Polybius, Histories

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Character of the Gauls

Such was the end of the Celtic war: which, for the

B.C. 480. B.C. 279.

desperate determination and boldness of the enemy, for the obstinacy of the battles fought, and for the number of those who fell and of those who were engaged, is second to none recorded in history, but which, regarded as a specimen of scientific strategy, is utterly contemptible. The Gauls showed no power of planning or carrying out a campaign, and in everything they did were swayed by impulse rather than by sober calculation. As I have seen these tribes, after a short struggle, entirely ejected from the valley of the Padus, with the exception of some few localities lying close to the Alps, I thought I ought not to let their original attack upon Italy pass unrecorded, any more than their subsequent attempts, or their final ejectment: for it is the function of the historian to record and transmit to posterity such episodes in the drama of Fortune; that our posterity may not from ignorance of the past be unreasonably dismayed at the sudden and unexpected invasions of these barbarians, but may reflect how shortlived and easily damped the spirit of this race is; and so may stand to their defence, and try every possible means before yielding an inch to them. I think, for instance, that those who have recorded for our information the invasion of Greece by the Persians, and of Delphi by the Gauls, have contributed materially to the struggles made for the common freedom of Greece. For a superiority in supplies, arms, or numbers, would scarcely deter any one from putting the last possible hope to the test, in a struggle for the integrity and the safety of his city and its territory, if he had before his eyes the surprising result of those expeditions; and remembered how many myriads of men, what daring confidence, and what immense armaments were baffled by the skill and ability of opponents, who conducted their measures under the dictates of reason and sober calculation. And as an invasion of Gauls has been a source of alarm to Greece in our day, as well as in ancient times, I thought it worth while to give a summary sketch of their doings from the earliest times.