e coming to the help of the Nervii, returned home when
they heard of this battle.

All Gaul being now subdued, so high an opinion of this war was spread
among the barbarians that ambassadors were sent to Caesar by those
nations that dwelt beyond the Rhine, to promise that they would give
hostages and execute his commands. He ordered these embassies to return
to him at the beginning of the following summer, because he was
hastening into Italy and Illyricum. Having led his legions into winter
quarters among the Carnutes, the Andes, and the Turones, which states
were close to those in which he had waged war, he set out for Italy, and
a public thanksgiving of fifteen days was decreed for these
achievements, an honour which before that time had been conferred on
none.

_III.--War by Land and Sea in Gaul_

When Caesar was setting out for Italy, he sent Servius Galba with the
twelfth legion and part of the cavalry against the Nantuates, the
Veragri, and the Seduni, who extend from the territories of the
Allobroges and the Lake of Geneva and the River Rhone to the top of the
Alps. The reason for sending him was that he desired that the pass along
the Alps, through which the Roman merchants had been accustomed to
travel with great danger, should be opened.

Galba fought several successful battles, stormed some of their forts,
and concluded a peace. He then determined to winter in a village of the
Veragri, which is called Octodurus. But before the winter camp could be
completed the tops of the mountains were seen to be crowded with armed
men, and soon these rushed down from all parts and discharged stones and
darts on the ramparts.

The fierce battle that followed lasted for more than six hours. During
the fight more than a third part of the army of 30,000 men of the Seduni
and the Veragri were slain, and the rest were put to flight,
panic-stricken. Then Galba, unwilling to tempt fortune again, after
having burned all the buildings in that village, hastened to return into
the province, urged chiefly by the want of corn and provision. As no
enemy opposed his march, he brought his forces safely into the country
of the Allobroges, and there wintered.

These things being achieved, Caesar, who was visiting Illyricum to gain a
knowledge of that country, had every reason to suppose that Gaul was
reduced to a state of tranquillity. For the Belgae had been overcome, the
Germans had been expelled, and the Seduni and the Veragri