Success had made the Germans indefatigable. Even now they took no rest, but proceeded to divert all streams, springing from the surrounding hills, into the plain below, flooding the ground, submerging the little work accomplished, and doubling the task of the soldiery. Still, it was Caecina’s fortieth year of active service as commander or commanded, and he knew success and danger too well to be easily perturbed. On balancing the possibilities, he could see no other course than to hold the enemy to the woods until his wounded and the more heavily laden part of the column passed on: for extended between mountain and morass was a level patch which would just allow an attenuated line of battle. The fifth legion was selected for the right flank, the twenty-first for the left; the first was to lead the van, the twentieth to stem the inevitable pursuit.
65 1 It was a night of unrest, though in contrasted fashions. The barbarians, in high carousal, filled the low-lying valleys and echoing woods with chants of triumph or fierce vociferations: among the Romans were languid fires, broken challenges, and groups of men stretched beside the parapet or staying amid the tents, unasleep but something less than awake. The general’s night was disturbed by a sinister and alarming dream: for he imagined that he saw Quintilius Varus risen, blood-bedraggled, from the marsh, and heard him calling, though he refused to obey and pushed him back when he extended his hand. Day broke, and the legions sent to the wings, either through fear or wilfulness, abandoned their post, hurriedly occupying a level piece of ground beyond the morass. Arminius, however, though the way was clear the attack, did not immediately deliver his onslaught. But when he saw the baggage-train caught in the mire and trenches; the troops around it in confusion; the order of the standards broken, and (as may be expected in a crisis) every man quick to obey his impulse and slow to hear the word of command, he ordered the Germans to break in. “Varus and the legions,” he cried, “enchained once more in the old doom!” And, with the word, he cut through the column at the head of a picked band, their blows being directed primarily at the horses. Slipping in their own blood and the marsh-slime, the beasts threw their riders, scattered all they met, and trampled the fallen underfoot. The eagles caused the greatest difficulty of all, as it was impossible either to advance them against the storm of spears or to plant them in the water-logged soil. Caecina, while attempting to keep the front intact, fell with his horse stabbed under him, and was being rapidly surrounded when the first legion interposed. A point in our favour was the rapacity of the enemy, who left the carnage to pursue the spoils; and towards evening the legions struggled out on to open and solid ground. Nor was this the end of their miseries. A rampart had to be raised and material sought for the earthwork; and most of the tools for excavating soil or cutting turf had been lost. There were no tents for the companies, no dressings for the wounded, and as they divided their rations, foul with dirt or blood, they bewailed the deathlike gloom and that for so many thousands of men but a single day now remained.
66 1 As chance would have it, a stray horse which had broken its tethering and taken fright at the shouting, threw into confusion a number of men who ran to stop it. So great was the consequent panic (men believed the Germans had broken in) that there was a general rush to the gates, the principal objective being the decuman, which faced away from the enemy and opened the better prospects of escape. Caecina, who had satisfied himself that the fear was groundless, but found command, entreaty, and even physical force, alike powerless to arrest or detain the men, threw himself flat in the gateway; and pity in the last resort barred a road which led over the general’s body. At the same time, the tribunes and centurions explained that it was a false alarm.
67 1 He now collected the troops in front of his quarters, and, first ordering them to listen in silence, warned them of the crisis and its urgency:—”Their one safety lay in the sword; but their resort to it should be tempered with discretion, and they must remain within the rampart till the enemy approached in the hope of carrying it by assault. Then, a sally from all sides — and so to the Rhine! If they fled, they might expect more forests, deeper swamps, and a savage enemy: win the day, and glory and honour were assured.” He reminded them of all they loved at home, all the honour they had gained in camp: of disaster, not a word. Then, with complete impartiality, he distributed the horses of the commanding officers and tribunes — he had begun with his own — to men of conspicuous gallantry; the recipients to charge first, while the infantry followed.
