Histories — Book 4

Tacitus · a new plain-English translation from the original language

1| With Vitellius dead, the fighting had stopped, but peace hadn't started. Armed victors roamed the city hunting down the defeated with implacable hatred. The streets were choked with bodies, the fora and temples bloody, men cut down wherever chance put them in the way. Soon, as license grew, they began hunting the hidden out, dragging them from their hiding places. If they spotted anyone who looked well-born and young, they killed him without asking whether soldiers or civilians had a claim on him. This savagery, first fed by fresh hatred and blood, turned before long into greed. They let nothing stay private or locked, always pretending they were rooting out Vitellians. That became the excuse to break into houses — or, if the owner resisted, the excuse to kill him. There was no shortage of the city's poorest ready to betray rich masters on their own initiative, and worse, some of the worst household slaves did the same. Others were pointed out by their own friends. Everywhere there was wailing and outcry, the whole feel of a captured city — so much so that people actually missed the merely obnoxious insolence of the old Othonian and Vitellian soldiers. The leaders of the factions had been fierce at stoking civil war but were no match for moderating victory, since in times of chaos and discord the worst men have the most power, while peace and calm need better qualities than that.

2| Domitian had taken the name and rank of Caesar, but he wasn't yet applying himself to public business — he was playing the emperor's son through seductions and adulteries. Command of the Praetorian Guard rested with Arrius Varus, but the real power lay with Antonius Primus. He looted money and slaves from the imperial household as if it were plunder from Cremona. The rest, either modest or simply unimportant, had been obscure in the war and got no share of the rewards either. The city, frightened and ready to submit to anyone, demanded that Lucius Vitellius, who was returning from Tarracina with his cohorts, be seized, and that the last embers of the war be stamped out. Cavalry were sent ahead to Aricia; the legions' column halted at Bovillae. Vitellius did not hesitate — he surrendered himself and his cohorts to the victor's mercy, and his soldiers threw down their unlucky weapons out of anger as much as fear. A long column of the surrendered marched through the city hemmed in by armed men; not one wore a pleading face — they were grim and hard, unmoved by the jeering and mockery of the insulting crowd. A few tried to break away and were crushed by the men surrounding them; the rest were locked up, and not one of them said anything unworthy of himself — even in defeat, their reputation for courage stayed intact. Then Lucius Vitellius was executed — a man who shared his brother's vices, though more alert during his brother's reign, and less carried away by good fortune than dragged down by bad.

3| In these same days Lucilius Bassus was sent with a flying squadron of cavalry to pacify Campania, where the towns were more at odds with each other than defiant toward the emperor. The sight of soldiers restored calm, and the smaller colonies went unpunished. The Third Legion was quartered at Capua for the winter, and the great houses there suffered for it, while the people of Tarracina, by contrast, got no help at all. It's so much easier to pay back an injury than a favor, because gratitude feels like a burden, while revenge is counted as profit. There was some small comfort: the slave of Vergilius Capito who had betrayed Tarracina, as I mentioned earlier, was nailed to a cross still wearing the rings he'd taken as his reward from Vitellius. Meanwhile at Rome the senate voted Vespasian all the honors usually given emperors, glad and confident of the future — for after civil war had broken out through Gaul and Spain, after the German provinces and then Illyricum had been stirred to war, and after Egypt, Judaea, Syria, and every province and army had gone through the fire, it looked as if the whole world, having paid its price, was finally at peace. A letter from Vespasian added to the cheer, though it was written as though the war were still going on. At first glance it seemed a modest document; but as the emperor spoke of himself, it was all restraint, and about the state, all excellence. Nor was the senate slow to fall in line — consulships were voted to Vespasian and his son Titus, and a praetorship with consular power to Domitian.

4| Mucianus too had sent letters to the senate, and they gave people plenty to talk about. If he was only a private citizen, why speak in public terms? He could have said the same things a few days later, in his turn to give an opinion. Even his attack on Vitellius came late and showed no real independence. But what truly seemed arrogant toward the state and insulting toward the emperor was his boast that the empire had been in his own hands and that he had made a gift of it to Vespasian. Still, the resentment stayed hidden, while the flattery was open: with great ceremony Mucianus was granted the honors of a triumph, technically for the civil war though it was dressed up as a campaign against the Sarmatians. Antonius Primus was given consular honors, Cornelius Fuscus and Arrius Varus praetorian ones. Then they turned their thoughts to the gods — it was decided to rebuild the Capitol. All these measures were proposed by Valerius Asiaticus, the consul designate. The rest agreed with looks and gestures — a few, whose standing or wit made their flattery conspicuous, agreed in carefully composed speeches. When it came to Helvidius Priscus, the praetor designate, he gave an opinion that honored the new emperor without falsehood, and it won him the enthusiastic support of the senate. That day marked the beginning both of the great resentment against him and of his great glory.

5| Since we've come back around to mentioning a man who will be named often again, it seems right to sketch briefly his life, his interests, and the fortune he met. Helvidius Priscus came from the town of Cluviae in the Caracene district of Italy; his father had commanded a senior centurionate. As a young man he devoted his considerable talent to the higher branches of philosophy — not, as most do, to hide idle uselessness behind a grand-sounding label, but so he could face public life more firmly against whatever fortune brought. He followed the teachers who hold that only what is honorable is good, only what is base is bad, and that power, noble birth, and everything else outside the soul count as neither good nor bad. While still only a quaestor, Paetus Thrasea chose him as a son-in-law, and of everything he absorbed from his father-in-law's character, nothing sank in more deeply than a passion for freedom. Whether acting as citizen, senator, husband, son-in-law, or friend, he never wavered in any role life demanded of him — scorning wealth, clinging stubbornly to what was right, and refusing to bend before fear.

