Geography

​The Massaliotes are governed aristocratically in the most orderly manner of all, having established a council of six hundred men who hold this honor for life, whom they call Timouchoi. Fifteen of the council are the presiding officers, and to these is given the administration of immediate business. Again, three of the fifteen, who have the greatest power, preside, and of these three, one is the head. No one becomes a Timouchos unless he has children and is descended from citizens for three generations. Their laws are Ionian, and are publicly displayed. They possess a land planted with olives and vines, but rather poor for wheat on account of its ruggedness, so that, trusting in the sea rather than the land, they preferred instead their natural aptitude for navigation. Later, however, by their brave deeds they succeeded in acquiring some of the surrounding plains by the same military power with which they had founded their cities, as fortifications—on the one hand, those in Iberia against the Iberians, to whom they also handed down the ancestral rites of Ephesian Artemis so that they sacrifice in the Greek fashion, and on the other hand, * Roe and Agathe against the barbarians living around the river Rhodanus , and Tauroention, Olbia, Antipolis, and Nicaea against the nation of the Salyes and the Ligurians who inhabit the Alps. They also have ship-sheds and an armory among them; and formerly they had an abundance of ships, arms, and engines, both those useful for navigation and those for sieges, by means of which they held out against the barbarians and acquired the Romans as friends, and they themselves became very useful to them, and the Romans contributed to their growth. Sextius, at any rate, who overthrew the Salyes, founded not far from Massalia a city named after both himself and the warm waters—some of which they say have changed into cold—and established there a Roman garrison, and drove back the barbarians from the coastline leading to Italy from Massalia, as the Massaliotes were not able to keep them back completely. Nor was he himself able to do more than this, namely, to make the barbarians withdraw from the sea to a distance of twelve stadia in the well-harbored parts, and eight stadia in the rugged parts; and the land left by them he handed over to the Massaliotes. There are dedicated in the city many first-fruits of spoils which they took in continually defeating in sea-fights those who disputed the sea unjustly. In former times, then, they were exceptionally prosperous in other respects and especially in their friendship with the Romans, of which one might find many signs; and indeed, the Romans dedicated the wooden image of Artemis on the Aventine, having the same design as that among the Massaliotes. But during the strife of Pompey against Caesar, by joining the defeated party, they lost the greater part of their prosperity; nevertheless, traces of their old zeal still remain among the people, especially in the manufacturing of engines and in naval equipment. But since the barbarians dwelling above them are continually being civilized, and instead of waging war have already turned to political life and agriculture because of the supremacy of the Romans, such great zeal concerning the aforementioned matters would no longer occur for them either. This is shown by the present state of affairs; for all the cultivated people turn to speaking and philosophy, so that the city, which a little while ago was opened to the barbarians as a school and made the Gauls philhellenes so that they even wrote their contracts in Greek, has at present persuaded even the most notable of the Romans, when they are desirous of learning, to resort there instead of traveling to Athens. Seeing these things, the Gauls, and at the same time enjoying peace, gladly devote their leisure to such lives, not only individually but also publicly; at any rate, they welcome sophists, some privately, and some cities hire them publicly, just as they do physicians. One would place this as no small proof of the simplicity of life and the temperance of the Massaliotes: for the greatest dowry among them is a hundred gold pieces, and five for clothing, and five for gold ornaments; more is not permitted. Moreover, Caesar and the leaders after him acted with moderation towards the errors committed in the war, remembering their friendship, and preserved the autonomy which the city had from the beginning, so that neither the city itself nor its subjects obey the governors sent to the province. Thus much concerning Massalia.