32.
To these things Caesar replied, "That he, in accordance
with his custom, rather than owing to their desert, should spare the state, if
they should surrender themselves before the battering-ram should touch the wall;
but that there was no condition of surrender, except upon their arms being
delivered up; that he should do to them that which he had done in the case of
the Nervii, and would command their neighbors not to offer any
injury to those who had surrendered to the Roman
people." The matter being reported to their countrymen, they said that they
would execute his commands. Having cast a very large quantity of their arms from
the wall into the trench that was before the town, so that the heaps of arms
almost equalled the top of the wall and the rampart, and nevertheless having
retained and concealed, as we afterward discovered, about a third part in the
town, the gates were opened, and they enjoyed peace for that day.
C. Julius Caesar. Caesar's Gallic War. Translator. W. A. McDevitte. Translator. W. S. Bohn. 1st Edition. New York. Harper & Brothers. 1869. Harper's New Classical Library.
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