6| Some thought him rather too eager for fame — for even in wise men the craving for glory is the last thing to be shed. Driven into exile by his father-in-law's ruin, he returned when Galba became emperor and set about prosecuting Eprius Marcellus, the man who had informed against Thrasea. That act of vengeance — whether the greater motive was justice or ambition is hard to say — split the senate into factions, for if Marcellus fell, a whole line of the accused would go down with him. At first it was a threatening confrontation, remembered for the brilliant speeches on both sides; but then, with Galba's wishes uncertain and many senators pleading for restraint, Priscus dropped the case — to a mixed chorus, as people's characters differ, some praising his moderation, others complaining he'd lacked resolve.

7| On the day, however, when the senate was voting on Vespasian's rule, it had been decided to send envoys to the new emperor. This sparked a sharp quarrel between Helvidius and Eprius: Priscus wanted the envoys chosen by name by the sworn magistrates, Marcellus wanted the choice made by lot from an urn — which had been the recommendation of the consul designate.

8| Marcellus's eagerness sprang from a private embarrassment — he feared that if others were chosen by name, it would look as if he'd been passed over. Little by little the argument escalated from bickering into full, hostile speeches, with Helvidius demanding to know why Marcellus was so afraid of a vote by the magistrates: he had money and eloquence enough to outdo most men, if he weren't dogged by the memory of his crimes. Drawing lots doesn't sort out character, Helvidius said — voting and the senate's judgment exist precisely so they can look into a man's life and reputation. It mattered to the good of the state, it mattered to Vespasian's honor, that the men who met him be the ones the senate judged most blameless, men who could fill the new emperor's ears with honest talk. Vespasian, he said, had been a friend of Thrasea, of Soranus, of Sentius; even if their accusers shouldn't be punished, they shouldn't be put on display either. This vote of the senate would be, in effect, a signal to the emperor about whom he should trust and whom he should fear. No tool serves good government better than good friends. It should be enough for Marcellus that he'd driven so many innocent men to their deaths under Nero — let him enjoy his rewards and his impunity, and leave Vespasian to better men.

9| Marcellus answered that it wasn't his own proposal under attack, but that of the consul designate, who had simply followed old precedent in assigning envoys by lot, so there'd be no room for ambition or personal grudges. Nothing had happened to justify scrapping long-established custom, or to turn an honor to the emperor into an insult to anyone; everyone's compliance was enough. What needed to be avoided, rather, was letting a few men's stubbornness provoke a mind still unsettled by a new reign and watching everyone's face and word with suspicion. He remembered the times he was born into, he said, and the form of government their fathers and grandfathers had built; he admired the distant ideal but followed the present reality; he prayed for good emperors but put up with whatever kind he got. It wasn't his speech any more than the senate's own verdict that had brought Thrasea down; Nero's cruelty had toyed with them both through exactly this kind of theater, and a friendship like that had cost him as much anxiety as exile cost others. Let Helvidius be ranked with the Catos and Brutuses for firmness and courage — he himself was just one man from that same senate that had, all together, played the slave. He advised Priscus, too, not to try to climb above the emperor, not to try to rein in with his own precepts a Vespasian who was an old man, a man who had celebrated a triumph, a father of grown sons. Just as the worst emperors want limitless power, he said, so even the best of them want some limit set on liberty. These arguments, thrown back and forth with great heat on both sides, were received according to each man's leanings. The side favoring the lottery won, with even the moderates in the senate pushing to keep the old custom; and every man of real distinction leaned the same way, from the same fear of resentment if he were the one chosen by name.

10| Another fight followed. The praetors of the treasury (for the treasury was then run by praetors) complained of the state's poverty and asked for a cap on spending. The consul-elect, given the size of the burden and the difficulty of any fix, wanted to leave it to the emperor. Helvidius moved that the senate handle it itself. As the consuls were polling opinions, the tribune of the people Vulcacius Tertullinus vetoed any decision on so great a matter while the emperor was away. Helvidius had also proposed that the Capitol be rebuilt at public expense, with Vespasian contributing. The most cautious senators let that proposal pass in silence, and then it was forgotten — though some remembered.

11| Then Musonius Rufus attacked Publius Celer, charging that Barea Soranus had been destroyed by his false testimony. The inquiry threatened to reopen old hatreds from the prosecutions. But a worthless, guilty defendant could find no shelter: Soranus's memory was sacred, while Celer, who professed philosophy, had then testified against Barea — betraying and corrupting the friendship whose teacher he claimed to be. The case was set for the next day. But it was not so much Musonius or Publius that people waited for as Priscus and Marcellus and the rest, whose thoughts were bent on revenge.

12| Things stood like this — discord among the senators, rage among the defeated, no authority among the victors, no laws, no emperor in the state — when Mucianus entered the city and pulled everything toward himself at once. The power of Antonius Primus and Arrius Varus was broken, and Mucianus's anger at them, though he tried to hide it, was poorly disguised. But the city, quick to sniff out who was in and who was out, had already turned and shifted its attention: Mucianus alone was courted and flattered now. He did his part, moving through houses and gardens surrounded by armed men, wrapping himself in the trappings, the walk, the guards of an emperor while declining the title. The killing of Calpurnius Galerianus caused the greatest terror. He was the son of Gaius Piso and had done nothing rash, but his famous name and his own good looks kept him on everyone's lips, and in a city still restless and hungry for new gossip there were those who wrapped him in an empty rumor of imperial ambition. On Mucianus's order he was surrounded by a military guard, and — so his death would not draw too much notice within the city itself — he was taken to the fortieth milestone on the Appian Way and bled to death through opened veins. Julius Priscus, prefect of the praetorian cohorts under Vitellius, killed himself, more from shame than necessity. Alfenus Varus lived on, saddled with his own cowardice and disgrace. Asiaticus — a freedman — paid for his wicked power with a slave's execution.