68 1 Hope, cupidity, and the divided counsels of the chieftains kept the Germans in equal agitation. Arminius proposed to allow the Romans to march out, and, when they had done so, to entrap them once more in wet and broken country; Inguiomarus advocated the more drastic measures dear to the barbarian:—”Let them encircle the rampart in arms. Storming would be easy, captives more plentiful, the booty intact!” So, at break of day, they began demolishing the fosses, threw in hurdles, and struggled to grasp the top of the rampart; on which were ranged a handful of soldiers apparently petrified with terror. But as they swarmed up the fortifications, the signal sounded to the cohorts, and cornets and trumpets sang to arms. Then, with a shout and a rush, the Romans poured down on the German rear. “Here were no trees,” they jeered, “no swamps, but a fair field and an impartial Heaven.” Upon the enemy, whose thoughts were of a quick despatch and a few half-armed defenders, the blare of trumpets and the flash of weapons burst with an effect proportioned to the surprise, and they fell — as improvident in failure as they had been headstrong in success. Arminius and Inguiomerus abandoned the fray, the former unhurt, the latter after a serious wound; the rabble was slaughtered till passion and the daylight waned. It was dusk when the legions returned, weary enough — for wounds were in greater plenty than ever, and provisions in equal scarcity — but finding in victory strength, health, supplies, everything.
69 1 In the meantime a rumour had spread that the army had been trapped and the German columns were on the march for Gaul; and had not Agrippina prevented the demolition of the Rhine bridge, there were those who in their panic would have braved that infamy. But it was a great-hearted woman who assumed the duties of a general throughout those days; who, if a soldier was in need, clothed him, and, if he was wounded, gave him dressings. Pliny, the historian of the German Wars, asserts that she stood at the head of the bridge, offering her praises and her thanks to the returning legions. The action sank deep into the soul of Tiberius. “There was something behind this officiousness; nor was it the foreigner against whom her courtship of the army was directed. Commanding officers had a sinecure nowadays, when a woman visited the maniples, approached the standards and took in hand to bestow largesses — as though it were not enough to curry favour by parading the general’s son in the habit of a common soldier, with the request that he should be called Caesar Caligula! Already Agrippina counted for more with the armies than any general or generalissimo, and a woman had suppressed a mutiny which the imperial name had failed to check.” Sejanus inflamed and exacerbated his jealousies; and, with his expert knowledge of the character of Tiberius, kept sowing the seed of future hatreds — grievances for the emperor to store away and produce some day with increase.
70 1 Meanwhile Germanicus, in order to lighten the fleet in case it should have to navigate shallow water or should find itself grounded at ebb-tide, transferred two of the legions he had brought on shipboard — the second and fourteenth — to Publius Vitellius, who was to march them back by the land route. At first Vitellius had an uneventful journey over dry ground or through gently running tides. Before long, however, a northerly gale, aggravated by the equinox, during which the Ocean is always at its wildest, began to play havoc with the column. Then the whole land became a flood: sea, shore, and plain wore a single aspect; and it was impossible to distinguish solid from fluid, deep from shallow. Men were dashed over by the billows or drawn under by the eddies: packhorses — their loads — lifeless bodies — came floating through, or colliding with, the ranks. The companies became intermingled, the men st
anding one moment up to the breast, another up to the chin, in water; then the ground would fail beneath them, and they were scattered or submerged. Words and mutual encouragement availed nothing against the deluge: there was no difference between bravery and cowardice, between wisdom and folly, circumspection or chance; everything was involved in the same fury of the elements. At last Vitellius struggled out on to rising ground and led his columns after him. They spent the night without necessities, without fire, many of them naked or badly maimed, — every whit as wretched as their comrades in the invested camp. For those at least had the resource of an honourable death; here was destruction without the glory. Day brought back the land, and they pushed on to the river to which Germanicus had preceded them with the fleet. The legions then embarked. Current report proclaimed them drowned, and the doubts of their safety were soon dispelled by the sight of the Caesar returning with his army.
