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Being prevailed upon by their entreaties he moves his camp from the country of the Bituriges in the direction of the Arverni.
The copper implements not unfrequently of excellent workmanship and even now malleable, which are brought to light in the tombs of Gaul, and the carefully adjusted Arvernian gold coins, are still at the present day striking witnesses of the skill of the Celtic workers in copper and gold; and with this the reports of the ancients well accord, that the Romans learned the art of tinning from the Bituriges and that of silvering from the Alesini inventions, the first of which was naturally suggested by the traffic' in tin, and both of which were probably made in the period of Celtic freedom.
II. That this notion might not be confirmed among the Gauls, Caesar left Marcus Antonius, his quaestor, in charge of his quarters, and set out himself with a guard of horse, the day before the kalends of January, from the town Bibracte, to the thirteenth legion, which he had stationed in the country of the Bituriges, not far from the territories of the Aedui, and joined to it the eleventh legion which was next it.
In the much-divided Celtic nation at this period the canton of the Bituriges had lost its real hegemony and retained merely an honorary presidency, and the actually leading canton in the region from the Pyrenees to the Rhine and from the Mediterranean to the Western Ocean was that of the Arverni; so that the statement seems not quite an exaggeration, that it could bring into the field as many as 180,000 men.
Such expeditions were in the winter of 702-703 undertaken against the Bituriges and the Carnutes. With the Bellovaci More serious resistance was offered by the Bellovaci, who in the previous year had kept aloof from the relief of Alesia; they seem to have wished to show that their absence on that decisive day at least did not proceed from want of courage or of love for freedom.
Whether they did this for the reason which they alleged to the lieutenants, or influenced by treachery, we think that we ought not to state as certain, because we have no proof. On their departure, the Bituriges immediately unite themselves to the Arverni.
They burnt their farmsteads. They burnt their villages. The tribes adjoining caught the enthusiasm. The horizon at night was a ring of blazing fires. Vercingetorix was for burning Bourges also; but it was the sacred home of the Bituriges, the one spot which they implored to be allowed to save, the most beautiful city in all Gaul.
Such offers being made to the Bituriges, when they perceived that through Caesar's clemency, an avenue was open to his friendship, and that the neighbouring states had given hostages, without incurring any punishment, and had been received under his protection, they did the same.
Having left two cohorts of each legion to guard the baggage, he proceeded toward the fertile country of the Bituriges, a vast territory, where the presence of a single legion was insufficient to put a stop to the preparations for insurrection. His sudden arrival in the midst of men without distrust, who were spread over the open country, produced the result which he expected.
The copper implements not unfrequently of excellent workmanship and even now malleable, which are brought to light in the tombs of Gaul, and the carefully adjusted Arvernian gold coins, are still at the present day striking witnesses of the skill of the Celtic workers in copper and gold; and with this the reports of the ancients well accord, that the Romans learned the art of tinning from the Bituriges and that of silvering from the Alesini inventions, the first of which was naturally suggested by the traffic' in tin, and both of which were probably made in the period of Celtic freedom.
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