The Works of Tacitus
tr. by Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb
[1864-1877]
Tacitus: History Book 1 [60]
60. Of that province Trebellius Maximus was governor, a man whose sordid avarice
made him an object of contempt and hatred to the army. His unpopularity was
heightened by the efforts of Roscius Caelius, the legate of the 20th legion,
who had long been on bad terms with him, and who now seized the opportunity
of a civil war to break out into greater violence. Trebellius charged him with
mutinous designs, and with disturbing the regularity of military discipline;
Caelius retorted on Trebellius the accusation of having plundered and impoverished
the legions. Meanwhile all obedience in the army was destroyed by these disgraceful
quarrels between its commanders, and the feud rose to such a height that Trebellius
was insulted even by the auxiliaries, and finding himself altogether isolated,
as the infantry and cavalry sided with Caelius, he fled for safety to Vitellius.
Yet the province still enjoyed tranquility, though its consular governor had
been driven from it. It was now ruled by the legates of the legions, who were
equal as to lawful authority, though the audacity of Caelius made him the more
powerful.
61. After the army of Britain had joined him, Vitellius, who had now a prodigious
force and vast resources, determined that there should be two generals and two
lines of march for the contemplated war. Fabius Valens was ordered to win over,
if possible, or, if they refused his overtures, to ravage the provinces of Gaul
and to invade Italy by way of the Cottian Alps; Caecina to take the nearer route,
and to march down from the Penine range. To Valens were entrusted the picked
troops of the army of Lower Germany with the eagle of the 5th legion and the
auxiliary infantry and cavalry, to the number of 40,000 armed men; Caecina commanded
30,000 from Upper Germany, the strength of his force being one legion, the 21st.
Both had also some German auxiliaries, and from this source Vitellius, who was
to follow with his whole military strength, completed his own forces.
62. Wonderful was the contrast between the army and the Emperor. The army
was all eagerness; they cried out war, while Gaul yet wavered, and Spain hesitated.
“The winter,” they said, “the delays of a cowardly inaction must not stop us.
We must invade Italy, we must seize the capital; in civil strife, where action
is more needed than deliberation, nothing is safer than haste.” Vitellius, on
the contrary, was sunk in sloth, and anticipated the enjoyment of supreme power
in indolent luxury and prodigal festivities. By midday he was half-intoxicated,
and heavy with food; yet the ardour and vigour of the soldiers themselves discharged
all the duties of a general as well as if the Emperor had been present to stimulate
the energetic by hope and the indolent by fear. Ready to march and eager for
action, they loudly demanded the signal for starting; the title of Germanicus
was at once bestowed on Vitellius, that of Caesar he refused to accept, even
after his victory. It was observed as a happy omen for Fabius Valens and the
forces which he was conducting to the campaign, that on the very day on which
they set out an eagle moved with a gentle flight before the army as it advanced,
as if to guide it on its way. And for a long distance so loudly did the soldiers
shout in their joy, so calm and unterrified was the bird, that it was taken
as no doubtful omen of great and successful achievements.
63. The territory of the Treveri they entered with all the security naturally
felt among allies. But at Divodurum, a town of the Mediomatrici, though they
had been received with the most courteous hospitality, a sudden panic mastered
them. In a moment they took up arms to massacre an innocent people, not for
the sake of plunder, or fired by the lust of spoil, but in a wild frenzy arising
from causes so vague that it was very difficult to apply a remedy. Soothed at
length by the entreaties of their general, they refrained from utterly destroying
the town; yet as many as four thousand human beings were slaughtered. Such an
alarm was spread through Gaul, that as the army advanced, whole states, headed
by their magistrates and with prayers on their lips, came forth to meet it,
while the women and children lay prostrate along the roads, and all else that
might appease an enemy’s fury was offered, though war there was none, to secure
the boon of peace.
64. Valens received the tidings of the murder of Galba and the accession
of Otho while he was in the country of the Leuci. The feelings of the soldiers
were not seriously affected either with joy or alarm; they were intent on war.
Gaul however ceased to hesitate: Otho and Vitellius it hated equally, Vitellius
it also feared. The next territory was that of the Lingones who were loyal to
Vitellius. The troops were kindly received, and they vied with each other in
good behaviour. This happy state of things, however, was of short duration owing
to the violence of the auxiliary infantry, which had detached itself, as before
related, from the 14th legion, and had been incorporated by Valens with his
army. First came angry words, then a brawl between the Batavi and the legionaries,
which as the partialities of the soldiers espoused one or another of the parties
was almost kindled into a battle, and would have been so, had not Valens by
punishing a few, reminded Batavi of the authority which they had now forgotten.
Against the Aedui a pretext for war was sought in vain. That people, when ordered
to furnish arms and money, voluntarily added a supply of provisions. What the
Aedui did from fear, the people of Lugdunum did with delight. Yet the Italian
legion and the Taurine Horse were withdrawn. It was resolved that the 18th cohort
should be left there, as it was their usual winter quarters. Manlius Valens,
legate of the Italian legion, though he had served the party well, was held
in no honour by Vitellius. Fabius Valens had defamed him by secret charges of
which he knew nothing, publicly praising him all the while, that he might the
less suspect the treachery.