71 1 By this time, Stertinius, who had been sent forward to receive the submission of Segestes’ brother Segimerus, had brought him and his son through to the Ubian capital. Both were pardoned; Segimerus without any demur, his son with more hesitation, as he was said to have insulted the corpse of Quintilius Varus. For the rest, the two Gauls, the Spains, and Italy vied in making good the losses of the army with offers of weapons, horses, or gold, according to the special capacity of each province. Germanicus applauded their zeal, but took only arms and horses for the campaign: the soldiers he assisted from his private means. To soften by kindness also their recollections of the late havoc, he made a round of the wounded, praised their individual exploits; and, while inspecting their injuries, confirmed their enthusiasm for himself and battle, here by the stimulus of hope, there by that of glory, and everywhere by his consolations and solicitude.
72 1 In this year triumphal distinctions were voted to Aulus Caecina, Lucius Apronius, and Caius Silius, in return for their services with Germanicus. Tiberius rejected the title Father of his Country, though it had been repeatedly pressed upon him by the people: and, disregarding a vote of the senate, refused to allow the taking of an oath to obey his enactments. “All human affairs,” so ran his comment, “were uncertain, and the higher he climbed the more slippery his position.” Yet even so he failed to inspire the belief that his sentiments were not monarchical. For he had resuscitated the Lex Majestatis, a statute which in the old jurisprudence had carried the same name but covered a different type of offence — betrayal of an army; seditious incitement of the populace; any act, in short, of official maladministration diminishing the “majesty of the Roman nation.” Deeds were challenged, words went immune. The first to take cognizance of written libel under the statute was Augustus; who was provoked to the step by the effrontery with which Cassius Severus had blackened the characters of men and women of repute in his scandalous effusions: then Tiberius, to an inquiry put by the praetor, Pompeius Macer, whether process should still be granted on this statute, replied that “the law ought to take its course.” He, too, had been ruffled by verses of unknown authorship satirizing his cruelty, his arrogance, and his estrangement from his mother.
73 1 It will not be unremunerative to recall the first, tentative charges brought in the case of Falanius and Rubrius, two Roman knights of modest position; if only to show from what beginnings, thanks to the art of Tiberius, the accursed thing crept in, and, after a temporary check, at last broke out, an all-devouring conflagration. Against Falanius the accuser alleged that he had admitted a certain Cassius, mime and catamite, among the “votaries of Augustus,” who were maintained, after the fashion of fraternities, in all the great houses: also, that when selling his gardens, he had parted with a statue of Augustus as well. To Rubrius the crime imputed was violation of the deity of Augustus by perjury. When the facts came to the knowledge of Tiberius, he wrote to the consuls that place in heaven had not been decreed to his father in order that the honour might be turned to the destruction of his countrymen. Cassius, the actor, with others of his trade, had regularly taken part in the games which his own mother had consecrated to the memory of Augustus; nor was it an act of sacrilege, if the effigies of that sovereign, like other images of other gods, went with the property, whenever a house or garden was sold. As to the perjury, it was on the same footing as if the defendant had taken the name of Jupiter in vain: the gods must look to their own wrongs.
74 1 Before long, Granius Marcellus, praetor of Bithynia, found himself accused of treason by his own quaestor, Caepio Crispinus, with Hispo Romanus to back the charge. Caepio was the pioneer in a walk of life which the miseries of the age and effronteries of men soon rendered popular. Indigent, unknown, unresting, first creeping, with his private reports, into the confidence of his pitiless sovereign, then a terror to the noblest, he acquired the favour of one man, the hatred of all, and set an example, the followers of which passed from beggary to wealth, from being despised to being feared, and crowned at last the ruin of others by their own. He alleged that Marcellus had retailed sinister anecdotes about Tiberius: a damning indictment, when the accuser selected the foulest qualities of the imperial character, and attributed their mention to the accused. For, as the facts were true, they were also believed to have been related! Hispo added that Marcellus’ own statue was placed on higher ground than those of the Caesars, while in another the head of Augustus had been struck off to make room for the portrait of Tiberius. This incensed the emperor to such a degree that, breaking through his taciturnity, he exclaimed that, in this case, he too would vote, openly and under oath, — the object being to impose a similar obligation on the rest. There remained even yet some traces of dying liberty. Accordingly Gnaeus Piso inquired: “In what order will you register your opinion, Caesar? If first, I shall have something to follow: if last of all, I fear I may inadvertently find myself on the other side.” The words went home; and with a meekness that showed how profoundly he rued his unwary outburst, he voted for the acquittal of the defendant on the counts of treason. The charge of peculation went before the appropriate commission.
