ness, coupled with Celtic ferocity, entirely to obliterate this race, if, indeed, that is done even now, which I very much doubt.
Before leaving this part of the subject, there is one other question which it may be as well to allude to here, as those investigations into the distribution of the rude-stone monuments seem destined to throw a new and important light upon it. Few questions have been more keenly debated among the learned than the relationship stated to have existed between the Cimbri and the Gauls. A great deal has been, and can be, said on both sides,[1] but the difficulty appears to me to have arisen principally from the erroneous assumption that no other people except the Celts existed in France.
There is no trace of Celts or of a Celtic language in the Cimbric Chersonese or the north-west corner of Europe, which is generally assumed to be the country occupied by the Cimbri, and no such people as the Cimbri are found settled in any part of France in historical times. If, however, we assume that the relationship may have been between the Cimbri and the Aquitanians, the case assumes a totally different aspect. As we do not know what the language of the Aquitanians really was, no assistance can be obtained from it, but our very ignorance of it leaves the field open for any other evidence that may be adduced, and that of the monuments seems clear and distinct. It seems almost impossible that there should be so much similarity between the monuments of the two countries without some community of race, and the great likeness that exists between those on the southern frontier of the northern dolmen province and those on the northern edge of the southern dolmen field seems almost to settle the question.
From history we only know of the existence of this relationship by the mode in which they fought together against Marius in the late Roman wars. If they were then geographically separated by the Belgæ and the Celts having thrust themselves between
- ↑ The argument, which it is not necessary to enter on here, has been well summed up by Dr. Schmitz, in Smith's 'Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography,' sub voce Cimbri.
