Gold of Tolosa
Near-contemporary Cicero briefly mentioned it in his philosophical dialogue De Natura Deorum, referencing political scandal in the late Roman Republic with the line "Consider other judicial inquiries, the one in reference to the gold of Tolosa, and the one on the Jugurthine conspiracy..."[1] The treasure itself was discussed by several ancient historians, including Strabo and Cassius Dio.
Eager for the Gauls to leave their territories, the Heracleots and the Aenianians showed Brennus how to bypass the main pass at Thermopylae in order to outflank the Greek force.
Brennus once again divided his army, leaving the main force under the command of Acichorius while he himself took a detachment through the same path used by the Persians some two centuries previously, defeating the Phocian attachment charged with guarding it.
[4] Junianus Justinus, excerpting the work of Gnaeus Pompeius Trogus, claims that those Tectosages who returned to Tolosa suffered "a pestilential distemper" that was not dispelled until after they had thrown their plunder into the lakes.
[6] During the latter part of the second century BC, a large coalition of German and Gallic tribes, which eventually included the Cimbri, the Teutones, the Boii, the Tigurini, and the Ambrones, undertook a mass migration.
After inflicting several defeats on Rome, a Roman army under the command of the consul Lucius Cassius Longinus in 107 BC confronted the Tigurini near Burdigala, modern-day Bordeaux.
Now proconsul and unwilling to cooperate with his superior,[2] the novus homo consul Gnaeus Mallius Maximus, Caepio, eager for glory, provoked a battle with the Cimbri.
Charged over the loss of his army, Caepio was stripped of his Roman citizenship, fined 15,000 talents, had his property confiscated, and forbidden fire and water within eight hundred miles of Rome.
The earliest, Strabo, says that due to "having laid hands on [the gold of Tolosa]... Caepio ended his life in misfortunes",[4] while his near-contemporary Pompeius Trogus even suggested that the defeat at Arausio was punishment for the theft of the treasure.
Cicero is the earliest author whose extant writings mention the Gold of Tolosa, referencing the inquiry into its disappearance in De Natura Deorum, which was written in the two years before his death in 43 BC.
Instead, Poseidonius wrote that the origin of the hoard was in Gaul itself, "since the country was rich in gold, and also belonged to people who were god-fearing and not extravagant in their ways of living, it came to have treasures..."[4] The only extant sources to mention the Gallic attack on Delphi are the second-century AD travelogue of Pausanias and the history of Justinus, the latter of which excerpts the first century BC works of Pompeius Trogus.
[19] Excluding Phocian reparations, Pausanias' account describes a number of expensive artistic votive offerings made to the sanctuary from all over the ancient Greek world in the years preceding the invasion.