75 1 Not satiated with senatorial cases, he took to sitting in the common courts, — at a corner of the tribunal, so as not to dispossess the praetor of his chair. As a result of his presence, many verdicts were recorded in defiance of intrigue and of the solicitations of the great. Still, while equity gained, liberty suffered. — Among these cases, Aurelius Pius, a member of the senate, complained that by the construction of a public road and aqueduct his house had been left insecure; and he asked compensation from the Fathers. As the treasury officials were obdurate, Tiberius came to the rescue, and paid him the value of his mansion: for, given a good cause, he was ready and eager to spend — a virtue which he long retained, even when he was denuding himself of every other. When Propertius Celer, the ex-praetor, applied to be excused from his senatorial rank on the score of poverty, he satisfied himself that his patrimony was in fact embarrassed, and made him a gift of one million sesterces. Others who tried a similar experiment were ordered to make out a case before the senate: for in his passion for austerity, even where he acted justly, he contrived to be harsh. The rest, therefore, preferred silence and poverty to confession and charity.
76 1 In the same year, the Tiber, rising under the incessant rains, had flooded the lower levels of the city, and its subsidence was attended by much destruction of buildings and life. Accordingly, Asinius Gallus moved for a reference to the Sibylline Books. Tiberius objected, preferring secrecy as in earth so in heaven: still, the task of coercing the stream was entrusted to Ateius Capito and Lucius Arruntius. Since Achaia and Macedonia protested against the heavy taxation, it was decided to relieve them of their proconsular government for the time being and transfer them to the emperor. A show of gladiators, given in the name of his brother Germanicus, was presided over by Drusus, who took an extravagant pleasure in the shedding of blood however vile — a trait so alarming to the populace that it was said to have been censured by his father. Tiberius’ own absence from the exhibition was variously explained. S
ome ascribed it to his impatience of a crowd; others, to his native morosity and his dread of comparisons; for Augustus had been a good-humoured spectator. I should be slow to believe that he deliberately furnished his son with an occasion for exposing his brutality and arousing the disgust of the nation; yet even this was suggested.
77 1 The disorderliness of the stage, which had become apparent the year before, now broke out on a more serious scale. Apart from casualties among the populace, several soldiers and a centurion were killed, and an officer of the Praetorian Guards wounded, in the attempt to repress the insults levelled at the magistracy and the dissension of the crowd. The riot was discussed in the senate, and proposals were mooted that the praetors should be empowered to use the lash on actors. Haterius Agrippa, a tribune of the people, interposed his veto, and was attacked in a speech by Asinius Gallus, Tiberius said nothing: these were the phantoms of liberty which he permitted to the senate. Still the veto held good: for the deified Augustus had once remarked, in answer to a question, that players were immune from the scourge; and it would be blasphemy in Tiberius to contravene his words. Measures in plenty were framed to limit the expenditure on entertainments and to curb the extravagance of the partisans. The most striking were: that no senator was to enter the houses of the pantomimes; that, if they came out into public, Roman knights were not to gather round, nor were their performances to be followed except in the theatre; while the praetors were to be authorized to punish by exile any disorder among the spectators.
Complete Works of Tacitus (Delphi Classics) (Delphi Ancient Classics Book 24) Page 50