the Druids there is no further mention, except only so far as the sage women in Gaul down to the time of Diocletian passed under the name of Druidesses and uttered oracles, and the ancient noble houses still for long boasted of Druidic progenitors on their ancestral roll. The religion of the country fell into the background still more rapidly perhaps than the native language, and Christianity, as it pushed its way, hardly encountered in the former any serious resistance. [Sidenote: Economic condition.] Southern Gaul, withdrawn more than any other province by its position from hostile assault, and, like Italy and Andalusia, a land of the olive and the fig, rose under the imperial government to great prosperity and rich urban development. The amphitheatre and the sarcophagus-field of Arles, the "mother of all Gaul," the theatre of Orange, the temples and bridges still standing erect to this day in and near Nîmes, are vivid witnesses of this down to the present time. Even in the northern provinces the old prosperity of the country was enhanced by the lasting peace, which, certainly with lasting pressure of taxation, accrued to the land by means of the foreign rule. "In Gaul," says a writer of the time of Vespasian, "the sources of wealth are at home, and flood the earth with their abundance."[56] Perhaps nowhere do equally numerous and equally magnificent country-houses make their appearance,--especially in the east of Gaul, on the Rhine and its affluents; we discern clearly the rich Gallic nobility. Famous is the testament of a man of rank among the Lingones, who directs that there should be erected for him a memorial tomb and a statue of Italian marble or best bronze, and that, among other things, his whole implements for hunting and fowling be burned along with him. This reminds us of the elsewhere mentioned hunting-parks enclosed for miles in the Celtic country, and of the prominent part which the Celtic hounds for the chase and Celtic huntsmanship play in the Xenophon of Hadrian's time, who does not fail to add that the hunting system of the Celts could not have been known to Xenophon the son of Gryllos. To this connection belongs likewise the remarkable fact that in the Roman army of the imperial period the cavalry was, properly speaking, Celtic, not merely inasmuch as it was pre-eminently recruited from Gaul, but also because the manœuvres, and even the technical expressions, were in good part derived from the Celts; we see here how, after the disappearance of the old burgess-cavalry under the republic, the cavalry became reorganised by Caesar and Augustus with Gallic men and in Gallic fashion. The basis of this notable prosperity was agriculture, towards the elevation of which Augustus himself worked with energy, and which yielded rich produce in all Gaul, apart perhaps from the steppe-region on the Aquitanian coast. The rearing of cattle was also lucrative, especially in the north, particularly the rearing of swine and sheep,