The wars which Augustus or his legates waged in the Cantabrian Mountains of northwestern Spain, in the Alps and the wooded hills of Dalmatia, merely served to consolidate the empire and strengthen its frontiers, and gave the imperial ruler an opportunity of renewing the martial feats and triumphs of the republic. The Spanish mountaineers were transplanted to the plains and constrained to conduct themselves peaceably. Deprived of their savage liberty, they accustomed themselves to agriculture and social life; and the Spanish cities, endowed with privileges and connected by highroads, soon became seats of Roman culture and spheres of active influence in trade and commerce. The products of the soil, the largess of the sea, the fruits of industry--oil and wine, honey and wax, wool and salt fish--were exported in large quantities from the ports of Spain and filled the seaboard cities with wealth. The fierce and predatory tribes of the Alpine range, from Savoy and Piedmont to Istria, were again and again smitten with the edge of the sword and forced to submit; the newly founded military colony of Augusta Prætoria (Aosta), in the country of the Salassians and at the junction of the Graian and Pennine Alps, served thenceforward as a bulwark to the Roman possessions in northwest Italy, after the stubbornness of the hardy mountaineers had been broken by the carrying off of such men as were capable of bearing arms to the slave market at Eporedia (Ivrea). [Sidenote: [15 B.C.-7 A.D.]] In the year 15 B.C. the free races of Rætia, Vindelicia, and Noricum were conquered, from the Lake of Constance and the Valley of the Inn to the Adriatic; and Tiberius led his legions from Gaul to the sources of the Rhine, there to join hands with Drusus, the vigorous youth for whom was reserved the honour of “ushering in the last hour of the liberty of the mountains,” and who was then advancing from the south. A single campaign sufficed to destroy forevermore the freedom of these disconnected tribes, who had no national ties to unite them into a political entity. A trophy on the southern slope of the mountain rampart proclaimed to posterity that under the leadership and auspices of Augustus four-and-forty nations, all mentioned by name, had been vanquished and subjugated by the sword of Rome. The transportation of the most vigorous elements of the population to foreign parts, the construction of Alpine roads, the erection of fortresses and castella, and the founding of military colonies (amongst which Augusta Vindelicorum, the present Augsburg, and Regina Castra, the modern Ratisbon, quickly took the first rank), secured these conquests and won fresh territory for the dominion of Rome; so that in a short time all the land between the Danube and the Alps was included in the provincial dominions of the Roman Empire.