BOII, a Celtic people, whose original home was Gallia Trans alpina. They were known to the Romans in the time of Plautus, as is shown by the reference in the Captivi (888). At an early date they split up into two groups, one of which made its way into Italy, the other into Germany. Some, however, appear to have stayed behind, since, during the second Punic war, Magalus, a Boian prince, offered to show Hannibal the way into Italy after he had crossed the Pyrenees. The first group of immigrants crossed the Pennine Alps (Great St. Bernard) into the valley of the Po, proceeded over the river, drove out the Etruscans and Umbrians, and established themselves as far as the Apennines in the modern Romagna. From the remains discovered in the tombs at Hallstatt, etc., they appear to have been fairly civilized.
in 224 B.C., after the battle of Telamon in Etruria, they were forced to submit. But they still cherished a hatred of the Romans, and during the second Punic war (218), irritated by the foundation of the Roman colonies of Cremona and Placentia, they rendered valuable assistance to Hannibal. They continued the struggle against Rome from 201 to 191 B.C., when they were subdued and deprived of nearly half their territory. There was a settlement of the Boii on the Danube from very early times, in part of the modern Bohemia (anc. Boiohemum, "land of the Boii"). Thirty two thousand Boii joined the expedition of the Helvetians into Gaul, and shared their defeat near Bibracte (58 B.c.). They were subsequently allowed by Caesar to settle in the territory of the Aedui between the Loire and the Allier. Those who remained on the Danube were exterminated by the Dacian king, Boerebista, and the district they had occupied was afterwards called the "desert of the Boii" (Strabo vii. p. 292).
The Boii, as we know them, belonged almost certainly to the Early Iron Age. They used long iron swords for dealing cutting blows, and from the size of the handles they must have been a race of large men (cf. Polybius ii. 30).
ir possible connection with the Homeric Achaeans see W. Ridgeway's Early Age of Greece (vol. i., i9o1) ; see also A. Desjardins, Geographie historique de la Gaule romaine, (1876-93) ; T. R. Holmes, Caesar's Conquest of Gaul, 426-428 (1899) ; T. Mommsen, Hist. of Rome, ii. (Eng. trans., 1894), 373, note; M. Ihm in Pauly-Wissowa's Real encyklopiidie, pt. i. (1897).
