of this and perceiving that the Germans were inactive,
thought it a good opportunity for engaging with them, while they were
out of spirits instead of sitting still and waiting for their time. By
attacking their fortifications and the hills on which they were
encamped, he irritated the Germans and provoked them to come down in
passion and fight. The Germans were completely routed and pursued to
the Rhenus a distance of four hundred stadia, and the whole of this
space was strewed with dead bodies and arms. Ariovistus with a few
escaped across the river. The dead are said to have been eighty
thousand in number.

XX. After these exploits he left his forces among the Sequani[488] to
winter, and with the view of attending to what was going on at Rome,
came down to Gaul about the Padus, which was a part of his province;
for the river Rubico separates the rest of Italy from Gaul beneath the
Alps. Fixing his residence there, he carried on his political
intrigues, and many persons came to visit him to whom he gave what
they asked for; and he dismissed all either with their wishes
satisfied, or with hopes. During the whole period of his government in
Gaul, he conducted his operations without attracting any attention
from Pompeius, though at one time he was subduing the enemy by the
arms of the citizens, and at another capturing and subjecting the
citizens by the money which he got from the enemy. Hearing that the
Belgae[489] had risen in arms, who were the most powerful nation of the
Gauls and in possession of a third part of all Gaul, and that they had
assembled many ten thousands of armed men, he immediately turned about
and went against them with all possible expedition; and falling upon
the enemy while they were plundering the Gauls who were in alliance
with the Romans, he put to flight and destroyed those who were
collected in greatest numbers and the chief part of them after an
unsuccessful resistance, and such was the slaughter that the Romans
crossed the lakes and deep rivers over the dead bodies. Of the rebels
all who dwelt near the ocean surrendered without resistance; but
against the fiercest and most warlike of those in these parts, the
Nervii,[490] Caesar led his forces. The Nervii, who inhabited the dense
thickets and had placed their families and property in a deep recess
of the forest as far as possible from the enemy, suddenly, to the
number of sixty thousand, attacked Caesar while he was fortifying his
camp an