[419] Cicero, Epist. ad Atticum, IV. 17.
[420] To find the time required, we must suppose that, by some delay or by the absence of regular couriers, Cæsar’s letter to Cicero had been thirteen days on the road between Lodi and Rome.
[421] Much uncertainty exists in regard to the distribution of the legions; yet the location of two of the winter quarters appears to us certain, Samarobriva (Amiens) and Aduatuca (Tongres). If now, from a point situate near to the Sambre, from Bavay as the centre, we describe a circle, we shall see that Cæsar’s winter quarters, except those of Normandy, were all comprised in a radius of 100 miles, or 148 kilomètres. The researches which Major Cohausen kindly made for me, and those of MM. Stoffel and Locqueyssie, have enabled me to determine approximately the winter quarters.
[422] The brother of the orator.
[423] The Commandant of Artillery, De Locqueyssie, has found on the Ourthe, near the village of Lavacherie (Duchy of Luxemburg), the remains of a Roman camp with triangular fosses, and in a position which appears to agree with the date of the “Commentaries.”
[424] Under the name of Belgium, we must only comprise a part of the peoples of Belgic Gaul, such as the Atrebates, the Ambiani, and the Bellovaci. (De Bello Gallico, V. 24, 25, 46; VIII. 46.)
[425] Unam legionem, quam proxime trans Padum conscripserat.—According to the use of the good Latin writers, proxime does not mean recently, but in the last place. Through an incorrect interpretation of this phrase, General de Gœler has supposed that Cæsar had, at this time, brought from Italy the 15th legion; this legion, as we shall see, was only raised at a later period.
[426] More than fourteen different localities have been proposed for identification with Aduatuca. If some writers have advanced good arguments for placing Aduatuca on the right bank of the Meuse, others have believed that they have offered equally good ones for seeking it on the left bank of that river; but the greater part of them have admitted this or that site for the most futile reasons. Nobody has dreamt of resolving the question by the simplest of all means—which consists in seeking if, among the different sites proposed, there is one which, by the form of the ground, agrees with the requirements of the narrative given in the “Commentaries.” Now, Tongres is in this position, and it alone, and so completely satisfies them that we cannot think of placing Aduatuca elsewhere. In fact, Tongres is situated in the country occupied formerly by the Eburones, and, as Cæsar expresses it, in modiis finibus Eburonum, which signifies entirely in the country of the Eburones, and not in the centre of the country. It is moreover enclosed in a circle of a hundred miles radius, comprising all the winter quarters of the Roman army except those of Roscius. This locality fulfils all the conditions required for the establishment of a camp; it is near a river, on a height which commands the neighborhood, and the country produces wheat and forage. At two miles towards the west is a long defile, magna convallis, the vale of Lowaige, where the relation of the massacre of the cohorts of Sabinus is perfectly explained. At three miles from Tongres we find a plain, separated from the town by a single hill; on the same side as this hill rises a rounded eminence—that of Berg, to which the name of tumulus may be fairly applied. Lastly, the Geer, the banks of which were formerly marshy, defended through a large extent the height of Tongres. (See Plate 18.)
[427] De Bello Gallico, V. 25.
[428] See the notice by M. M. F. Driesen on the position of Aduatuca, in the Bulletins de l’Académie Royale de Belgique, 2nd series, tom. XV. No. 3.