13| In those same days a growing report of disaster in Germany reached a city that took it in without much grief: that armies had been cut down, legionary winter camps captured, and the Gallic provinces had broken away — people spoke of it as if it were merely bad news, not calamity. I will explain in more depth what started that war and how great a stir it kindled among foreign and allied peoples. The Batavians, while they still lived across the Rhine, were part of the Chatti; driven out by internal strife, they seized the empty edge of Gaul and, along with it, a nearby island, which the Ocean washes on one side and the Rhine river surrounds on the back and flanks. Their strength was not worn down — rare for a people allied to a stronger power — and they supply the empire only with men and arms, having long been tested in wars in Germany and later gaining greater glory in Britain, where cohorts of them served, traditionally led by the noblest of their own people. At home too they kept a picked force of cavalry, especially skilled at swimming, able to cross the Rhine in full squadrons without losing their weapons or horses.

14| Julius Paulus and Julius Civilis, of royal stock, stood far above the rest of their people. Paulus was killed by Fonteius Capito on a trumped-up charge of rebellion. Civilis was thrown in chains, sent to Nero, and acquitted by Galba, but under Vitellius faced danger again, since the army was demanding his execution — and from this came his grievances and his hopes, born of our own misfortunes. But Civilis, shrewder than most barbarians and fancying himself a Sertorius or a Hannibal (he even resembled them, having lost an eye like they had), avoided appearing to face Rome as an open enemy. So rather than openly break with the Roman people, he claimed friendship with Vespasian and support for his cause — and indeed a letter had come to him from Primus Antonius, instructing him to divert the auxiliary troops summoned by Vitellius and to hold back the legions under the pretext of a German uprising. Hordeonius Flaccus, on the spot, had urged the same course, since he leaned toward Vespasian and worried for the state, which faced ruin if the war were renewed and so many thousands of armed men poured into Italy.

15| So Civilis, set on rebellion but keeping his deeper plan hidden for now, ready to decide the rest as events unfolded, began to stir things up like this. By Vitellius's order, young Batavians were being called up for the draft, a burden already harsh by its nature and made worse by the greed and self-indulgence of the recruiting officers, who rounded up the old and infirm to sell their discharge for a price, while dragging off good-looking boys — and many Batavian boys are tall for their age — for sexual abuse. This bred resentment, and the men behind the planned revolt used it to push the people into refusing the draft. Civilis invited the leading men of the tribe and the boldest of the common people to a sacred grove under the pretext of a feast, and once he saw them warmed by night and drink, he began by praising the glory and honor of their people, then listed the wrongs, the plundering, and the rest of the miseries of servitude: they were no longer treated as allies, as before, but as slaves. When did a legate ever come to them invested with imperium—burdensome and arrogant though his retinue would be? No — they were handed over to prefects and centurions, who, once they'd gorged themselves on plunder and blood, were simply replaced, and new pockets to fill and new names for robbery kept being invented. And now the draft was pressing in, tearing children from parents and brothers from brothers as if for a final farewell. Rome had never been in worse shape; there was nothing in the winter camps but plunder and old men — let them just lift their eyes and stop fearing the empty name of the legions. As for themselves, they had strong infantry and cavalry, kinsmen among the Germans, and the Gauls wanting the same thing they wanted. Even the Romans would not mind this war, since its uncertain outcome could be blamed on Vespasian — no one has to account for a victory.

16| He was heard with loud approval, and bound them all together with a barbarian rite and their ancestral curses. Envoys were sent to the Canninefates to draw them into the plan. That people occupies part of the island, matching the Batavians in origin, language, and courage, though fewer in number. Next, by secret messages, he won over the British auxiliary troops, the Batavian cohorts that had been sent to Germany, as I mentioned earlier, and were then stationed at Mainz. Among the Canninefates there was one Brinno, a man of reckless stupidity but striking noble birth; his father had dared many acts of hostility and had mocked Caligula's expeditions with impunity. So, simply because his family had a name for rebellion, he was chosen as leader, hoisted on a shield in the tribal custom and swayed on the shoulders of the men holding him up. He immediately summoned the Frisians (a people from across the Rhine) and burst upon the winter camp of two cohorts [text corrupt] nearest the Ocean. The soldiers had not foreseen the attack, and even if they had, they lacked the strength to stop it: so the camp fell and was stripped bare. Next came the Roman sutlers and merchants, caught unarmed and unsuspecting as they went about their ordinary trade, scattered here and there. At the same time they threatened to destroy the forts, which the prefects of the cohorts burned themselves, since they could not be defended. The standards, the banners, and whatever soldiers remained gathered in the upper part of the island under the command of Aquilius, a former chief centurion — an army in name more than in strength, since Vitellius had drained the cohorts of their real fighting men and padded out the sluggish remainder with troops from the nearby districts of the Nervii and the Germans.

17| Civilis, deciding to proceed by trickery, went so far as to accuse the prefects of having abandoned the forts, saying that he himself, with the cohort under his command, would put down the Canninefates' uprising, and that they should each go back to their own winter quarters. It became clear there was deceit behind this advice, and that the scattered cohorts would be easier to crush — and that Brinno was not really the leader of this war, but Civilis was, as clues gradually surfaced, since the Germans, a people who relish war, had not kept quiet for long. When trickery achieved too little, he turned to open force, arranging the Canninefates, Frisians, and Batavians into their own separate units. A battle line was drawn up not far from the Rhine, facing the enemy, with ships turned toward them — ships they had brought there after burning the forts. The fighting did not last long: a cohort of Tungrians carried its standards over to Civilis, and the stunned soldiers were cut down by this sudden betrayal from allies turned enemies. The same treachery showed itself on the ships: some of the rowers, who were Batavians, hindered the work of the sailors and marines as if through clumsiness, then began rowing against them and turning the sterns toward the enemy shore. In the end they slaughtered the helmsmen and centurions who would not go along with them, until the whole fleet of twenty-four ships deserted or was captured.

