his arrival, they send to him, as ambassadors,
the most illustrious men of their state (in which embassy Numeius and
Verudoctius held the chief place), to say "that it was their intention
to march through the Province without doing any harm, because they had"
[according to their own representations] "no other route:--that they
requested they might be allowed to do so with his consent." Caesar,
inasmuch as he kept in remembrance that Lucius Cassius, the consul, had
been slain, and his army routed and made to pass under the yoke by the
Helvetii, did not think that [their request] ought to be granted; nor
was he of opinion that men of hostile disposition, if an opportunity of
marching through the Province were given them, would abstain from
outrage and mischief. Yet, in order that a period might intervene, until
the soldiers whom he had ordered [to be furnished] should assemble, he
replied to the ambassadors, that he would take time to deliberate; if
they wanted anything, they might return on the day before the ides of
April [on April 12th].

VIII.--Meanwhile, with the legion which he had with him and the soldiers
who had assembled from the Province, he carries along for nineteen
[Roman, not quite eighteen English] miles a wall, to the height of
sixteen feet, and a trench, from the lake of Geneva, which flows into
the river Rhone, to Mount Jura, which separates the territories of the
Sequani from those of the Helvetii. When that work was finished, he
distributes garrisons, and closely fortifies redoubts, in order that he
may the more easily intercept them, if they should attempt to cross over
against his will. When the day which he had appointed with the
ambassadors came, and they returned to him, he says that he cannot,
consistently with the custom and precedent of the Roman people, grant
any one a passage through the Province; and he gives them to understand
that, if they should attempt to use violence, he would oppose them. The
Helvetii, disappointed in this hope, tried if they could force a passage
(some by means of a bridge of boats and numerous rafts constructed for
the purpose; others, by the fords of the Rhone, where the depth of the
river was least, sometimes by day, but more frequently by night), but
being kept at bay by the strength of our works, and by the concourse of
the soldiers, and by the missiles, they desisted from this attempt.

IX.--There was left one way, [namely] through the Sequani, by which, on
ac