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He slaughtered the Boii without mercy, and made it one of the claims of his triumph that he had left only children and old men alive. This warlike people was now thoroughly subdued, and from henceforth Cisalpine Gaul became a Roman province, and gradually adopted the language and customs of Rome. The submission of the people was secured by the foundation of new colonies and the formation of military roads. In B.C. 190 a colony was established at Bononia, now Bologna, in the country of the Boii, and six years afterward others were also founded at Mutina (Modena) and Parma. A military road made by M. AEmilius Lepidus, Consul for B.C. 180, and called the Via AEmilia, was a continuation of the Via Flaminia, and ran from Ariminum past Placentia, Mutina, and Parma to Placentia. The subjugation of the Ligurians was a longer and more difficult task. These hardy mountaineers continued the war, with intermissions, for a period of eighty years. The Romans, after penetrating into the heart of Liguria, were seldom able to effect more than to compel the enemy to disperse, and take refuge in their villages and castles, of which the latter were mountain fastnesses, in which they were generally able to defy their pursuers. But into the details of these long-protracted and inglorious hostilities it is unnecessary to enter.

All was silent and dark in the little house where Hanz Toodleburg lived, when the wagon containing Tite and the inn-keeper drew up at the gate. A dull, dreamy stillness seemed to hang over the place, and the little, old house was in the full enjoyment of a deep sleep. The two men alighted, and Tite stood for a few minutes viewing the scene around him. How strange and yet how familiar everything seemed. He was at the opposite side of the world only a few months ago, and time had sped on so swiftly that it seemed as if he had gone to bed at night on one side of the globe, and waked up in the morning at the other. Then he was on an island almost unknown to the rest of the world, surrounded by scenes so wild, so strange and romantic, that the reader would not believe them real.

The decay of the peasant proprietors was an inevitable consequence of these frequent and long-protracted wars. In the earlier times the citizen-soldier, after a few weeks' campaign, returned home to cultivate his land; but this became impossible when wars were carried on out of Italy. Moreover, the soldier, easily obtaining abundance of booty, found life in the camp more pleasant than the cultivation of the ground. He was thus as ready to sell his land as the nobles were anxious to buy it. But money acquired by plunder is soon squandered. The soldier, returning to Rome, swelled the ranks of the poor; and thus, while the nobles became richer and richer, the lower classes became poorer and poorer. In consequence of the institution of slavery there was little or no demand for free labor, and as prisoners taken in war were sold as slaves, the slave-market was always well supplied. The estates of the wealthy were cultivated by large gangs of slaves; and even the mechanical arts, which give employment to such large numbers in the modern towns of Europe, were practiced by slaves, whom their masters had trained for the purpose. The poor at Rome were thus left almost without resources; their votes in the popular assembly were nearly the only thing they could turn into money, and it is therefore not surprising that they were ready to sell them to the highest bidder.

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