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The most vehement incendiaries were Julius Florus and Julius Sacrovir; the first amongst those of Treves, the second amongst the Aeduans. They were both distinguished by their nobility, and by the good services of their ancestors, who thence had acquired of old the right of Roman citizens; a privilege rare in those days, and then only the prize of virtue.

He had appropriated to them a third of the territory of his Gallic allies, and he imperiously demanded another third to satisfy other twenty-five thousand of his old German comrades, who asked to share his booty and his new country. One of the foremost AEduans, Divitiacus by name, went and invoked the succor of the Roman people, the patrons of his confederation.

AEduans, Sequanians, or Arvernians, all the Gauls interested in the struggle thus terminated, were eager to congratulate Caesar upon his victory; but if they were delivered from the invasion of the Helvetians, another scourge fell heavily upon them; Ariovistus and the Germans, who were settled upon their territory, oppressed them cruelly, and day by day fresh bands were continually coming to aggravate the evil and the danger.

Caesar thereupon conveyed to him by messenger his express injunctions, "not to summon any more from the borders of the Rhine fresh multitudes of men, and to cease from vexing the AEduans and making war on them, them and their allies. Otherwise, Caesar would not fail to avenge their wrongs." Ariovistus replied that "he had conquered the AEduans.

On the other side, Silius, though he presumed the victory, and thence might have spared exhortations, yet called to his men, "that they might be with reason ashamed that they, the conquerors of Germany, should be thus led against a rabble of Gauls as against an equal enemy: one cohort had newly defeated the rebels of Tours; one regiment of horse, those of Treves; a handful of this very army had routed the Sequanians: the present Aeduans, as they are more abounding in wealth, as they wallow more in voluptuousness, are by so much more soft and unwarlike: this is what you are now to prove, and your task to prevent their escape."

Cotuatus and Conetodunus massacre all the Roman merchants at Genabum, G. vii. 3 Cotus, a division on his account among the Aeduans, G. vii. 32; obliged to desist from his pretensions to the supreme magistracy, 33 Crassus, P., his expedition into Aquitaine, G. iii. 20; reduces the Sotiates, 22; and other states, obliging them to give hostages, 27

The Aeduans, he said, were now his allies, and under his protection; and Ariovistus must send back the hostages which he held from them, and bind himself henceforth not to send any more troops across the Rhine, nor make war upon the Aeduans, or injure them in any way. If he complied with these terms, all would be well.

Being informed of this design, the Roman Senate and Caesar, at that time consul, resolved to protect the Roman province and their Gallic allies, the AEduans, against this inundation of roving neighbors. They found on their reunion, says Caesar, a total of three hundred and sixty-eight thousand emigrants, including ninety-two thousand men-at-arms.

The aedui again had their clients in the inferior tribes; and a Romano-aeduan authority of a shadowy kind had thus penetrated through the whole nation. But the aeduans had rivals and competitors in the Sequani, another powerful body in Burgundy and Franche-Comte.

In the war with the confederation of the AEduans, that of the Arvernians called to their aid the German Ariovistus, chieftain of a confederation of tribes which, under the name of Suevians, were roving over the right bank of the Rhine, ready at any time to cross the river. Ariovistus, with fifteen thousand warriors at his back, was not slow in responding to the appeal.