Spartan Gold: Grand St. Bernard Pass and more

the Pennine Alps had seen its shares of armies

The Pennine Alps (also: Valais Alps) are a mountain range in the western part of the Alps. They are located in Switzerland (Valais) and Italy (Piedmont and the Aosta Valley). The Col Ferret separates them from the Mont Blanc Massif; the Dora Baltea valley separates them from the Graian Alps; the Simplon Pass separates them from the Lepontine Alps; the Rhône valley separates them from the Bernese Alps.

The Italian side is drained by the rivers Dora Baltea, Sesia and Toce, tributaries of the Po. The Swiss side is drained by the Rhône River.

The Great St Bernard Tunnel, under the Great St Bernard Pass, leads from Martigny, Switzerland to Aosta.

The Gauls in 390 BC, on their way to trample Rome

The Gauls were a Celtic people living in Gaul, the region roughly corresponding to what is now France, Belgium, Switzerland and Northern Italy, from the Iron Age through the Roman period. They mostly spoke the Continental Celtic language called Gaulish.

Archaeologically, they were the bearers of the La Tène culture (5th to 1st centuries BC). In the 3rd century BC, the Gauls expanded towards the southeast in a series of invasions, including the Gallic Invasion of Greece, with a few settling as far east as Anatolia, as the Galatians. They were conquered by Julius Caesar in the Gallic Wars in the 50s BC, and during the Roman period became assimilated into a Gallo-Roman culture. During the crisis of the third century, there was briefly a breakaway Gallic Empire under Postumus, Marcus Aurelius Marius and Tetricus I. By the arrival of the Franks during the Migration Period (5th century), the Gaulish language had been replaced by Vulgar Latin.

trampling Rome
Brennus (or Brennos) was a chieftain of the Senones, a Gallic tribe originating from the modern areas of France known as Seine-et-Marne, Loiret, and Yonne, but which had expanded to occupy northern Italy.

More important historically was a branch of the above (called Senones, by Polybius), who about 400 B.C. made their way over the Alps and, having driven out the Umbrians, settled on the east coast of Italy from Ariminum to Ancona, in the so-called ager Gallicus, and founded the town of Sena Gallica (Sinigaglia), which became their capital.

In 391 they invaded Etruria and besieged Clusium. The Clusines appealed to Rome, whose intervention, accompanied by a violation of the law of nations, led to war, the defeat of the Romans at the Allia (18 July 390) and the capture of Rome.

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Spartan Gold, by Clive Cussler with Grant Blackwood.
This annotation from the paperback edition of Berkley Publishing, 2009, and from Wikipedia unless otherwise credited.