their rear to provoke our men by an attack. Caesar [however] restrained
his men from battle, deeming it sufficient for the present to prevent
the enemy from rapine, forage, and depredation. They marched for about
fifteen days in such a manner that there was not more than five or six
miles between the enemy's rear and our van.

XVI.--Meanwhile, Caesar kept daily importuning the Aedui for the corn
which they had promised in the name of their state; for, in consequence
of the coldness (Gaul being, as before said, situated towards the
north), not only was the corn in the fields not ripe, but there was not
in store a sufficiently large quantity even of fodder: besides he was
unable to use the corn which he had conveyed in ships up the river
Saone, because the Helvetii, from whom he was unwilling to retire, had
diverted their march from the Saone. The Aedui kept deferring from day
to day, and saying that it was being "collected--brought in--on the
road." When he saw that he was put off too long, and that the day was
close at hand on which he ought to serve out the corn to his soldiers,--
having called together their chiefs, of whom he had a great number in
his camp, among them Divitiacus, and Liscus who was invested with the
chief magistracy (whom the Aedui style the Vergobretus, and who is
elected annually, and has power of life and death over his countrymen),
he severely reprimands them, because he is not assisted by them on so
urgent an occasion, when the enemy were so close at hand, and when
[corn] could neither be bought nor taken from the fields, particularly
as, in a great measure urged by their prayers, he had undertaken the
war; much more bitterly, therefore, does he complain of his being
forsaken.

XVII.--Then at length Liscus, moved by Caesar's speech, discloses what
he had hitherto kept secret:--that "there are some whose influence with