have gone in search of other
homes. And being, many thousands of them, young men able to bear
arms, and carrying with them a still greater number of women and young
children, some of them, passing the Riphaean mountains, fell upon
the Northern Ocean, and possessed themselves of the farthest parts of
Europe; others, seating themselves between the Pyrenean mountains and
the Alps, lived there a considerable time, near to the Senones and
Celtorii; but, afterwards tasting wine, which was then first brought
them out of Italy, they were all so much taken with the liquor, and
transported with the hitherto unknown delight, that, snatching up their
arms and taking their families along with them, they marched directly to
the Alps, to find out the country which yielded such fruit, pronouncing
all others barren and useless. He that first brought wine among them and
was the chief instigator of their coming into Italy is said to have been
one Aruns, A Tuscan, a man of noble extraction.
At their first coming they at once possessed themselves of all that
country which anciently the Tuscans inhabited, reaching from the Alps
to both the seas, as the names themselves testify; for the North of
Adriatic Sea is named from the Tuscan city Adria, and that to the south
the Tuscan Sea simply. The whole country is rich in fruit trees, has
excellent pasture, and is well watered with river. It had eighteen large
and beautiful cities, well provided with all the means for industry and
wealth, and all the enjoyments and pleasures of life. The Gauls cast out
the Tuscans, and seated themselves in them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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