The pacification and reorganization of the West, and the amazing success which attended the policy of Augustus in Gaul and Spain, form perhaps the most enduring tribute to his careful statesmanship. Let us glance first at the four Gallic provinces, which covered practically the whole of modern France and Belgium. Cisalpine Gaul was now incorporated in the Italian peninsula. To the west of the Alps lay the province of Gallia Narbonensis, formed in the days of the Gracchi, extending from Lake Geneva on the eastern side and embracing the southern valleys of the Rhone, and then narrowing down to a thin strip of coastline towards the Pyrenees. The remainder of Gaul, fully four-fifths of the whole, had but recently been added to the Roman dominion by Julius Caesar. The more remote portions were still unsettled, but Julius had done his work well and in an almost inconceivably short space of time. He had not merely broken but shattered the strength of the most warlike tribes, and three provinces were carved out of the vast region which Caesar had subdued. In the west lay the province of Aquitania, covering the watershed of the Garonne, with the Loire for its boundary on the north and east. The middle province, Lugdunensis, included Normandy and Brittany and a wide strip on the northern bank of the Seine and then ran down through the center of the country to the Rhone. The third province, Belgica, included at first all that remained of central and northeastern Gaul and was bounded by the Atlantic and the Rhine, though subsequently the Rhine lands were taken from Belgica and formed — with a wide strip on the opposite bank — into the two border provinces of Higher and Lower Germany. Augustus and his generals first of all completed the conquests of Julius, and then gave the Gallic peoples stable and settled government.
Aquitania was Iberian rather than Celtic and its inhabitants belonged ethnically to the fierce tribes which dwelt in northern Spain and not to those of central Gaul. Both slopes of the Pyrenees had been Iberian, and there is thus a close connection between the Spanish wars of 27 and 26 B.C. and the campaigns of Marcus Valerius Messala in Aquitania during the same period, when he routed the natives in a great battle just over the border of the adjoining province, near the city of Narbo. This consummated the victories gained by Agrippa in Aquitania, eleven years before, and seems to have broken utterly the Iberian power, and, in consequence thereof, Augustus was able to hand over to the Senate the province of Gallia Narbonensis in 22 B.C. Thenceforward Gaul remained tranquil. No doubt, occasional punitive expeditions had to be undertaken, but none of these were sufficiently important to find a place in the annals of Roman history. Furthermore, as no Gallic triumphs are recorded, the inference is that down to the rising in the reign of Tiberius in the year 21 A.D. — a rising which was speedily quelled by the legions of the frontier — the peace of Gaul was scarcely broken. Two causes contributed to this grand result. One was the ruthless severity with which Julius had subdued the tribes. He had not hesitated to massacre as well as to slay. But if he showed no mercy towards the foe which opposed him in the field, he was generosity itself to the conquered when they had made their submission, and Augustus remained true to his uncle's policy. We may fairly compare their methods with those adopted, with equal success, by Russia in Central Asia, where in an equally short period the Turcomans and the Khanates of Transcaspia have been reduced to willing subjection. The Romans in Gaul did not worry the Celtic races. They did not dragoon them into accepting their superior civilization or interfere more than was absolutely necessary with the tribal customs to which the natives were passionately attached. And it is significant of the constant watch kept by Augustus over the Gallic provinces and the assiduity with which he fostered their goodwill that he not only repeatedly visited them in person, but sent thither, in the capacity of administrators as well as generals, the leading members of the Imperial House. Augustus went to Gaul in 27 B.C. and completed the census of the province of Lugdunensis. In the year 20 B.C., he was represented by his great Minister Agrippa. Later, he spent three whole years, 16-13 B.C., in Gaul, and then, when he finally quitted it, he sent in turn Tiberius, Drusus, and Germanicus to build upon the foundations which he had laid.
