|
|
Gallegos Directory 08 Page 02
As they had not been able to spend a single penny since we had left Diamantino they had accumulated a considerable sum of cash. I warned them, as I had done with Benedicto, to be careful and not waste their money. They went out for a walk. Some hours later they returned, dressed up in wonderful costumes with fancy silk ties, patent leather shoes, gold chains and watches, and gaudy scarf-pins. In a few hours they had wasted away nearly the entire sum I had paid out to them. Everything was extremely expensive in Para--certainly three or four times the price which things would fetch in London or New York.
The Romans had scarcely brought this trifling war to an end when they became involved in a formidable struggle with their old enemies the Gauls. Since the conquest of the Senones in B.C. 289, and of the Boii in B.C. 283, the Gauls had remained quiet. The Romans had founded the colony of Sena after the subjugation of the Senones; and in B.C. 268 they had still farther strengthened their dominion in those parts by founding the colony of Ariminum. But the greater part of the soil from which the Senones were ejected became Public Land. In B.C. 232 the Tribune C. Flaminius carried an Agrarian Law to the effect that this portion of the public land, known by the name of the "Gallic Land,"[30] should be distributed among the poorer citizens. This alarmed the Boii, who dwelt upon the borders of this district. They invoked the assistance of the powerful tribe of the Insubres, and being joined by them, as well as by large bodies of Gauls from beyond the Alps, they set out for Rome.
|