iving
at length the danger that menaced the right wing, despatched
the victorious tenth legion to the aid of his general. The Nervii,
separated from their confederates and simultaneously assailed
on all sides, now showed, when fortune turned, the same heroic courage
as when they believed themselves victors; still over the pile
of corpses of their fallen comrades they fought to the last man.
According to their own statement, of their six hundred senators
only three survived this day.

Subjugation of the Belgae

After this annihilating defeat the Nervii, Atrebates, and Viromandui
could not but recognize the Roman supremacy. The Aduatuci, who arrived
too late to take part in the fight on the Sambre, attempted still to hold
their ground in the strongest of their towns (on the mount Falhize
near the Maas not far from Huy), but they too soon submitted. A nocturnal
attack on the Roman camp in front of the town, which they ventured
after the surrender, miscarried; and the perfidy was avenged
by the Romans with fearful severity. The clients of the Aduatuci,
consisting of the Eburones between the Maas and Rhine and other
small adjoining tribes, were declared independent by the Romans,
while the Aduatuci taken prisoners were sold under the hammer en masse
for the benefit of the Roman treasury. It seemed as if the fate
which had befallen the Cimbri still pursued even this last
Cimbrian fragment. Caesar contented himself with imposing
on the other subdued tribes a general disarmament and furnishing
of hostages. The Remi became naturally the leading canton
in Belgic, like the Haedui in central Gaul; even in the latter
several clans at enmity with the Haedui preferred to rank
among the clients of the Remi. Only the remote maritime
cantons of the Morini (Artois) and the Menapii (Flanders and Brabant),
and the country between the Scheldt and the Rhine inhabited in great
part by Germans, remained still for the present exempt from Roman
invasion and in possession of their hereditary freedom.

Expeditions against the Maritime Cantons
Venetian War

The turn of the Aremorican cantons came. In the autumn of 697
Publius Crassus was sent thither with a Roman corps; he induced
the Veneti--who as masters of the ports of the modern Morbihan
and of a respectable fleet occupied the first place among all
the Celtic cantons in navigation and commerce--and generally
the coast-districts between the Loire and Seine, to submit
to the Roman