They were subjugated by the Roman forces of Claudius in 143 BC. The
Roman Republic took over the rich gold deposits, and a colony was later planted in 100 BC at Eporedia (
Ivrea) to take control of the Alpine route into the
Po Valley and guard over the Salassi. Relations with the Romans were not uniformly peaceful;
Strabo mentions that the Salassi robbed
Julius Caesar's treasury and threw stones on his legions on the grounds that they were making roads and building bridges. There may have been a Roman campaign against the Salassi in 35 or 34 BC, launched from the valley of the
Isère river under
Antistius Vetus or
Marcus Valerius Messalla Corvinus. For their last decade of freedom the Salassi – alongside some other, mainly Alpine, tribes subjugated by 14 BC – were almost the only remaining groups not under Roman control in the Mediterranean basin. After the
Battle of Actium in 31 BC the Roman world was united under one ruler,
Augustus, who could concentrate Roman forces against remaining holdouts. They were definitively conquered by
Aulus Terentius Varro Murena in 25 BC, and the colony of Augusta Praetoria (modern
Aosta) was founded in the following year with 3,000 settlers.
Strabo records that two thousand Salassi were killed and all the survivors, nearly 40,000 men, women, and children, were taken to Eporedia (modern day Ivrea) and sold into slavery. However, some remained; an inscription found near the west gate of
Augusta Praetoria Salassorum is a dedication to Augustus dated 23 BC of a statue (?) by "the Salassi who had joined the colony from its beginning." ==References==