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There Caesar came to him as he expected, and the army was once more together. Meanwhile the failure at Gergovia had kindled the enthusiasm of the central districts into white-heat. The Aedui, the most powerful of all the tribes, were now at one with their countrymen, and Bibracte became the focus of the national army.
Gallic towns were losing their old and receiving Roman names: Augustonemetum, Augusta, and Augustodunum took the place of Gergovia, Noviodunum, and Bibracte.
The Aedui request Vercingetorix to come to them and communicate his plans of conducting the war. On obtaining this request they insist that the chief command should be assigned to them; and when the affair became a disputed question, a council of all Gaul is summoned to Bibracte. They come together in great numbers and from every quarter to the same place.
To reward them he promised to give by way of prize-money two hundred sestertii to each soldier and two thousand to each centurion. He then sent them into their winter quarters and returned to Bibracte after an absence of forty days. While he was there, dispensing justice, the Bituriges came to implore his support against the attacks of the Carnutes.
Autun stands on the site and contains the stately ruins of the Roman Augustodunum, built by Augustus about 12 B.C. He, as it seems, brought down the Gaulish dwellers in the old native hill-fortress of Bibracte, on Mont-Beuvray, and planted them twelve miles away on an unoccupied site beside the river Arroux.
These heights are about equal to the Cumberland range, the loftiest peak of the Morvan rising to that of Skiddaw. Far away the famous Mont Beuvray, the Bibracte of the 'Commentaries' lying half-way between Chateau-Chinon and Autun, is a bold, grand outline to day, under a cold, gray sky. Wild crags to climb and romantic sites abound, also scenes of quiet caressing grace and smiling pastoralness.
Bethuria, a region of Hispania Lusitanica, Estremadura Bibracte, a town of Burgundy, now called Autun, the capital of the Aedui; Caesar, distressed for want of corn, marches thither to obtain a supply, G. i. 23 Bibrax, a town of Rheims, Braine, or Bresne; attacked with great fury by the confederate Belgians, G. ii. 6
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.
But when he ceased from the pursuit and turned against Bibracte, the Helvetii thought that the Romans were making preparations for flight, and now attacked in their turn. Battle at Bibracte Caesar desired nothing better.
When Eporedorix and Viridomarus came to this place, and received information of the disposition of the state, that Litavicus had been admitted by the Aedui into Bibracte, which is a town of the greatest importance among them, that Convictolitanis the chief magistrate and a great part of the senate had gone to meet him, that ambassadors had been publicly sent to Vercingetorix to negotiate a peace and alliance; they thought that so great an opportunity ought not to be neglected.
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