18| The victory was showy at the time and useful afterward: they gained the weapons and ships they needed, and the men who'd led the fight for freedom were celebrated far and wide through Germany and Gaul. German tribes at once sent envoys offering help. Civilis worked at winning Gaul over with cunning and gifts, sending home the captured cohort prefects to their own communities, and letting the cohorts choose whether to leave or stay. Those who stayed got an honored place in his ranks; those who left were given Roman spoils as parting gifts. All the while he reminded them in private conversations of the miseries they'd suffered for so many years, calling their wretched servitude by the false name of peace. The Batavians, he said, though exempt from tribute, had taken up arms against masters common to them all — and in the first battle the Romans had been routed and beaten. What if Gaul threw off the yoke too? How much was left in Italy to fight with? Provinces are conquered with the blood of other provinces. Let them not think of Vindex's battle: it was Batavian cavalry that had trampled the Aedui and Arverni, and Belgians had fought among Verginius's auxiliaries too — anyone who thought it through would see that Gaul had been crushed by its own strength. Now, he said, everyone stood on the same side, with the added advantage of whatever discipline the Roman camps had ever taught them: he had veteran cohorts with him, the very ones that had recently brought down Otho's legions. Let Syria and Asia be slaves, and the East, used to kings — many men were still alive in Gaul who had been born before there was any tribute at all. Hadn't the killing of Quintilius Varus driven servitude out of Germany for good? And back then it was no Vitellius they provoked to war, but Caesar Augustus. Freedom, he said, was given by nature even to dumb animals; courage was the peculiar good of men, and the gods stood by the stronger side. So let them, unencumbered and fresh, seize their moment against men already tied up elsewhere and worn out. While some backed Vespasian and some Vitellius, there was room to move against both. So it was that Civilis, aiming at Gaul and Germany together, was — if his plans worked out — reaching for the kingship of the richest and strongest nations there.

19| Meanwhile Hordeonius Flaccus fed Civilis's first moves along by pretending not to notice them. But once frightened messengers brought word that the camp had been stormed, the cohorts wiped out, and Roman power driven off the island of the Batavians, he ordered the commander Munius Lupercus — who was in charge of the winter quarters of two legions — to march out against the enemy. Lupercus hurried across the legionaries he had on hand, the Ubii from nearby, and the Treviran cavalry stationed not far off, adding a squadron of Batavian horse that had already gone over to the enemy in spirit and was only feigning loyalty, meaning to betray the Romans in the thick of battle itself and desert for a higher price. Civilis surrounded himself with the captured standards of the cohorts, so that his own men would see fresh glory before their eyes while the enemy would be terrified by the memory of their defeat; he also had his mother and sisters, along with the wives and small children of all his men, stand behind the line — an encouragement to victory, or, if they were beaten, a source of shame. When the battle line rang with the men's war-chant and the women's wailing, the shout that came back from the legions and cohorts was nowhere near as loud. The Batavian squadron had already stripped the left wing bare by deserting and turning at once against us. But the legionary soldiers, though things had gone badly, kept their weapons and their ranks. The Ubian and Treviran auxiliaries scattered in an ugly rout across the whole plain; the Germans threw themselves at them, and this gave the legions a chance meanwhile to reach the camp known as Vetera. Claudius Labeo, prefect of the Batavian squadron, a rival of Civilis from their hometown feuds, was carried off to the Frisii — lest he be killed and stir up ill will among his own people, or, if kept alive, become a seed of division.

20| In these same days the Batavian and Canninefate cohorts, on their way to Rome under Vitellius's orders, were overtaken by a messenger sent from Civilis. They swelled at once with pride and defiance, and demanded, as the price of their march, a bonus, double pay, and an increase in cavalry numbers — things Vitellius had indeed promised, though they weren't asking in order to get them, only for a pretext to mutiny. Flaccus, by giving way on many points, had achieved nothing but sharpen their demand for the one thing they knew he'd refuse. Spurning Flaccus, they set out for Lower Germany to join Civilis. Hordeonius called in the tribunes and centurions and debated whether to force their obedience by arms; then, held back by his own natural timidity and by officers who were themselves uneasy — troubled by the doubtful loyalty of the auxiliaries and by legions freshly filled out through a hasty levy — he decided to keep his men inside camp. Then, having second thoughts, and needled by the very men who had urged that course, he wrote to Herennius Gallus, commander of the First Legion, who held Bonn, as if he meant to follow through: Gallus was to block the Batavians' passage, and he himself would press on their rear with his army. They could have been crushed if Hordeonius from one side and Gallus from the other had moved their forces and closed in on them from both directions. But Flaccus dropped the plan and sent Gallus a second letter warning him not to provoke men who were only leaving. This raised the suspicion that the commanders themselves were stirring up the war of their own accord, and that everything that had happened, or was feared, came not from the soldiers' slackness nor the enemy's strength, but from the treachery of their leaders.

21| As the Batavians drew near the camp at Bonn, they sent men ahead to lay out the cohorts' demands to Herennius Gallus. They had no quarrel with the Romans, they said, for whom they had fought so many times; it was long, fruitless service that wore them down, and now they longed for home and rest. If no one stood in their way, their march would be harmless; but if weapons met them, they'd cut their way through with the sword. The soldiers pressed their hesitant commander to try his luck in battle. Three thousand legionaries, hastily gathered Belgian cohorts, and a cowardly but loud-mouthed crowd of camp followers and sutlers, bold enough before the danger came, burst out through every gate to surround the outnumbered Batavians. But these were seasoned soldiers: they massed into wedges, tight on every side, safe in front, back, and flank, and so broke clean through our thin line. As the Belgians gave way, the legion was driven back, and men scrambled in panic for the rampart and gates. That was where the slaughter was worst: the ditches filled up with bodies, and many died not only from slaughter and wounds but from the crush and from their own side's weapons. The victors avoided the colony of the Agrippinenses and attempted nothing hostile for the rest of their march, excusing the fight at Bonn by claiming they had asked for peace, and only looked to their own safety once it was refused them.