Augustus left the old cantonal system of the Celts intact. The sixty-four cantons, or communal districts, continued to elect their ancient representative diet, which met at stated periods and, subject to the supremacy of the imperial representative, governed its own local affairs. This diet was practically a national parliament of the three imperial Gallic provinces and assessed each canton for its share of the annual tribute. It assembled at Lugdunum (Lyons), the Roman burgess colony which had been founded by Plancus, and there chose the priest of the three Gauls, who was the head of the national religion, and celebrated the great festival of the Emperor. That festival, inaugurated by Drusus in 12 B.C., when he consecrated at Lugdunum an altar to Rome and to the genius of the Emperor, became thenceforth the most important event in the Gallic calendar. In accordance with the traditional policy of the Republic, Augustus willingly tolerated their national religion, and the Romans speedily identified many of the barbaric divinities of Gaul with the deities of the Roman Olympus. If the attributes of Taranis were similar to those of Jupiter, or the qualities of Belenus and Belisana indistinguishable from those of Apollo and Minerva, it was a simple matter for Gaul and Roman to worship them under their double names, and it tended to unity that both conquerors and conquered should sacrifice upon a common altar. Whether these were the gods of druidism, or whether the druid religion was something special and distinct, we cannot stay to enquire. But it is at least certain that the druid priests were the leaders of the extreme nationalist and irreconcilable party in Gaul, and that their rites involved human sacrifice, which the Roman Emperor sternly refused to countenance. Parallels are dangerous, but it is tempting to draw one from India, where the policy of the British Government is to afford complete toleration to the religious beliefs and practices of the natives, save where their rites involve the sacrifice of human life. And as the wildest and least tractable sects are invariably those whose rites are the most repugnant to Western sentiment, so in Gaul we may well believe that the druid priesthood, clinging tenaciously to its savagery, was also politically the most dangerous to the peaceful development of Gaul. Augustus gradually introduced measures tending to the repression of druidism. He prohibited any Roman citizen from taking part in its rites; and, with his usual sagacity, he sought to make the yearly festival of the Gallic diet a counterpoise to the old annual assembly of the Celtic priests. Whether he took any active steps for the expulsion of the druids is not stated. But at least the druids found themselves driven to take shelter in the remoter districts of Armorica, and even to cross the Channel into Britain, and the next emperors were able boldly to prohibit the practice of the cult throughout their Gallic domains. The festival of Rome and Augustus, held at Lugdunum, at which the national diet sacrificed and swore fealty to the Emperor, became one of the strongest factors in the Romanization of the country.
Augustus was content to let the seed which he had sown germinate in its own natural time. He did not flood the Gallic provinces with new colonies. Lugdunum remained the solitary burgess colony in the three provinces. As the seat both of the imperial and the national administration, as the station of the Gallic mint and with a picked cohort for its permanent garrison, as the center of the great military roads which here converged from the most distant parts of the provinces, Lugdunum grew at a very rapid rate and became the focus of national life. So far as history has left any records, it was not until the reign of Claudius that Latin rights were conferred upon a Gallic town. Augustus was chary of bestowing either Roman or Latin rights upon the Gallic communities, and he even prohibited those Gauls who had attained to the full citizenship for services rendered to the State from entering upon the official career for which that citizenship qualified them in the eye of the law. In this respect he departed from the policy of his uncle, who had admitted Gauls into the Senate. Why he took this narrow view, it is hard to say, unless it is to be explained by his strong conservatism, and by his anxiety to check the intrusion of foreign elements into the Roman system. But he insisted that the Roman language should be adopted for all official purposes by the cantonal authorities and by the diet of the three provinces. Modern experience has proven that there is no greater barrier to racial amalgamation than the presence of rival languages existing side by side, and the result of his wise enactment was that the Roman tongue at once became the tongue of the Gallic nobles and eventually the tongue of the whole country. Augustus' policy of judicious compromise, seen in the preservation of the old cantonal communities for purposes of local government and administration, but seen also in his restriction of the more fanatical forms of the native religion and the imposition of the Roman as the one official language of the country, bore a splendid harvest. When he died, the yoke of Rome over Celtic Gaul was hardly felt as the yoke of an alien power. The processes of amalgamation had not only begun but were in full swing, and Gaul was already an integral part of the Roman world.
In this brief review of what Augustus did for the three Celtic provinces, we have said nothing of the older province of Gallia Narbonensis on the Mediteranean littoral. This was now regarded as belonging rather to Italy than to Gaul. For whereas Augustus jealously withheld from Aquitania, Lugdunensis, and Belgica the Roman and Latin franchises, these were freely bestowed in Gallia Narbonensis. The cantons were strictly preserved in the one case. They were gradually done away with in the other. The territory which had belonged to the ancient Greek city of Massilia (Marseilles) had been stripped from her by Julius and new Roman burgess colonies were planted within it. Forum Julii (Fréjus) became the northern station of the imperial fleet; while at the mouth of the Rhone there sprang up the great trading city of Arelate (Arles), which in course of time robbed Narbo of much of its importance and struck a fatal blow at the waning commerce of Massilia. In addition to these Roman colonies, a number of other towns arose to which Augustus gave Latin rights. Nemausus (Nîmes), Aquae Sextiae (Aix), Avennio (Avignon), Apta (Apt), and many others covered the province with a chain of prosperous communities, while the older cities of Tolosa (Toulouse), on the Aquitanian border, Vienna (Vienne), on the Rhone, and Narbo shared in the general development. The Gaul absorbed the Roman in the north. In the south, the Roman absorbed the Gaul.
