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in the ancient Celtic or Iberian language,
principal passage. We know that, in the Pyrenees, these passages were called
ports. There existed places of the name of
Ocelum, in the Alps, in Gaul, and as far as Spain. (Ptolemy, II. 6.) – The itineraries found in the baths of Vicarello indicate, between Turin and Susa, an
Ocelum, which appears to us to have been that of which Cæsar speaks; there was a place similarly named in Maurienne, on the left bank of the Arc, at an equal distance from the source of that river and the town of Saint-Jean; it is now
Usseglio. There was another in the valley of the Lanzo, on the left bank of the Gara, from which appears to be derived the name of Garaceli or Graioceli; it was called
Ocelum Lanciensium. The Ocelum of Cæsar, according to M. Celesia, who adopts the opinion of D’Anville, was called
Ocelum ad Clusonem fluvium; it was situated in the valley of the Pragelatto, on the road leading from Pignerol to the defile of Fenestrella. This place has continued to preserve its primitive name of
Ocelum,
Occelum,
Oxelum,
Uxelum (
Charta Adeladis, an. 1064), whence by corruption its modern name of
Usseau. According to this hypothesis, Cæsar would have passed from the valley of Chiusone into that of Pragelatto, and thence, by Mount Genèvre, to Briançon, in order to arrive among the Vocontii. – Polyænus (
Stratag., VIII. xxiii. 2) relates that Cæsar took advantage of a mist to escape the mountaineers.
173
“Segusiavi sunt trans Rhodanum primi.” (De Bello Gallico, I. 10.) It is to be supposed that there existed a bridge on the Rhone, near Lyons.
174
Cæsar had deferred his reply till the Ides of April (April the 8th). If it were then decided to bring the legions from Aquileia, the time necessary to bring them would have been as follows:
According to this reckoning, Cæsar required 60 days, reckoning from the moment when he decided on this course, to transport his legions from Aquileia to Lyons; that is to say, if he sent, as is probable, couriers on the 8th of April, the day he refused the passage to the Helvetii, the head of his column arrived at Lyons towards the 7th of June.
175
To estimate the volume and weight represented by the provisions for three months for three hundred and sixty-eight thousand persons of both sexes and of all ages, let us allow that the ration of food was small, and consisted, we may say, only in a reserve of meal, trium mensium molita cibaria, at an average of ¾ of a pound (¾ of a pound of meal gives about a pound of bread); at this rate, the Helvetii must have carried with them 24,840,000 pounds, or 12,420,000 kilogrammes of meal. Let us allow also that they had great four-wheeled carriages, capable each of carrying 2,000 kilogrammes, and drawn by four horses. The 100 kilogrammes of unrefined meal makes 2 cubic hectolitres; therefore, 2,000 kilogrammes of meal make 4 cubic mètres, so that this would lead us to suppose no more than 4 cubic mètres as the average load for the four-wheeled carriages. On our good roads in France, levelled and paved, three horses are sufficient to draw, at a walking pace, during ten hours, a four-wheeled carriage carrying 4,000 kilogrammes. It is more than 1,300 kilogrammes per collar.
We suppose that the horses of the emigrants drew only 500 kilogrammes in excess of the dead weight, which would give about 6,000 carriages and 24,000 draught animals to transport the three months’ provisions.
But these emigrants were not only provided with food, for they had also certainly baggage. It appears to us no exaggeration to suppose that each individual carried, besides his food, fifteen kilogrammes of baggage on an average. We are thus left to add to the 6,000 provision carriages about 2,500 other carriages for the baggage, which would make a total of 8,500 carriages drawn by 34,000 draught animals. We use the word animals instead of horses, as at least a part of the teams would, no doubt, be composed of oxen, the number of which would diminish daily, for the emigrants would be led to use the flesh of these animals for their own food.
Such a column of 8,500 carriages, supposing them to march in file, one carriage at a time, on a single road, could not occupy less than thirty-two leagues in length, if we reckon fifteen mètres to each carriage. This remark explains the enormous difficulties the emigration would encounter, and the slowness of its movements: we need, then, no longer be astonished at the twenty days which it took three quarters of the column to pass the Saône.
We have not comprised the provisions of grain for the animals themselves: yet it is difficult to believe that the Helvetii, so provident for their own wants, had neglected to provide for those of their beasts, and that they had reckoned exclusively for their food on the forage they might find on the road.
176
De Bello Gallico, I. 11.
177
It is an error to translate Arar, quod per fines Æduorum et Sequanorum in Rhodamam influit, by the words, “the Saône, which forms the common boundary line of the Ædui and the Sequani.” Cæsar always understands by fines, territory, and not boundary line. He expresses himself very differently when he speaks of a river separating territories. (De Bello Gallico, I. 6, 83; VII. 5.) The expression per fines thus confirms the supposition that the territories of these two peoples extended on both sides of the Saône. (See Plate 2.)
178
De Bello Gallico, I. 12. – The excavations, carried on in 1862 between Trévoux and Riottier, on the plateaux of La Bruyère and Saint-Bernard, leave no doubt of the place of this defeat. They revealed the existence of numerous sepulchres, as well Gallo-Roman as Celtic. The tumuli furnished vases of coarse clay, and many fragments of arms in silex, ornaments in bronze, iron arrow-heads, fragments of sockets. These sepultures are some by incineration, others by inhumation. In the first, the cremation had nowhere been complete, which proves that they had been burnt hastily, and excludes all notion of an ordinary cemetery. Two common fosses were divided each into two compartments, one of which contained cinders, the other human skeletons, thrown in pell-mell, skeletons of men, women, and children. Lastly, numerous country ovens line, as it were, the road followed by the Helvetii. These ovens, very common at the foot of the abrupt hills of Trévoux, Saint-Didier, Frans, Jassans, and Mizérieux, are found again on the left bank of the Ain and as far as the neighbourhood of Ambronay.
179
Cæsar declares, on two different occasions, the fixed design of the Helvetii to establish themselves in the country of the Santones (I. 9 and 11), and Titus Livius confirms this fact in these words: “Cæsar Helvetios, gentem vagam, domuit, quæ, sedem quærens, in provinciam Cæsaris Narbonem iter facere volebat.” (Epitome, CIII.) Had they, for the execution of this project, the choice between several roads (the word “road” being taken here in the general sense)? Some authors, not considering the topography of France, have believed that, to go to the Santones, the Helvetii should have marched by the shortest line, from east to west, and passed the Loire towards Roanne. But they would have had first to pass, in places almost impassable, the mountains which separate the Saône from the Loire, and, had they arrived there, they would have found their road barred by another chain of mountains, that of Le Forez, which separates the Loire from the Allier.
The only means of going from the Lower Saône into Saintonge consists in travelling at first to the north-west towards the sources of the Bourbince, where is found the greatest depression of the chain of mountains which separates the Saône from the Loire, and marching subsequently to the west, to descend towards the latter river. This is so true, that at an epoch very near to our own, before the construction of the railways, the public conveyances, to go from Lyons to La Rochelle, did not pass by Roanne, but took the direction to the north-west, to Autun, and thence to Nevers, in the valley of the Loire. We understand, in exploring this mountainous country, why Cæsar was obliged to confine himself to pursuing the Helvetii, without being ever able to attack them. We cannot find a single point where he could have gained upon them by rapidity of movement, or where he could execute any manœuvre whatever.
180
The Romans used little precision in the division of time. Forcellini (Lex., voce Hora) refers to Pliny and Censorinus. He remarks that the day – that is, the time between the rising and setting of the sun – was divided into twelve parts, at all seasons of the year,
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