22| With the arrival of the veteran cohorts, Civilis now led a proper army, but he was still unsure of his course and mindful of Roman strength. So everyone present was made to swear the oath to Vespasian, while envoys went out to the two legions — beaten in the earlier battle and now shut up at Vetera — urging them to swear the same. Back came their answer: a traitor's counsel, or an enemy's, they would take from no one; Vitellius was their emperor, and to him their loyalty and their weapons would hold to the last breath. A Batavian deserter had no business arbitrating Rome's affairs — let him wait instead for whatever punishment his crime had earned him. Word of this reached Civilis, and it threw him into a rage: he called the whole Batavian nation to arms, the Bructeri and Tencteri fell in alongside him, and Germany, stirred by the news, answered the summons to plunder and glory.

23| Against this gathering storm of war, the legionary commanders Munius Lupercus and Numisius Rufus strengthened the rampart and walls. The works of a long peace — buildings put up not far from camp in the style of a town — were torn down, so the enemy could not use them. But too little was done to bring supplies into the camp; the men were allowed to plunder instead, so that in a few days, through this free-for-all, what would have lasted a long time against real need was used up. Civilis, holding the center of his line with the strength of the Batavians, occupied both banks of the Rhine so as to look more terrifying, filling them with bands of Germans, while cavalry charged about over the plains; at the same time ships were brought up against the current. On one side stood the standards of veteran cohorts, on the other the images of wild beasts, drawn from woods and groves, each nation according to its own custom of going into battle — and the mingled look of civil and foreign war left the besieged stunned. What raised the attackers' hopes further was the great size of the rampart, which barely five thousand armed Romans were left to defend, though it had been built for two legions. But a great crowd of camp followers, thrown together by the disruption of peace, was there too and served the war effort.

24| Part of the camp rose on a gentle slope, part could be approached on level ground. Augustus had believed that these winter quarters would be enough to besiege and hem in the German tribes, and had never imagined the horror of legions of ours being attacked outright — so no extra effort had gone into their position or their defenses; force and arms alone had seemed enough. The Batavians and the tribes from across the Rhine took up positions each nation on its own, so that their separate courage could be seen more clearly, and harassed the camp from a distance. Then, once most of their missiles stuck uselessly in the towers and battlements and they themselves began taking wounds from stones thrown down on them, they rushed the rampart with shouts and a charge, many setting up ladders, others advancing under a shield-roof formed by their own men. Some were already climbing when they were struck down by stakes and spears along with sword-blows and blows from Roman weapons — men who had started out too fierce and too confident from earlier success. But now, driven by greed for plunder, they endured even setbacks, and dared even to try siege engines, unfamiliar as these were to them; deserters and prisoners taught them how to build timber structures like a bridge, then mount them on wheels and push them forward, so that some men standing on top could fight as if from a rampart, while others hidden inside undermined the walls. But stones hurled from the ballistae smashed the clumsy contraption to pieces. And as they made ready wicker screens and siege-sheds, blazing spears shot from the catapults struck them, and the attackers themselves were now targeted with fire, until, giving up on force, they turned their plan to delay — well aware that only a few days' food remained inside, and that there was a great crowd unfit for war. At the same time they hoped that hunger would bring betrayal, that the loyalty of slaves would prove shaky, and that the fortunes of war would offer other chances.

25| Meanwhile Flaccus, learning of the siege of the camp and having sent men through Gaul to raise auxiliaries, handed over picked troops from the legions to Dillius Vocula, commander of the Twenty-second Legion, with orders to march by the fastest possible stages along the riverbank. Flaccus himself, weak in body and hated by his soldiers, went by boat. The men grumbled openly and without disguise: the Batavian cohorts had been sent away from Mainz on Flaccus's own orders, Civilis's schemes had been covered up, the Germans were being drawn into alliance. It wasn't the help of Primus Antonius or Mucianus that had built up Vespasian's cause so much as this. Open hatred and open weapons, they said, could be fought off; but treachery and deceit worked in the dark and so couldn't be stopped. Civilis stood in the open, drawing up his battle line; Hordeonius, from his sickbed, gave orders that suited the enemy. So many companies of the bravest men, ruled by the sickness of one old man — better to kill the traitor and clear their own luck and courage of the bad omen hanging over them. Fired up by these words among themselves, they were further inflamed by a letter that had arrived from Vespasian. Since it couldn't be hidden, Flaccus read it out to the assembled troops, and sent the men who had delivered it, in chains, to Vitellius.

26| With tempers somewhat cooled by this, they came to Bonn, winter quarters of the First Legion. There the soldiers were angrier still, laying the blame for the disaster on Hordeonius: it was on his order, they said, that the battle line had been drawn up against the Batavians as if the legions from Mainz were coming up in support; it was through his betrayal that men had been cut down with no reinforcements arriving. None of this, they said, was known to the other armies, nor reported to their own emperor — when a swift, sudden treachery could have been stamped out by help pouring in from provinces on every side. To the assembled army Hordeonius read out copies of every letter in which he had begged for aid across Gaul, Britain, and Spain, and he began the wretched practice of handing such letters straight to the legions' eagle-bearers, so that ordinary soldiers read them before the commanders themselves had even set eyes on them. He then ordered one of the ringleaders of the mutiny put in chains — more to assert his authority than because the fault was his alone. The army then moved from Bonn to Cologne, with Gallic auxiliaries flowing in, who at first eagerly supported the Roman cause. But as the Germans grew stronger, most of the tribes took up arms against us, hoping for freedom, or — once they'd thrown off servitude — hungry to rule in our place. The legions' anger kept building; the chaining of one soldier had cast no fear over them — indeed that same man went on to accuse the commander himself of complicity, claiming that a messenger between Civilis and Flaccus was being framed as a false witness to silence the truth. Vocula mounted the platform with remarkable steadiness, seized the shouting soldier, and ordered him led off to execution. While the troublemakers cowered, all the better men obeyed. After that, by common consent, the troops demanded Vocula as their commander, and Flaccus handed him full authority.

