# CHAPTER 8 — The Reason Why Peoples Leave Their Homelands and Overrun the Lands of Others

Since we have discussed above the method of proceeding in war used by the Romans and how the Etruscans were attacked by the Gauls, I feel it is not unrelated to the subject to explain that there are two causes for war. One type is waged because of the ambition of princes or republics that seek to extend their empire, such as the wars waged by Alexander the Great, those waged by the Romans, and those waged every day by one power against another. These kinds of wars are dangerous but they do not drive the inhabitants completely out of a province, because the victor is satisfied with the obedience of the people, and in most cases he allows them to live under their own laws and always in their own homes and with their own property. The other cause for war is when an entire people with all its families leaves a place, driven either by famine or by war, and goes to seek out a new location and a new province, not to rule over it as those above do but, rather, to possess it, even the private property, and to drive out or murder its ancient inhabitants. This kind of war is extremely cruel and frightful. It is about this type of war that Sallust speaks at the end of his history of Jugurtha, when he declares that once Jugurtha was defeated, the movement of the Gauls who were coming into Italy began to be felt; he then states that with all other peoples, the Romans fought only about who was to be in command, while with the Gauls they always fought for their safety. * Accordingly, for a prince or a republic that attacks a province, it is sufficient to destroy only those who are in command, but populations such as these need to destroy everyone since they wish to live off the resources that supported others. The Romans waged three of these extremely dangerous wars. The first occurred during the occupation of Rome, when the city was captured by those Gauls who had taken Lombardy from the Etruscans, as was mentioned above, and made it their territory; Livy sets forth two reasons for this invasion: first, as was mentioned above, the Gauls were attracted by the sweetness of the fruits and wines of Italy, which were lacking in France; secondly, the kingdom of Gaul was so overpopulated with men that it could no longer support them, and the rulers of those places decided that it was necessary for part of them to seek new land. Once they had made this decision, they elected as captains of the people who had to leave Bellovesus and Sicovesus, two kings of the Gauls; Bellovesus came into Italy and Sicovesus went on to Spain. It was Bellovesus’ passage into Italy that brought about the occupation of Lombardy and, as a result, the first war that the Gauls waged against Rome. * Then came the war that the Gauls waged after the First Carthaginian War, when between Piombino and Pisa the Romans killed more than 200,000 Gauls. * The third war occurred when the Teutones and the Cimbri came into Italy: having defeated several Roman armies, they were destroyed by Marius. The Romans, therefore, won these three extremely dangerous wars. Nor was only minor ability required to win them, because it can be seen later on that once Roman ability grew faint and their arms lost their ancient valour, their empire was destroyed by similar peoples, such as the Goths, the Vandals, and other like tribes who occupied the entire Western empire.

Peoples such as these leave their own lands, as was mentioned above, driven out by necessity, and this necessity arises either from famine or from a war and the oppression they have experienced in their own country, which has compelled them to seek new homelands. Such peoples come in great numbers, and then they violently enter the lands of others, murder the inhabitants, take possession of their property, create a new kingdom, and change the very name of the province, just as Moses did and as those other peoples did when they occupied the Roman empire. Accordingly, these new names, which exist in Italy and in other provinces, arise from nothing other than the fact that they have been named in this way by the new occupants: just so Lombardy used to be called Cisalpine Gaul; France used to be called Transalpine Gaul and now is named after the Franks, the name of the peoples who occupied it; Slavonia was called Illyria; Hungary Pannonia; England Britannia; and so many other provinces changed their names that it would be tedious to recount them. Moses also called that part of Syria he had occupied Judaea. Since I declared above that on some occasions such peoples are driven out of their own territory by war and are therefore compelled to seek new lands, I should like to cite the example of the Maurusians, peoples who lived in Syria in ancient times. Upon hearing that the Jewish peoples had arrived and deciding that they were unable to resist them, they thought it preferable to save themselves and to abandon their own country rather than to perish while trying to save it, and after gathering up their families they left for Africa, where they established their territory, driving out the inhabitants that they found in those places. Thus, these peoples, who could not defend their own land, were able to occupy that of another people; and Procopius, who wrote a history of the war that Belisarius waged against the Vandals, who had occupied Africa, refers to the fact that he had read inscriptions written upon certain columns in the places where these Maurusians lived which said: ‘We Maurusians who fled before Joshua the Robber, son of Nava’—which reveals the reason for their departure from Syria. * Such peoples as these are, therefore, extremely formidable, since they are driven by extreme necessity, and if they do not encounter good armies, they will never be stopped.

But when peoples who are compelled to abandon their homeland are not numerous, they are not as dangerous as those we have discussed, because they cannot employ such violence and are obliged to occupy some location with cunning and, once it has been occupied, to maintain themselves there by means of allies and confederations. This can be seen from what Aeneas, Dido, the Massilienses, and other similar peoples did, all of whom with the consent of their neighbours were able to remain in the places to which they had come. *

The most numerous peoples leave the lands of Scythia, and almost all of them have left these cold and impoverished places from which, due to the large number of inhabitants and land of a quality that cannot support them, they are forced to migrate, having much to drive them away and nothing to hold them back. If none of these peoples have poured into another country during the last 500 years, this has come about for several reasons. The first is the enormous evacuation that this territory experienced during the decline of the Roman empire, when more than thirty different peoples left. The second is that Germany and Hungary, places from which these people still used to leave, have now reclaimed their lands in such a way that people can live there with ease, and are, therefore, not forced to move elsewhere. Moreover, their men are extremely bellicose and serve as a bastion to keep the Scythians, whose country borders theirs, from presuming to conquer them or to pass through them. Enormous movements of the Tartars have often occurred, which the Hungarians and the peoples of Poland have stopped, and they often boast that if it had not been for their swords, Italy and the church would on numerous occasions have felt the weight of the Tartar armies. But I wish this to suffice concerning the previously mentioned peoples.