He inquired with minute
curiosity into every detail of the siege. In a general address he thanked
Cicero and the whole legion. He thanked the officers man by man for their
gallantry and fidelity. Now for the first time (and that he could have
remained ignorant of it so long speaks for the passionate unanimity with
which the Gauls had risen) he learnt from prisoners the fate of Sabinus.
He did not underrate the greatness of the catastrophe. The soldiers in the
army he treated always as friends and comrades in arms, and the loss of so
many of them was as personally grievous to him as the effects of it might
be politically mischievous. He made it the subject of a second speech to
his own and to Cicero's troops, but he spoke to encourage and to console.
A serious misfortune had happened, he said, through the fault of one of
his generals, but it must be borne with equanimity, and had already been
heroically expiated. The meeting with Cicero must have been an interesting
one. He and the two Ciceros had been friends and companions in youth. It
would have been well if Marcus Tullius could have remembered in the coming
years the personal exertion with which Caesar had rescued a brother to
whom he was so warmly attached.
Communications among the Gauls were feverishly rapid. While the Nervii
were attacking Cicero, Induciomarus and the Treveri had surrounded
Labienus at Lavacherie.
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