de bello gallico, 1.4

This affair was announced to the Helvetii through informers. According to their customs, they compelled Orgetorix to plead his case in chains. It was necessary for the punishment to follow the condemned that they be burned by fire. On the appointed day of the pleading of his case, Orgetorix gathered to the court all of his family from all sides, up to ten thousand (of) men, and he brought all of his clients and debtors, of which he had a great number, together to this spot: through these he snatched himself away lest he plead his case. When the state, stirred up on account of this matter, tried to follow its right by arms, and when the magistrates gathered a multitude of men from the fields, Orgetorix died; and suspicion was not absent, as the Helvetians thought, but that he himself had decreed death for himself.