tarch tells us a story of the chieftain riding up before Cæsar, to deliver himself, with gilt armour, on a grand horse, caracolling and prancing. We cannot fancy that any horse out of Alesia, could, after the siege, have been fit for such holiday occasion. The horses out of Vercingetorix's stables had probably been eaten many days since. Then Cæsar again forgives the Ædui; but Vercingetorix is taken as a prisoner to Rome, is kept a prisoner for six years, is then led in Cæsar's Triumph, and, after these six years, is destroyed, as a victim needed for Cæsar's glory,—that so honour may be done to Cæsar! Cæsar puts his army into winter quarters, and determines to remain himself in Gaul during the winter. When his account of these things reaches Rome, a "supplication" of twenty days is decreed in his honour.
This is the end of Cæsar's Commentary "De Bello Gallico." The war was carried on for two years more; and a memoir of Cæsar's doings during those two years,—B.C. 51 and 50,—was written, after Cæsar's manner, by one Aulus Hirtius. There is no pretence on the writer's part that this was the work of Cæsar's hands, as in a short preface he makes an author's apology for venturing to continue what Cæsar had begun. The most memorable circumstance of Cæsar's warfares told in this record of two campaigns is the taking of Uxellodunum, a town in the south-west of France, the site of which is not now known. Cæsar took the town by cutting off the water, and then horribly mutilated the inhabitants who had dared to defend their own hearths.
