to keep in check the adjoining province; but in that intermediate region as little were there armies of the first rank with legions under senatorial generals, as there were senatorial governors. The distrust towards the corporation governing the state alongside of the emperor finds very forcible expression in this arrangement. [Sidenote: Roads and colonies in the Alps.] Next to the protection of the peace of Italy the chief aim of this organisation was to secure its communications with the north, which were of not less urgent importance for traffic than in a military point of view. With special energy Augustus took up this task; and he doubtless deserved that his name should still live at the present day in those of Aosta and Augsburg, perhaps also in that of the Julian Alps. The old coast-road, which Augustus partly renewed, partly constructed, from the Ligurian coast through Gaul and Spain to the Atlantic Ocean, can only have served purposes of traffic. The road also over the Cottian Alps, already opened up by Pompeius (iv. 28) {iv. 27.}, was finished under Augustus by the already mentioned prince of Susa, and named after him; in like manner a trading route, it connects Italy, by way of Turin and Susa, with the commercial capital of south Gaul, Arelate. But the military line proper--the direct connection between Italy and the camps on the Rhine--led through the valley of the Dora Baltea from Italy partly to Lyons the capital of Gaul, partly to the Rhine. While the republic had confined itself to bringing into its power the entrance of that valley by founding Eporedia (Ivrea), Augustus possessed himself of it entirely by not merely subjugating its inhabitants--the still restless Salassi, with whom he had already fought during the Dalmatian war--but extirpating them outright; 36,000 of them, including 8000 fighting men, were sold under the hammer into slavery in the market-place of Eporedia, and the purchasers were bound not to grant freedom to any of them within twenty years. The camp itself, from which his general Varro Murena had achieved their final defeat in 729 {25.}, became the fortress, which, occupied by 3000 settlers taken from the imperial guard, was to secure the communications--the town Augusta Praetoria, the modern Aosta, whose walls and gates then erected are still standing. It commanded subsequently two Alpine routes, as well that which led over the Graian Alps or Little St. Bernard, along the upper Isère and the Rhone to Lyons, as that which ran over the Poenine Alps, the Great St. Bernard, to the valley of the Rhone and to the Lake of Geneva, and thence into the valleys of the Aar and the Rhine. But it was for the first of these roads that the town was designed, as it originally had only gates leading east and west; nor could this be otherwise, for the fortress was built ten years before the occupation of Raetia; in those years, moreover, the later organisation of the camps on the Rhine was not yet