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Though the tribes of this stock dwelling nearest to the Rhine the Usipetes, Tencteri, Sugambri, Ubii had begun to be in some degree civilized, and had at least ceased voluntarily to change their abodes, all accounts yet agree that farther inland agriculture was of little importance, and the several tribes had hardly yet attained fixed abodes.
But the excellent officer who led the Romans knew how to surmount all difficulties, and after some hardly-contested but successful battles he induced the peoples from the Garonne to the vicinity of the Pyrenees to submit to the new masters. Fresh Violations of the Rhine-Boundary by the Germans The Usipetes and Tencteri
They allowed him on occasion of the proposals of Trebonius to push matters once more to a hand-to-hand conflict in the Forum, and to submit to the senate a proposal that the proconsul Caesar should be given over to the Usipetes and Tencteri on account of his perfidious conduct toward those barbarians.
The Sigambri, who are nearest to the Rhine, by whom, we have mentioned above, the Tenchtheri and Usipetes were received after their retreat, collect 2000 horse; they cross the Rhine in ships and barks thirty miles below that place where the bridge was entire and the garrison left by Caesar; they arrive at the frontiers of the Eburones, surprise many who were scattered in flight, and get possession of a large amount of cattle, of which barbarians are extremely covetous.
The German tribes of the Usipetes and Tencteri whose attempts to cross the Rhine in the territory of the Menapii have been already mentioned, had at length, eluding the vigilance of their opponents by a feigned retreat, crossed in the vessels belonging to the Menapii an enormous host, which is said, including women and children, to have amounted to 430,000 persons.
They allowed him on occasion of the proposals of Trebonius to push matters once more to a hand-to-hand conflict in the Forum, and to submit to the senate a proposal that the proconsul Caesar should be given over to the Usipetes and Tencteri on account of his perfidious conduct toward those barbarians.
It was not Caesar's design seriously to respond to this suggestion, which would have involved him in endless enterprises; but it seemed advisable, with the view of preventing the appearance of the Germanic arms on the south of the Rhine, at least to show the Roman arms beyond it. The protection which the fugitive Usipetes and Tencteri had found among the Sugambri afforded a suitable occasion.
Julius Cæsar, whose clemency has been so greatly extolled, 'executed the whole senate of the Veneti; permitted a massacre of the Usipetes and Tencteri; sold as slaves 40,000 natives of Genabum; and cut off the right hands of all the brave men whose only crime was that they held to the last against him their town of Uxellodunum. No slaughter in history is more terrible than that which took place at Jerusalem under the general who was called 'the delight of the human race, and when the last spasm of resistance had ceased, Titus sent Jewish captives, both male and female, by thousands to the provincial amphitheatres to be devoured by wild beasts or slaughtered as gladiators.
The Usipetes and Tencteri settled on the right bank of the Rhine, weary of the incessant devastation of their territory by the overbearing Suebian tribes, had, the year before Caesar arrived in Gaul , set out from their previous abodes to seek others at the mouth of the Rhine.
His treacherous conduct towards the Usipetes and Tenchteri, which he relates with perfect sang froid, is such as to shock us beyond description; his brutal vengeance upon the Atuatici and Veneti, all whose leading men he murdered, and sold the rest, to the number of 53,000, by auction; his cruel detention of the noble Vercingetorix, who, after acting like an honourable foe in the field, voluntarily gave himself up to appease the conqueror's wrath; these are blots in Caesar's scutcheon, which, if they do not place him below the recognised standard of action of the time, prevent him from being placed in any way above it.