The Reason why People Depart from their National Places and Inundate the Country of Others

Since there has been discussed above the method of proceeding in war observed by the Romans and how the Tuscans were assaulted by the Gauls, it does not appear to me alien to the subject to discuss how two kinds of war are made. One is waged because of the ambitions of Princes or of a Republic that seek to extend their Empire, such as were the wars that Alexander the Great waged, and those that the Romans waged, and those which one power wages against another. While these wars are dangerous, they never drive all the inhabitants out of a province, but the obedience of the people is enough for the conqueror, and most of the times he leaves them to live with their laws, and always with their homes and possessions: The other kind of war is when an entire people with all their families are taken away from a place, necessitated either by famine or by war, and goes to seek a new seat in a new province, not in order to seek dominion over them as those others above, but to possess it absolutely; and to drive out or kill its old inhabitants. This kind of war is most cruel and most frightful. And of these wars Sallust discusses at the end of [the history] of Jugurtha, when he says that, after Jugurtha was defeated, movements of the Gauls coming into Italy were heard: where he [also] says that the Roman People had combatted with all the other peoples only as to who should dominate, but that with the Gauls they combatted for the [very] existence of each. For to a Prince or a Republic that assaults a province, it is enough to extinguish only those who command, but to these entire populations, it behooves them to extinguish everyone because they want to live on that which the others lived.

The Romans had three of these most perilous wars. The first was when Rome was taken, which was occupied by those Gauls who had detached Lombardy (as was mentioned above) from the Tuscans and made it their seat: for which Titus Livius assigns two causes: The first, as was said above, that they were attracted by the sweetness of the fruits and wines of Italy, which were lacking in France: The second, that in that Kingdom of Gaul, men multiplied so fast that they were no longer able to feed them, [and] the Princes decided it should be necessary that a part of them should go some place to seek a new country. And having made such a decision, they elected as captains over those who should depart Bellovesus and Sicovesus, two Kings of the Gauls, of whom Bellovesus went into Italy and Sicovesus passed into Spain. From the passage of this Bellovesus there resulted the occupation of Lombardy, and hence the first war that the Gauls made against Rome. After this came that which they made after the first Carthaginian war, where they [the Romans] killed over two hundred thousand Gauls between Piombino and Pisa. The third was when the Teutons and Cimbrians came into Italy, who having overcome several Roman armies, were defeated by Marius. The Romans, therefore, won these three most perilous wars. And no little virtu was necessary to win them; for it is seen that when that Roman virtu was lost [and], those arms lost their ancient valor, that Empire was destroyed by similar people, such as were the Goths, Vandals, and the like, who occupied all the western Empire.

These people go out from their countries (as was said above) driven by necessity; and the necessity arises from famine, or war, and oppression, which in their own country is experienced by them, so that they are constrained to seek new land. And these such are sometimes of a great number, and then enter into the countries of............