27| But much was driving their divided tempers to savagery: shortage of pay and grain, and at the same time the Gauls' resentment at the levy and the tribute; the Rhine, in a drought unheard of in that climate, was barely navigable, cramping supply lines; sentry posts strung along the whole riverbank to keep the Germans from the fords meant fewer crops and more mouths to feed. Among the ignorant, the very scarcity of water was taken as an omen — as though the rivers too, and the ancient bulwarks of the empire, were deserting us. In peacetime this would have been put down to chance or nature; now it was called fate and the anger of a god.

28| When they reached Neuss, the Sixteenth Legion joined them. Herennius Gallus, a legionary legate, was added to share command with Vocula, but they didn't dare advance against the enemy; they made camp at a place called Gelduba. There they toughened the troops by drawing up battle lines, building ramparts and ditches, and other drills of war. And to spur their courage with plunder, Vocula led the army into the nearest districts of the Cugerni, who had gone over to Civilis; part of the force stayed behind with Herennius Gallus.

29| As it happened, a grain-laden ship ran aground in the shallows not far from camp, and the Germans on their own bank began hauling it in. Gallus couldn't stand for this and sent a cohort to the rescue; the Germans' numbers grew too, and as reinforcements gathered on both sides a pitched fight broke out. The Germans, at heavy cost to our men, dragged the ship away. The defeated soldiers — as had by then become the habit — blamed not their own cowardice but their commander's treachery. They dragged Gallus from his tent, tore his clothes, beat him, and demanded he say for what price, and with whose complicity, he had betrayed the army. Suspicion then swung back to Hordeonius: they called Gallus the instrument and Hordeonius the mastermind, until, terrified by threats of death, Gallus himself accused Hordeonius of treason. Gallus was put in chains and only released when Vocula arrived. The next day Vocula put the ringleaders of the mutiny to death — such was the gulf in that army between license and endurance. There was no doubt the ordinary soldier was loyal to Vitellius, while the most distinguished men leaned toward Vespasian; hence this alternating cycle of crimes and punishments, fury mixed with obedience, so that men who could be punished couldn't also be controlled.

30| Civilis, meanwhile, was being lifted up by immense reinforcements from all Germany, his alliance secured with hostages from the noblest families. He ordered each district ravaged by whichever force was nearest — the Ubii and Treveri — and sent another force across the Meuse to strike the Menapii, the Morini, and the farthest edges of Gaul. Plunder was taken on both fronts, more savagely among the Ubii, because that people, though of German origin, had renounced their homeland and taken a Roman name and were called Agrippinenses. Their cohorts were cut down at the village of Marcodurum, caught off guard because they were far from the riverbank. Even so the Ubii didn't stop raiding into Germany for plunder — unpunished at first, then surrounded and cut off; through this whole war they showed better loyalty than luck. With the Ubii crushed, Civilis, fiercer now with success, pressed the siege of the legions harder, keeping close watch so no secret message about approaching relief could get through. He put the Batavians in charge of siege engines and earthworks, and when the tribesmen from across the Rhine demanded battle, he sent them to tear down the rampart, and when they were driven back, ordered them to renew the fight — since they had numbers to spare and little to lose.

31| Night brought no end to the struggle. Wood was piled up around the camp and set alight, and as the men feasted and grew warm with wine, each in turn was carried by reckless drunkenness into the fight. Their own weapons, thrown blind through the dark, mostly missed; the Romans, by contrast, could see the barbarians' line clearly outlined, and marked for a hit anyone shining bright with boldness or decoration. Civilis saw this and ordered the fires put out, so that everything — men and weapons alike — was thrown into darkness and confusion. What followed was real confusion, a jumble of clashing sounds and blind luck: nobody could see well enough to land a blow or dodge one, and men spun and flailed their limbs toward wherever a shout came from; courage counted for nothing, chance ruled everything, and it was often the bravest who fell to a coward's weapon. Among the Germans the fury was blind; the Roman soldier, wise to the dangers, threw his iron-tipped stakes and heavy stones with aim, not at random. Whenever the sound of men working the machines, or ladders set against the wall, put the enemy within reach, they shoved them back with their shield-bosses and followed up with the javelin; many who had climbed onto the walls were stabbed with daggers. So the night was spent, and daylight opened a new battle.

32| The Batavians had built a two-storey siege tower, and as it drew near the main gate — the most level ground — the defenders pushed out strong poles and rammed beams against it and broke it apart, killing many of the men standing on top. A sudden, successful sally struck the shaken attackers while they reeled. At the same time the legionaries, with superior skill and craft, were building more devices of their own. One device brought special terror — a hanging, swinging contraption that would drop without warning right in front of its own operators, hook one or more of the enemy, and then, its weight swinging back the other way, hurl them bodily into the camp. Civilis gave up hope of taking the camp by storm and went back to a slow siege, working instead to undermine the legions' loyalty with messages and promises.

33| All this happened in Germany before the battle of Cremona; news of that battle's outcome reached them through a letter from Primus Antonius, along with a copy of Caecina's proclamation, and a cohort commander from the losing side, Alpinius Montanus, was there in person to confirm the fortunes of the parties. From this came divided reactions. The auxiliaries from Gaul, who had neither love nor hatred for either side and served without feeling, broke from Vitellius at once at their officers' urging; the old-guard legionaries hesitated. But under pressure from Hordeonius Flaccus and the insistence of the tribunes, they took the oath — though their faces and their hearts showed little conviction. And while they mouthed the rest of the oath's words together, they stumbled over the name of Vespasian, or let it pass in a low murmur, or mostly in silence.

