Throughout a number of campaigns in diverse territories, beaten but repeatedly refusing to consider themselves finaly conquered, Celtic and Germanic peoples fought for centuries against Roman expansion, first in the Italic peninsula and later in nothern and southern Europe as the unstopable march of the Roman Empire continued in it's boundless desire for conquest. For five centuries, the humiliating – and in some cases decisive – defeats of the almost invincible legions, were not the work of heavily-armed, well-equipped national armies, but of Celtic and Germanic tribes which, though without a unified political organisation, were capable of fighting to the death or to victory in defense of one of their most sacred principle: respect of the motherland and freedom.