BOOK THIRD
Notes For Chapter VII
1. According to the account of Strabo these Italian Boii were driven
by the Romans over the Alps, and from them proceeded that Boian
settlement in what is now Hungary about Stein am Anger and Oedenburg,
which was attacked and annihilated in the time of Augustus by the
Getae who crossed the Danube, but which bequeathed to this district
the name of the Boian desert. This account is far from agreeing with
the well-attested representation of the Roman annals, according to
which the Romans were content with the cession of half the territory;
and, in order to explain the disappearance of the Italian Boii,
we have really no need to assume a violent expulsion--the other
Celtic peoples, although visited to a far less extent by war and
colonization, disappeared not much less rapidly and totally from the
ranks of the Italian nations. on the other hand, other accounts
suggest the derivation of those Boii on the Neusiedler See from the
main stock of the nation, which formerly had its seat in Bavaria and
Bohemia before Germanic tribes pushed it towards the south. But it is
altogether very doubtful whether the Boii, whom we find near Bordeaux,
on the Po, and in Bohemia, were really scattered branches of one
stock, or whether this is not an instance of mere similarity of name.
The hypothesis of Strabo may have rested on nothing else than an
inference from the similarity of name--an inference such as the
ancients drew, often without due reason, in the case of the Cimbri,
Veneti, and others.
2. III. I. Libyphoenicians
3. III. VI. Gades Becomes Roman
4. of this praetor there has recently come to light the following
decree on a copper tablet found in the neighbourhood of Gibraltar
and now preserved in the Paris Museum: "L. Aimilius, son of Lucius,
Imperator, has ordained that the slaves of the Hastenses [of Hasta
regia, not far from Jerez de la Frontera], who dwell in the tower of
Lascuta [known by means of coins and Plin. iii. i, 15, but uncertain
as to site] should be free. The ground and the township, of which
they are at the time in possession, they shall continue to possess and
hold, so long as it shall please the people and senate of the Romans.
Done in camp on 12 Jan. [564 or 565]." (-L. Aimilius L. f. inpeirator
decreivit utei qui Hastensium servei in turri Lascutana habitarent,
leiberei essent, Agrum oppidumqu[e], guod ea tempestate posedissent,
item possidere habereque ioussit, dum poplus senatusque Romanus
vettet. Act. in castreis a. d. XII. k. Febr.-) This is the oldest
Roman document which we possess in the original, drawn up three years
earlier than the well-known edict of the consuls of the year 568 in
the affair of the Bacchanalia.
5. 1 Maccab. viii. 3. "And Judas heard what the Romans had done
to the land of Hispania to become masters of the silver and gold
mines there."
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