Note 426 — Chapter VIII · (Year of Rome 700.) (Book V. of the “Commentaries.”) MARCH AGAINST THE TREVIRI—SECOND DESCENT IN BRITAIN.

More than fourteen different localities have been proposed for identification with Aduatuca. If some writers have advanced good arguments for placing Aduatuca on the right bank of the Meuse, others have believed that they have offered equally good ones for seeking it on the left bank of that river; but the greater part of them have admitted this or that site for the most futile reasons. Nobody has dreamt of resolving the question by the simplest of all means—which consists in seeking if, among the different sites proposed, there is one which, by the form of the ground, agrees with the requirements of the narrative given in the “Commentaries.” Now, Tongres is in this position, and it alone, and so completely satisfies them that we cannot think of placing Aduatuca elsewhere. In fact, Tongres is situated in the country occupied formerly by the Eburones, and, as Cæsar expresses it, in modiis finibus Eburonum, which signifies entirely in the country of the Eburones, and not in the centre of the country. It is moreover enclosed in a circle of a hundred miles radius, comprising all the winter quarters of the Roman army except those of Roscius. This locality fulfils all the conditions required for the establishment of a camp; it is near a river, on a height which commands the neighborhood, and the country produces wheat and forage. At two miles towards the west is a long defile, magna convallis, the vale of Lowaige, where the relation of the massacre of the cohorts of Sabinus is perfectly explained. At three miles from Tongres we find a plain, separated from the town by a single hill; on the same side as this hill rises a rounded eminence—that of Berg, to which the name of tumulus may be fairly applied. Lastly, the Geer, the banks of which were formerly marshy, defended through a large extent the height of Tongres. (See Plate 18.)