It is not easy to estimate the degree of civilization reached by the Pannonians and Dalmatians or the Germanic tribes, when they made war upon the Roman legions. To the ancients all men living under tribal or national institutions were barbarians; they restricted the honour of civilization to those whose political constitution was based upon the city, and though the Græco-Roman city organization practically covered the two peninsulas, which we call Greece and Italy, it did not elsewhere extend far inland; the outer fringe of cities was in close contact with populations living under a clan system, whose chiefs or kings adopted many of the luxuries and some of the institutions of their neighbours; behind these again were less advanced nations and less civilized rulers, gradually merging into real barbarism. The Gallic chieftains had already been in frequent communication with Rome for a century before Cæsar conquered Gaul, and the influence of the Roman traders upon the general standard of civilization was perceptible in his time even among the German tribes nearest to the Rhine. Arminius had had a Roman education, Maroboduus was brought up by Augustus, adopted the Roman military system and welcomed refugees who could train his troops; Latin was already spoken by the Dalmatian tribes when they were eventually conquered by Tiberius. Though the greater part of Central Europe was under forest the valleys were cultivated, as they were in Britain at the time of Cæsar’s invasions, but the forest was always near enough to receive fugitives, and to give cover to an attacking party. There were no large aggregations of human beings in towns, but there were areas sufficiently thickly populated, and their population was sufficiently well organized to bring formidable armies into the field, whose operations were skilfully conducted. The men were no more savages than the Boers are savages; their civilization was a different civilization from the Græco-Roman, but it was a civilization. The occurrences of the Highland Line were anticipated in the foothills of the Alps; sometimes there was a mere cattle-lifting raid, when a predecessor of Rob Roy swooped down upon the farms round Mantua or Cremona, sometimes a combination of clans under a capable chieftain waged a formidable war, whose object was less plunder than the preservation of their independence; sometimes the pressure of real savagery from behind urged the more civilized races forward till the ultimate wave fell upon the Roman frontier.