The Works of Tacitus
tr. by Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb
[1864-1877]
Tacitus: History Book 4 [30]
30. The Batavians had raised a tower two stories high, which they brought up
to the Praetorian gate of the camp, where the ground was most level. But our
men, pushing forward strong poles, and battering it with beams, broke it down,
causing great destruction among the combatants on the top. The enemy were attacked
in their confusion by a sudden and successful sally. All this time many engines
were constructed by the legionaries, who were superior to the enemy in experience
and skill. Peculiar consternation was caused by a machine, which, being poised
in the air over the heads of the enemy, suddenly descended, and carried up one
or more of them past the faces of their friends, and then, by a shifting of
the weights, projected them within the limits of the camp. Civilis, giving up
all hope of a successful assault, again sat down to blockade the camp at his
leisure, and undermined the fidelity of the legions by the promises of his emissaries.
31. All these events in Germany took place before the battle of Cremona,
the result of which was announced in a despatch from Antonius, accompanied by
Caecina’s proclamation. Alpinius Montanus, prefect of a cohort in the vanquished
army, was on the spot, and acknowledged the fate of his party. Various were
the emotions thus excited; the Gallic auxiliaries, who felt neither affection
nor hatred towards either party, and who served without attachment, at once,
at the instance of their prefects, deserted Vitellius. The veteran soldiers
hesitated. Nevertheless, when Hordeonius administered the oath, under a strong
pressure from their tribunes, they pronounced the words, which their looks and
their temper belied, and while they adopted every other expression, they hesitated
at the name of Vespasian, passing it over with a slight murmur, and not unfrequently
in absolute silence.
32. After this, certain letters from Antonius to Civilis were read in full
assembly, and provoked the suspicions of the soldiery, as they seemed to be
addressed to a partisan of the cause and to be unfriendly to the army of Germany.
Soon the news reached the camp at Gelduba, and the same language and the same
acts were repeated. Montanus was sent with a message to Civilis, bidding him
desist from hostilities, and not seek to conceal the designs of an enemy by
fighting under false colours, and telling him that, if he had been attempting
to assist Vespasian, his purpose had been fully accomplished. Civilis at first
replied in artful language, but soon perceiving that Montanus was a man of singularly
high spirit and was himself disposed for change, he began with lamenting the
perils through which he had struggled for five-and-twenty years in the camps
of Rome. “It is,” he said, “a noble reward that I have received for my toils;
my brother murdered, myself imprisoned, and the savage clamour of this army,
a clamour which demanded my execution, and for which by the law of nations I
demand vengeance. You, Treveri, and other enslaved creatures, what reward do
you expect for the blood which you have shed so often? What but a hateful service,
perpetual tribute, the rod, the axe, and the passions of a ruling race? See
how I, the prefect of a single cohort, with the Batavians and the Canninefates,
a mere fraction of Gaul, have destroyed their vast but useless camps, or are
pressing them with the close blockade of famine and the sword. In a word, either
freedom will follow on our efforts, or, if we are vanquished, we shall but be
what we were before.” Having thus fired the man’s ambition, Civilis dismissed
him, but bade him carry back a milder answer. He returned, pretending to have
failed in his mission, but not revealing the other facts; these indeed soon
came to light.
33. Civilis, retaining a part of his forces, sent the veteran cohorts and
the bravest of his German troops against Vocula and his army, under the command
of Julius Maximus and Claudius Victor, his sister’s son. On their march they
plundered the winter camp of a body of horse stationed at Ascibergium, and they
fell on Vocula’s camp so unexpectedly that he could neither harangue his army,
nor even get it into line. All that he could do in the confusion was to order
the veteran troops to strengthen the centre. The auxiliaries were dispersed
in every part of the field. The cavalry charged, but, received by the orderly
array of the enemy, fled to their own lines. What ensued was a massacre rather
than a battle. The Nervian infantry, from panic or from treachery, exposed the
flank of our army. Thus the attack fell upon the legions, who had lost their
standards and were being cut down within the entrenchments, when the fortune
of the day was suddenly changed by a reinforcement of fresh troops. Some Vascon
infantry, levied by Galba, which had by this time been sent for, heard the noise
of the combatants as they approached the camp, attacked the rear of the preoccupied
enemy, and spread a panic more than proportionate to their numbers, some believing
that all the troops from Novesium, others that all from Mogontiacum, had come
up. This delusion restored the courage of the Romans, and in relying on the
strength of others they recovered their own. All the bravest of the Batavians,
of the infantry at least, fell, but the cavalry escaped with the standards and
with the prisoners whom they had secured in the early part of the engagement.
