Note 490 — Chapter X · (Year of Rome 702.) (Book VII. of the “Commentaries.”) REVOLT OF GAUL—CAPTURE OF VELLAUNODUNUM, GENABUM, AND NOVIODUNUM—SIEGES OF AVARICUM AND GERGOVIA—CAMPAIGN OF LABIENUS AGAINST THE PARISII—SIEGE OF ALESIA.

The hill is certainly the Roche-Blanche, for it is situated opposite the oppidum (e regione oppidi); it begins at the very foot of the slopes of the mountain of Gergovia (sub ipsis radicibus montis), is singularly fortified by nature, and, as it were, cut out from all sides (egregie munitus atque ex omni parte circumcisus). So long as the Gauls occupied it, they could go to the Auzon by the ravine of Merdogne, to obtain water and forage; but as soon as it was in the power of the Romans, the Gauls were compelled to draw their water from the springs on the mountain of Gergovia, and from the little brook of Artières.

The excavations made in 1862 brought the two camps to light. The fosses of the little camp are clearly defined in the calcareous soil. They form an irregular outline, represented on Plate 22. The Roche-Blanche, which presents in its southern part an escarpment almost as perpendicular as a wall, has lost on the sides its abrupt form by successive landslips, the last of which took place within memory of the inhabitants. The communication between the great and little camps was composed of a parapet, formed by the earth thrown out of two contiguous fosses, each four feet in depth and six in breadth, so that the breadth of the two together is only twelve feet. If we wonder that the Romans should have dug two little ditches, each six feet broad and four feet deep, instead of making one eight feet wide by six feet deep, which would have given the same amount of soil to take out, it may be answered that the two little ditches were much more quickly made than one large ditch.