34| Then a letter from Antonius to Civilis was read out before the assembly, and it stirred the soldiers' suspicions — it seemed written to an ally of their cause and spoke of the army of Germany in hostile terms. Soon the same reports and the same reaction reached the camp at Gelduba, and Montanus was sent with instructions to Civilis to lay down arms and stop dressing up a foreign war in a false Roman cause: if he had only meant to help Vespasian, he'd done enough already for that purpose. Civilis at first answered cunningly; but seeing that Montanus was hot-tempered by nature and ready for revolution, he began instead with a complaint about the dangers he'd endured through twenty-five years in Roman camps. 'A fine reward I've gotten for my labors,' he said, 'my brother's murder, my own chains, the savage cries of this army demanding my death — for which, by the law of nations, I now demand payment in kind. And you Treveri, and the rest of you slavish souls — what reward do you expect for all the blood you've poured out so many times, except thankless service, endless taxes, the rods and the axe, and the whims of your masters? Look at me: commander of a single cohort, with the Canninefates and Batavians, a tiny sliver of Gaul — we're cutting down those vast camp-fortifications of yours, or hemming them in with iron and starvation. In the end, either freedom will follow those who dared, or, if we're beaten, we'll be no worse off than we are now.' Having stirred Montanus to this pitch, Civilis sent him off with instructions to report something milder. Montanus went back as a failed envoy, hiding the rest — which soon burst out into the open.

35| Civilis held back part of his forces and sent the veteran cohorts, along with the most eager of the Germans, against Vocula and his army, under the command of Julius Maximus and Claudius Victor, his sister's son. On the march they seized the winter camp of the cavalry wing stationed at Asciburgium, and they burst into the camp so unexpectedly that Vocula had no chance to address his men or even form a battle line. All he could manage in the chaos was to order the legionary reserves to hold the center; the auxiliaries were scattered everywhere. The cavalry charged out, but ran into the enemy's ordered ranks and turned back on their own side. What followed was slaughter, not battle. The Nervian cohorts, whether from fear or treachery, left our flanks exposed, and the enemy reached the legions, which, having lost their standards, were being cut down inside the rampart—when suddenly the fortune of the fight changed with fresh help. Cohorts of Vascones, raised by Galba and now summoned, were approaching the camp when they heard the noise of battle and struck the enemy from behind, unaware they were under attack; they created more panic than their numbers warranted, since some believed a whole army had arrived from Novaesium, others from Mainz. This mistake gave the Romans heart, and trusting in strength they didn't actually have, they recovered their own. The bravest of the Batavian infantry were cut down; their cavalry escaped with the standards and prisoners they had seized in the first clash. More men died that day on our side, though they were the less capable troops; among the Germans, it was their finest who fell.

36| Both commanders, by equal fault, deserved their reverses, and both failed to make anything of their successes. If Civilis had drawn up his line with larger forces, so few cohorts could not have surrounded him, and he would have broken through the camp and destroyed it. Vocula, for his part, never scouted the enemy's approach, and so was caught marching out and beaten; then, lacking confidence in victory, he wasted days before moving his camp against the enemy—if he had moved at once to press the advantage and follow through, he could have broken the siege of the legions in that same push. Meanwhile Civilis had been testing the resolve of the besieged, spreading word that Roman fortunes were ruined and that his own side had won: he paraded standards and banners around, even displaying prisoners. One of these prisoners dared a remarkable act—he cried out the truth of what had happened in a loud voice, and was immediately run through by the Germans, which only made his report more credible. At the same time, the burning and devastation of farmhouses in flames signaled that a victorious army was approaching. Within sight of the camp, Vocula ordered the standards planted and a ditch and rampart thrown up, with the baggage set aside so the men could fight unencumbered. At this the men shouted at their commander, demanding battle, and they had grown used to threatening him. Without even time to form a proper line, disordered and exhausted, they went into battle—for Civilis was there, relying as much on his enemy's faults as on his own men's courage. Fortune wavered among the Romans, and the most mutinous troops proved the most cowardly; but some, remembering their recent victory, held their ground, struck at the enemy, urged themselves and those beside them on, and as the line re-formed, stretched their hands toward the besieged men so as not to fail them at the critical hour. Those men, watching everything from the walls, burst out through every gate. And as chance would have it, Civilis was thrown from his horse and fell, and the rumor spread through both armies that he was wounded or killed—this filled his own men with immense fear and the enemy with equal excitement. But Vocula, instead of pursuing the fleeing enemy, kept strengthening the rampart and towers of the camp, as if a fresh siege were coming—and, having botched victory so many times already, he was not wrongly suspected of preferring war to peace.

37| Nothing wore down our armies as much as the shortage of supplies. The legions' baggage, along with a crowd of non-combatants, was sent to Novaesium so grain could be brought back overland, since the enemy controlled the river. The first column marched unopposed, Civilis not yet being fully ready. But when he learned that the grain-foraging party had again been sent to Novaesium, and cohorts assigned as escort, marching as if in full peace—soldiers rarely at their posts, weapons stowed in the wagons, everyone wandering about at will—he attacked them in tight formation, having sent men ahead to hold the narrow points of bridges and roads. The fighting stretched along the long column with the outcome uncertain, until night broke it off. The cohorts pushed on to Gelduba, while the camp remained garrisoned as before by the troops left behind there. There was no doubt about the danger the foragers would face on their way back, burdened with grain and already shaken. From the Fifth and Fifteenth legions, still under siege at Vetera, Vocula drew a thousand handpicked men to reinforce his own—soldiers who obeyed no one and despised their officers. More men set out than had been ordered, openly grumbling in the ranks that they would no longer put up with hunger and their commanders' treachery; meanwhile those who stayed behind complained they had been abandoned when part of the legion was taken away. So there was a double mutiny: some calling Vocula back, others refusing to return to camp.

