Severus did not venture to attack his opponents in the open at any one point, in view of their numbers and their desperation, but by intercepting small groups, thanks to the number of his soldiers and his under-officers, and by depriving them of food and shutting them up, he was able, rather slowly, to be sure, but with comparatively little danger, to crush, exhaust and exterminate them. Very few of them in fact survived.
Edition :
Dio's Roman History. Cassius Dio Cocceianus. Earnest Cary. Herbert Baldwin Foster. William Heinemann, Harvard University Press. London; New York. 1914-.