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The Golden Age Of Roman Helvetia, H. Dwight Page

Swiss American Historical Society Review

Any traveller who had visited the region of present day Switzerland in the first century before Christ and who could have returned there three centuries later at the end of the second century of the Christian era would have been astonished by the differences between the two periods. Whereas the pre-Roman country of the Helvetii had been a vast forest whose inhabitants had lived in rudimentary hilltop oppida and had spent their lives hunting, fishing and tilling the soil of small farms, the Roman province of Helvetia in the third century after Christ was a prosperous nation whose citizens lived …