65. The old feud between Lugdunum and Vienna had been kindled afresh by the
late war. They had inflicted many losses on each other so continuously and so
savagely that they could not have been fighting only for Nero or Galba. Galba
had made his displeasure the occasion for diverting into the Imperial treasury
the revenues of Lugdunum, while he had treated Vienna with marked respect. Thence
came rivalry and dislike, and the two states, separated only by a river, were
linked together by perpetual feud. Accordingly the people of Lugdunum began
to work on the passions of individual soldiers, and to goad them into destroying
Vienna, by reminding them, how that people had besieged their colony, had abetted
the attempts of Vindex, and had recently raised legions for Galba. After parading
these pretexts for quarrel, they pointed out how vast would be the plunder.
From secret encouragement they passed to open entreaty. “Go,” they said, “to
avenge us and utterly destroy this home of Gallic rebellion. There all are foreigners
and enemies; we are a Roman colony, a part of the Roman army, sharers in your
successes and reverses. Fortune may declare against us. Do not abandon us to
an angry foe.”
66. By these and many similar arguments they so wrought upon the troops,
that even the legates and the leaders of the party did not think it possible
to check their fury; but the people of Vienna, aware of their danger, assumed
the veils and chaplets of suppliants, and, as the army approached, clasped the
weapons, knees and feet of the soldiers, and so turned them from their purpose.
Valens also made each soldier a present of 300 sesterces. After that the antiquity
and rank of the colony prevailed, and the intercession of Valens, who charged
them to respect the life and welfare of the inhabitants, received a favourable
hearing. They were however publicly mulcted of their arms, and furnished the
soldiers with all kinds of supplies from their private means. Report, however,
has uniformly asserted, that Valens himself was bought with a vast sum. Poor
for many years and suddenly growing rich, he could but ill conceal the change
in his fortunes, indulging without moderation the appetites which a protracted
poverty had inflamed, and, after a youth of indigence, becoming prodigal in
old age. The army then proceeded by slow marches through the territory of the
Allobroges and Vocontii, the very length of each day’s march and the changes
of encampment being made a matter of traffic by the general, who concluded disgraceful
bargains to the injury of the holders of land and the magistrates of the different
states, and used such menaces, that at Lucus, a municipal town of the Vocontii,
he was on the point of setting fire to the place, when a present of money soothed
his rage. When money was not forthcoming he was bought off by sacrifices to
his lust. Thus he made his way to the Alps.
67. Caecina revelled more freely in plunder and bloodshed. His restless spirit
had been provoked by the Helvetii, a Gallic race famous once for its warlike
population, afterwards for the associations of its name. Of the murder of Galba
they knew nothing, and they rejected the authority of Vitellius. The war originated
in the rapacity and impatience of the 21st legion, who had seized some money
sent to pay the garrison of a fortress, which the Helvetii had long held with
their own troops and at their own expense. The Helvetii in their indignation
intercepted some letters written in the name of the army of Germany, which were
on their way to the legions of Pannonia, and detained the centurion and some
of his soldiers in custody. Caecina, eager for war, hastened to punish every
delinquency, as it occurred, before the offender could repent. Suddenly moving
his camp he ravaged a place, which during a long period of peace had grown up
into something like a town, and which was much resorted to as an agreeable watering
place. Despatches were sent to the Rhaetian auxiliaries, instructing them to
attack the Helvetii in the rear while the legion was engaging them in front.
68. Bold before the danger came and timid in the moment of peril, the Helvetii,
though at the commencement of the movement they had chosen Claudius Severus
for their leader, knew not how to use their arms, to keep their ranks, or to
act in concert. A pitched battle with veteran troops would be destruction, a
siege would be perilous with fortifications old and ruinous. On the one side
was Caecina at the head of a powerful army, on the other were the auxiliary
infantry and cavalry of Rhaetia and the youth of that province, inured to arms
and exercised in habits of warfare. All around were slaughter and devastation.
Wandering to and fro between the two armies, the Helvetii threw aside their
arms, and with a large proportion of wounded and stragglers fled for refuge
to Mount Vocetius. They were immediately dislodged by the attack of some Thracian
infantry. Closely pursued by the Germans and Rhaetians they were cut down in
their forests and even in their hiding places. Thousands were put to the sword,
thousands more were sold into slavery. Every place having been completely destroyed,
the army was marching in regular order on Aventicum, the capital town, when
a deputation was sent to surrender the city. This surrender was accepted. Julius
Alpinus, one of the principal men, was executed by Caecina, as having been the
promoter of the war. All the rest he left to the mercy or severity of Vitellius.
69. It is hard to say whether the envoys from Helvetia found the Emperor
or his army less merciful. “Exterminate the race,” was the cry of the soldiers
as they brandished their weapons, or shook their fists in the faces of the envoys.
Even Vitellius himself did not refrain from threatening words and gestures,
till at length Claudius Cossus, one of the Helvetian envoys, a man of well-known
eloquence, but who then concealed the art of the orator under an assumption
of alarm, and was therefore more effective, soothed the rage of the soldiers,
who, like all multitudes, were liable to sudden impulses, and were now as inclined
to pity as they had been extravagant in fury. Bursting into tears and praying
with increasing earnestness for a milder sentence, they procured pardon and
protection for the state.
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