Of the slain on that day the greater number belonged to our army, but to its
less effective part. The Germans lost the flower of their force.
34. The two generals were equally blameworthy; they deserved defeat, they
did not make the most of success. Had Civilis given battle in greater force,
he could not have been outflanked by so small a number of cohorts, and he might
have destroyed the camp after once forcing an entrance. As for Vocula, he did
not reconnoitre the advancing enemy, and consequently he was vanquished as soon
as be left the camp; and then, mistrusting his victory, he fruitlessly wasted
several days before marching against the enemy, though, had he at once resolved
to drive them back, and to follow up his success, he might, by one and the same
movement, have raised the siege of the legions. Meanwhile Civilis had tried
to work on the feelings of the besieged by representing that with the Romans
all was lost, and that victory had declared for his own troops. The standards
and colours were carried round the ramparts, and the prisoners also were displayed.
One of them, with noble daring, declared the real truth in a loud voice, and,
as he was cut down on the spot by the Germans, all the more confidence was felt
in his information. At the same time it was becoming evident, from the devastation
of the country and from the flames of burning houses, that the victorious army
was approaching. Vocula issued orders that the standards should be planted within
sight of the camp, and should be surrounded with a ditch and rampart, where
his men might deposit their knapsacks, and so fight without encumbrance. On
this, the General was assailed by a clamorous demand for instant battle. They
had now grown used to threaten. Without even taking time to form into line,
disordered and weary as they were, they commenced the action. Civilis was on
the field, trusting quite as much to the faults of his adversaries as to the
valour of his own troops. With the Romans the fortune of the day varied, and
the most violently mutinous shewed themselves cowards. But some, remembering
their recent victory, stood their ground and struck fiercely at the foe, now
encouraging each other and their neighbours, and now, while they re-formed their
lines, imploring the besieged not to lose the opportunity. These latter, who
saw everything from the walls, sallied out from every gate. It so happened that
Civilis was thrown to the ground by the fall of his horse. A report that he
had been either wounded or slain gained belief throughout both armies, and spread
incredible panic among his own troops, and gave as great encouragement to their
opponents. But Vocula, leaving the flying foe, began to strengthen the rampart
and the towers of the camp, as if another siege were imminent. He had misused
success so often that he was rightly suspected of a preference for war.
35. Nothing distressed our troops so much as the scarcity of supplies. The
baggage of the legions was therefore sent to Novesium with a crowd of non-combatants
to fetch corn from that place overland, for the enemy commanded the river. The
march of the first body was accomplished in security, as Civilis had not yet
recovered. But when he heard that officers of the commissariat had been again
sent to Novesium, and that the infantry detached as an escort were advancing
just as if it were a time of profound peace, with but few soldiers round the
standards, the arms stowed away in the wagons, and all wandering about at their
pleasure, he attacked them in regular form, having first sent on troops to occupy
the bridges and the defiles in the road. The battle extended over a long line
of march, lasting with varying success till night parted the combatants. The
infantry pushed on to Gelduba, while the camp remained in the same state as
before, garrisoned by such troops as had been left in it. There could be no
doubt what peril a convoy, heavily laden and panic-stricken, would have to encounter
in attempting to return. Vocula added to his force a thousand picked men from
the fifth and fifteenth legions besieged in the Old Camp, a body of troops undisciplined
and ill-affected to their officers. But more than the number specified came
forward, and openly protested, as they marched, that they would not endure any
longer the hardships of famine and the treachery of the legates. On the other
hand, those who had stayed behind complained that they were, being left to their
fate by this withdrawal of a part of the legions. A twofold mutiny was the result,
some calling upon Vocula to come back, while the others refused to return to
the camp.
36. Meanwhile Civilis blockaded the Old Camp. Vocula retired first to Gelduba,
after, wards to Novesium; Civilis took possession of Gelduba, and not long after
was victorious in a cavalry engagement near Novesium. But reverses and successes
seemed equally to kindle in the troops the one desire of murdering their officers.
The legions, increased in number by the arrival of the men from the fifth and
fifteenth, demanded a donative, for they had discovered that some money had
been sent by Vitellius. After a short delay Hordeonius gave the donative in
the name of Vespasian. This, more than anything else, fostered the mutinous
spirit. The men, abandoning themselves to debauchery and revelry and all the
license of nightly gatherings, revived their old grudge against Hordeonius.
