1The Helvetii, fierce before the crisis and fearful in danger, although at the first alarm they had chosen Claudius Severus as their leader, did not know their weapons, did not keep their ranks, did not take counsel together. 1A battle against veterans would be deadly, a siege unsafe, since their walls had crumbled with age; 1on this side was Caecina with a strong army, on that the Raetian cavalry and cohorts and the young men of the Raetians themselves, used to arms and trained in the ways of soldiering. 1Everywhere there was ravaging and slaughter: they themselves, wandering in between, threw away their arms, and a great part of them, wounded or straggling, fled to Mount Vocetius.
1And at once, when a cohort of Thracians was sent in, they were dislodged, and with the Germans and Raetians in pursuit were butchered all through the woods and in their very hiding places. 1Many thousands of men were slain, many thousands sold into slavery under the garland. 1And when, after everything had been destroyed, the column was advancing in hostile array on Aventicum, the capital of the people, envoys were sent to surrender the community, and the surrender was accepted. 1Caecina punished Julius Alpinus, one of the leading men, as the instigator of the war: the rest he left to the pardon or the cruelty of Vitellius.