What took place throughout Gaul was repeated across the Pyrenees in the great Spanish peninsula. But while the chief credit for the conquest of Gaul belongs to Julius, that of the final subjugation of Spain, with the exception of the old southern province of Baetica, belongs to Augustus and to his generals. The Republic had sunk millions of money in attempting the conquest of Spain. Army after army had been swallowed up in its plains and hills. It had come to be regarded as the grave of Roman reputations, and more than once the Senate had almost despaired of success. Triumphs in plenty had been won there and the Republic boasted of two Spanish provinces, but the Iberian peninsula had remained, except along the coast and in Baetica, practically unconquered and unsubdued, and was the natural refuge of lost causes and desperate rebellion. There were, indeed, a few flourishing towns such as Italica, Corduba, Valentia, Gades, and Tarraco. Gnaeus Pompeius had freely distributed the citizenship, and Julius, liberal-handed as ever, had followed his rival's example. Yet the whole of Lusitania (Portugal) was in the hands of the natives. The north of Spain was held by the unbroken tribes of Iberians and Galicians, and the vast central districts of the Cantabrians were only quiet while their inhabitants were silently preparing for war. Roman armies had often marched through their midst and received their submission, but at the first favorable opportunity the natives had again sprung to arms. Thus we find that in the period between the death of Julius and the Battle of Actium, six Roman governors had won triumphs in Spain, a fact which points, if not to sweeping victories, at least to almost incessant warfare. We have already spoken of Augustus' long stay in Spain from B.C. 27 to 24, years which his lieutenants spent in battle while their chief was planting new colonies and perfecting his organization of the military lines of communication. No sooner had he returned to Rome than the Cantabrians and Asturians broke out in open revolt, and it was not until the year 19 B.C., when Agrippa was sent to take control of the operations in the field, that the Cantabrians were finally subdued. Agrippa routed them from their mountain fastnesses and settled them in the plains, and from that time onward there was peace in Spain. The peninsula, which for two hundred years had been the constant theater of harassing warfare, became the most peaceful portion of the Roman Empire during the next three centuries.
Augustus divided Spain into three provinces. Out of the old inchoate province of Further Spain he carved Baetica, which he soon handed over to the Senate, and Lusitania, which still required a considerable garrison. To Hither Spain he gave the name of Tarraconensis, from its new capital Tarraco, which was the usual port of entry for those who approached the country by sea from Italy. We have the express testimony of Strabo, writing but a few years later, that the natives of Baetica had already adopted the manners and customs of the Romans so thoroughly that they had become strangers to their mother tongue. They were "almost Romans" and prided themselves on wearing the toga. Augustus dealt generously with them in the bestowal of the Latin rights and the two new burgess colonies of Hispalis (Seville) and Astigi (Ecija) became fresh centers of Roman influence. Even in Cicero's time, Corduba could boast its native literati who ventured to sing in Roman measures. They excited, it is true, only his derision and contempt, yet a generation later the Roman poets of the Augustan age found no more enthusiastic readers than among the Spanish provincials, who were soon to send to Rome itself teachers, poets, philosophers, and even emperors. The Roman lives and treasure which had been poured out in Spain were not wasted, for Spain gave new and vigorous blood to the Empire and amply repaid the debt. In Lusitania and Tarraconensis, the Romanizing process was more slow but it was none the less sure. Roads were the great highways of civilization then as railways are now, and Augustus thrust his military roads tirelessly forward, with permanent garrisons planted at the chief strategical points. In the region of the Ebro, he set his new colonies at Celsa, Caesar Augusta, and Dertosa; Legio Septima (Leon) and Asturica (Asturga) mounted guard in the Asturias; while in modern Portugal the familiar names of Lisbon, Badajos, and Merida are but corruptions of the Roman names of the military colonies which overawed the hardy mountaineers of ancient Lusitania. "Fifty tribes which were once constantly at war with one another now live in peace by the side of the Italian colonists," wrote Strabo. "Even so late as the time of Sertorius," says Velleius Paterculus, "it seemed doubtful which was the stronger and which would prove the master, the Roman or the Spaniard. But now the provinces which hardly knew respite from wars of first-class magnitude are so profoundly peaceful that they scarcely harbor a single brigand." Thanks to Augustus, Spain became a source of strength to the Empire instead of weakness, and, in grateful recognition of her regenerator's work, she continued, down to the late Middle Ages, to reckon the years from the date of his accession and was proud to live under the dispensation of Augustus.