Caesar, Julius; Rome -- History -- Republic, 265-30 B.C.
Induciomarus was busy all the winter soliciting help from the Germans,
and promising money and lands. The Germans had had enough of fighting
the Romans, and, as long as their own independence was not threatened,
were disinclined to move; but Induciomarus, nothing daunted, gathered
volunteers on all sides. His camp became a rallying point for
disaffection. Envoys came privately to him from distant tribes. He,
too, held his rival council, and a fresh attack on the camp of Labienus
was to be the first step in a general war. Labienus, well informed of
what was going on, watched him quietly from his entrenchments. When the
Gauls approached, he affected fear, as Caesar had done, and he secretly
formed a body of cavalry, of whose existence they had no suspicion.
Induciomarus became careless. Day after day he rode round the
entrenchments, insulting the Romans as cowards, and his men flinging
their javelins over the walls. Labienus remained passive, till one
evening, when, after one of these displays, the loose bands of the
Gauls had scattered, he sent his horse out suddenly with orders to
fight neither with small nor great, save with Induciomarus only, and
promising a reward for his head. Fortune favored him. Induciomarus was
overtaken and killed in a ford of the Ourthe, and for the moment the
agitation was cooled down. But the impression which had been excited by
the destruction of Sabinus was still telling through the country.
Caesar expected fresh trouble in the coming summer, and spent the rest
of the winter and spring in preparing for a new struggle. Future peace
depended on convincing the Gauls of the inexhaustible resources of
Italy; on showing them that any loss which might be inflicted could be
immediately repaired, and that the army could and would be maintained
in whatever strength might be necessary to coerce them. He raised two
fresh legions in his own province. Pompey had formed a legion in the
north of Italy, within Caesar's boundaries, for service in Spain.
Caesar requested Pompey to lend him this legion for immediate purposes;
and Pompey, who was still on good terms with Caesar, recognized the
importance of the occasion, and consented without difficulty.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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