When Caesar saw it, he laughed (Plutarch in Caesar [The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans]); yet he relates his unsuccessful siege of Gergovia with less frankness than we might expect from a great man to whom victory was familiar. He acknowledges, however, that in one attack he lost forty-six centurions and seven hundred men (de Bell. Gallico, l. vi. [vii.] c. 44-53, in tom. i. p. 270-272).