Without a single legate or tribune venturing to check them, for the darkness
seems to have taken from them all sense of shame, they dragged him out of his
bed and killed him. The same fate was intended for Vocula, but he assumed the
dress of a slave, and escaped unrecognized in the darkness. When their fury
had subsided and their alarm returned, they sent centurions with despatches
to the various states of Gaul, imploring help in money and troops.
37. These men, headstrong, cowardly, and spiritless, as a mob without a leader
always is, on the approach of Civilis hastily took up arms, and, as hastily
abandoning them, betook themselves to flight. Disaster produced disunion, the
troops from the Upper army dissociating their cause from that of their comrades.
Nevertheless the statues of Vitellius were again set up in the camp and in the
neighbouring Belgian towns, and this at a time when Vitellius himself had fallen.
Then the men of the 1st, the 4th, and the 18th legions, repenting of their conduct,
followed Vocula, and again taking in his presence the oath of allegiance to
Vespasian, were marched by him to the relief of Mogontiacum. The besieging army,
an heterogeneous mass of Chatti, Usipii, and Mattiaci, had raised the siege,
glutted with spoils, but not without suffering loss. Our troops attacked them
on the way, dispersed and unprepared. Moreover the Treveri had constructed a
breastwork and rampart across their territory, and they and the Germans continued
to contend with great losses on both sides up to the time when they tarnished
by rebellion their distinguished services to the Roman people.
38. Meanwhile Vespasian (now consul for the second time) and Titus entered
upon their office, both being absent from Rome. People were gloomy and anxious
under the pressure of manifold fears, for, over and above immediate perils,
they had taken groundless alarm under the impression that Africa was in rebellion
through the revolutionary movements of Lucius Piso. He was governor of that
province, and was far from being a man of turbulent disposition. The fact was
that the wheat-ships were detained by the severity of the weather, and the lower
orders, who were accustomed to buy their provisions from day to day, and to
whom cheap corn was the sole subject of public interest, feared and believed
that the ports had been closed and the supplies stopped, the Vitellianists,
who had not yet given up their party feelings, helping to spread the report,
which was not displeasing even to the conquerors. Their ambition, which even
foreign campaigns could not fill to the full, was not satisfied by any triumphs
that civil war could furnish.
39. On the 1st of January, at a meeting of the Senate, convoked for the purpose
by Julius Frontinus, praetor of the city, votes of thanks were passed to the
legates, to the armies, and to the allied kings. The office of praetor was taken
away from Tettius Julianus, as having deserted his legion when it passed over
to the party of Vespasian, with a view to its being transferred to Plotius Griphus.
Equestrian rank was conferred on Hormus. Then, on the resignation of Frontinus,
Caesar Domitian assumed the office of praetor of the city. His name was put
at the head of despatches and edicts, but the real authority was in the hands
of Mucianus, with this exception, that Domitian ventured on several acts of
power, at the instigation of his friends, or at his own caprice. But Mucianus
found his principal cause of apprehension in Primus Antonius and Varus Arrius,
who, in the freshness of their fame, while distinguished by great achievements
and by the attachment of the soldiery, were also supported by the people, because
in no case had they extended their severities beyond the battle-field. It was
also reported that Antonius had urged Scribonianus Crassus, whom an illustrious
descent added to the honours of his brother made a conspicuous person, to assume
the supreme power; and it was understood that a number of accomplices would
not have failed to support him, had not the proposal been rejected by Scribonianus,
who was a man not easily to be tempted even by a certainty, and was proportionately
apprehensive of risk. Mucianus, seeing that Antonius could not be openly crushed,
heaped many praises upon him in the Senate, and loaded him with promises in
secret, holding out as a prize the government of Eastern Spain, then vacant
in consequence of the departure of Cluvius Rufus. At the same time he lavished
on his friends tribuneships and prefectures; and then, when he had filled the
vain heart of the man with hope and ambition, he destroyed his power by sending
into winter quarters the 7th legion, whose affection for Antonius was particularly
vehement. The 3rd legion, old troops of Varus Arrius, were sent back to Syria.
Part of the army was on its way to Germany. Thus all elements of disturbance
being removed, the usual appearance of the capital, the laws, and the jurisdiction
of the magistrates, were once more restored.
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