[33]
Therefore, he fought with the greatest success against
those most valiant and powerful nations the Germans and Helvetians; and the
other nations he alarmed and drove back and defeated, and accustomed to
yield to the supremacy of the Roman people, so that those districts and
those nations which were previously known to us neither by any one's
letters, nor by the personal account of any one, nor even by vague report,
have now been overrun and thoroughly examined by our own general, by our own
army, and by the arms of the Roman people.
Hitherto, O conscript fathers, we have only known the road into Gaul. All other parts of it were possessed
by nations which were either hostile to this empire, or treacherous, or
unknown to us, or, at all events, savage, barbarian, and
warlike;—nations which no one ever existed who did not wish to
break their power and subdue: nor has any one, from the very first rise of
this empire, ever carefully deliberated about our republic, who has not
thought Gaul the chief object of
apprehension to this empire. But still, on account of the power and vast
population of those nations, we never before have had a war with all of
them; we have always been content to resist them when attacked. Now, at
last, it has been brought about that there should be one and the same
boundary to our empire and to those nations.
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