Meanwhile, Caesar kept daily importuning the Aedui for the corn which they had promised in the name of their state;
Interim cotidie Caesar Haeduos frumentum, quod essent publice polliciti, flagitare.
for, in consequence of the coldness (Gaul, being as before said, situated toward the north), not only was the corn in the fields not ripe, but there was not in store a sufficiently large quantity even of fodder:
Nam propter frigora [quod Gallia sub septentrionibus, ut ante dictum est, posita est,] non modo frumenta in agris matura non erant, sed ne pabuli quidem satis magna copia suppetebat;
besides he was unable to use the corn which he had conveyed in ships up the river Saone, because the Helvetii, from whom he was unwilling to retire had diverted their march from the Saone.
eo autem frumento quod flumine Arari navibus subvexerat propterea uti minus poterat quod iter ab Arari Helvetii averterant, a quibus discedere nolebat. Diem ex die ducere Haedui: conferri, comportari, adesse dicere.
The Aedui kept deferring from day to day, and saying that it was being collected-brought in-on the road." When he saw that he was put off too long, and that the day was close at hand on which he ought to serve out the corn to his soldiers;-having called together their chiefs, of whom he had a great number in his camp, among them Divitiacus and Liscus who was invested with the chief magistracy (whom the Aedui style the Vergobretus, and who is elected annually and has power of life or death over his countrymen), he severely reprimands them, because he is not assisted by them on so urgent an occasion, when the enemy were so close at hand, and when [corn] could neither be bought nor taken from the fields, particularly as, in a great measure urged by their prayers, he had undertaken the war; much more bitterly, therefore does he complain of his being forsaken.
Ubi se diutius duci intellexit et diem instare quo die frumentum militibus metiri oporteret, convocatis eorum principibus, quorum magnam copiam in castris habebat, in his Diviciaco et Lisco, qui summo magistratui praeerat, quem vergobretum appellant Haedui, qui creatur annuus et vitae necisque in suos habet potestatem, graviter eos accusat, quod, cum neque emi neque ex agris sumi possit, tam necessario tempore, tam propinquis hostibus ab iis non sublevetur, praesertim cum magna ex parte eorum precibus adductus bellum susceperit[; multo etiam gravius quod sit destitutus queritur].