Page:Charactersevents00ferriala.djvu/110

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92
The Development of Gaul

museums, has demonstrated most commendably that in the first century of the Empire many manufactories of ceramics were opened and flourished in Gaul, especially in the valley of the Allier, and that they sold their vases in Spain, in the Danube regions, to the Germans, and in Italy.

Dechelette has proved that many ceramics found among the ruins of Pompeii, now admired in the museums of Pompeii and Naples, were made in Gaul,—discoveries most noteworthy, which, in connection with the extracts from Pliny, disclose in essence that real Roman Gaul whose sumptuous relics but half tell the tale of its wealth.

This tremendous development of Gaul was without doubt an effect of the Roman conquest; but an effect that neither Cæsar, nor any other man of his times had foreseen or willed, but which Augustus was first to recognise in the winter of 15–14 b.c., and to which, astute man that he was, he gave heed as he ought; that is, not as due his own merit, but as an unexpected piece of good fortune. I have already said that one of the greatest cares of Augustus, as soon as the civil wars were finished, was to reorganise the finances of the Empire; that to find new entries for the treasury, he had turned his attention in 27 b.c. to the province conquered by his father, regarding it merely from the common