The Veneti detained Silius and Velanius, who had been sent among them, for they thought they should recover by their means the hostages which they had given Crassus. The neighbouring people, the Essui and the Curiosolitæ, led on by the influence of the Veneti (as the measures of the Gauls are sudden and hasty) detained other officers for the same motive. All the sea-coast being quickly brought over to the sentiments of these states, they sent a common embassy to P. Crassus to say "If he wished to receive back his officers, let him send back to them their hostages." Cæsar, being informed of these things, since he was himself so far distant, ordered ships of war to be built on the River Loire; rowers to be raised from the province; sailors and pilots to be provided. These matters being quickly executed, he hastened to the army as soon as the season of the year admitted. Cæsar at once ordered his army, divided into several detachments, to attack the towns of the enemy in different districts. Many were stormed, yet much of the warfare was vain and much labour was lost, because the Veneti, having numerous ships specially adapted for such a purpose, their keels being flatter than those of our ships, could easily navigate the shallows and estuaries, and thus their flight hither and thither could not be prevented. At length, in a naval fight, our fleet, being fully assembled, gained a victory so signal that, by that one battle, the war with the Veneti and the whole sea-coast was finished. Cæsar thought that severe punishment should be inflicted, in order that for the future the rights of ambassadors should be respected by barbarians; he therefore put to death all their senate, and sold the rest for slaves. About the same time P. Crassus arrived in Aquitania, which, as was already said, is, both from its extent and its number of population, a third part of Gaul. Here, a few years before, L. Valerius Præconius, the lieutenant, had been killed and his army routed, so that Crassus understood no ordinary care must be used. On his arrival being known, the Sotiates assembled great forces, and the battle that followed was long and vigorously contested. The Sotiates being routed, they retired to their principal stronghold, but it was stormed, and they submitted. Crassus then marched into the territories of the Vocates and the Tarusites, who raised a great host of men to carry on the war, but suffered total defeat, after which the greater part of Aquitania of its own accord surrendered to the Romans, sending hostages of their own accord from different tribes. A few only--and those remote nations--relying on the time of year, neglected to do this. _IV.--The First Landing in Britain_