38| Meanwhile Civilis laid siege to Vetera. Vocula withdrew to Gelduba and then to Novaesium; Civilis took Gelduba, and soon after fought a successful cavalry engagement not far from Novaesium. But whether things went well or badly, the soldiers were driven all the same toward destroying their commanders. With the arrival of the men from the Fifth and Fifteenth legions, the reinforced legions demanded their donative, having learned that money had been sent by Vitellius. Hordeonius, without much delay, gave it out in the name of Vespasian, and that became the chief fuel of the mutiny. Given over to drinking, feasting, and nighttime gatherings, they revived their old anger against Hordeonius, and since none of the legates or tribunes dared stand in their way—shame having vanished entirely with the night—they dragged him from his bed and killed him. The same fate was being prepared for Vocula, but he escaped in the dark disguised as a slave, unrecognized.

39| Once the frenzy had subsided and fear returned, they sent centurions with letters to the communities of Gaul to beg for troops and pay. As for themselves—since a mob without a leader is reckless, fearful, and thoughtless all at once—when Civilis approached, they snatched up their weapons in a panic and then just as quickly threw them down again, turning to flight. Their setbacks bred discord: those who belonged to the upper army tried to distance themselves from the others' cause. Yet images of Vitellius were set up again in the camp and in the nearby Belgian towns, even though Vitellius was already dead. Then the First, Fourth, and Twenty-second legions had a change of heart and rejoined Vocula in remorse; under him, having sworn allegiance to Vespasian once more, they were led out to relieve the siege of Mainz. The besiegers had already withdrawn—a mixed force of Chatti, Usipi, and Mattiaci, glutted with plunder and not without losses, since our soldiers had ambushed them scattered and unwary along the road. The Treviri, for their part, built a wall and rampart across their own territory, and traded heavy losses with the Germans back and forth—until their genuine service to Rome was later fouled by their own rebellion.

40| Meanwhile Vespasian, for the second time, and Titus entered upon the consulship while both were absent, and the city hung suspended in gloom and manifold fear, having, on top of its real troubles, worked itself into groundless panics as well—word spread that Africa had revolted, with Lucius Piso plotting an uprising. Piso, the province's proconsul, was in fact nothing like a troublemaker by temperament; but because storms kept ships from sailing, and the common people were used to buying their food day by day, with their only concern in the whole state being the grain supply, they took it as certain—since they were afraid—that the coast was closed and the shipments blocked. Vitellian sympathizers, who had not yet given up their party's cause, fed the rumor further, since it was not unwelcome news even to the victors, whose greed—insatiable even in foreign wars—no civil war victory has ever satisfied.

41| On the first of January, in a Senate summoned by the city praetor Julius Frontinus, honors and thanks were voted to the armies, their commanders, and the client kings. Tettius Julianus was stripped of his praetorship, on the charge that he had abandoned his legion as it went over to Vespasian's side, so that it could be transferred to Plotius Grypus instead; Hormus was granted equestrian rank. And soon, when Frontinus resigned his post, Domitianus Caesar took up the praetorship. His name headed letters and edicts, but real power lay with Mucianus—except that Domitian, egged on by friends or by his own impulses, dared a good deal on his own. Mucianus's chief fear, though, was of Antonius Primus and Arrius Varus, men whose recent fame and popularity with the soldiers even the common people favored, since they had shown no cruelty to anyone once the fighting was over. It was said that Antonius had urged Scribonianus Crassus—a man shining with distinguished ancestors and his brother's reputation—to make a bid for power, with no shortage of accomplices ready, had Scribonianus not refused; not even ready support could tempt him, so wary was he of anything uncertain. So Mucianus, unable to strike Antonius down openly, heaped him with praise in the Senate while burdening him with private promises, dangling nearer Spain before him as vacant since Cluvius Rufus's departure; at the same time he lavished tribunates and prefectures on Antonius's friends. Then, once he had filled Antonius's empty vanity with hope and desire, he stripped him of real power by sending the Seventh Legion—most devoted to Antonius—off to winter quarters. The Third Legion, too, close to Arrius Varus's soldiers, was sent back to Syria; part of the army was marched off to the Germanies. So, once every source of unrest had been drained away, the city returned to its ordinary shape, its laws, and the routine functions of its magistrates.

42| On the day Domitian entered the senate, he spoke briefly and modestly about his father's and brother's absence and his own youth, carrying himself well; and since his character was not yet known, his frequent facial confusion was taken for modesty. When Caesar raised the question of restoring Galba's honors, Curtius Montanus proposed that Piso's memory also be honored. The senators voted for both; the motion for Piso came to nothing. Then men were chosen by lot to return property seized in the war, to examine and re-post bronze law-tablets worn away by age, to purge the calendar of the flattery that had disfigured it in past times, and to set limits on public spending. Tettius Julianus was restored to his praetorship once it was learned he had fled to Vespasian; Grypus kept the honor he already held. It was then decided to reopen the inquiry between Musonius Rufus and Publius Celer; Publius was condemned, and Soranus's shade was thus satisfied. A day marked by public severity was not without private praise either. Musonius seemed to have carried out a just prosecution; opinion was divided about Demetrius, a professed Cynic, for having defended a plainly guilty man more for show than for honesty. Publius himself had neither the nerve to face danger nor the words to speak in it. Once the signal had been given for vengeance against informers, Junius Mauricus asked Caesar to let the senate see the imperial records, so they might learn who had asked whom to be prosecuted. Domitian answered that such a matter required the emperor's own judgment.

43| At the prompting of the leading senators, the senate drew up an oath, which all the magistrates and then the rest, as each was asked his opinion, competed to swear, calling the gods to witness that they had done nothing to harm anyone's safety, and had taken no reward or honor from a citizen's ruin — men trembling and twisting the words of the oath in various ways, aware of their own guilt. The senators approved this show of religion and denounced the perjury in it; and this censure landed heaviest, so to speak, on three men notorious under Nero for their constant denunciations: Sariolenus Vocula, Nonius Attianus, and Cestius Severus. Sariolenus was pressed further by a recent charge, that he had been up to the same tricks under Vitellius; the senate did not stop shaking its fists at Vocula until he left the chamber. They turned next to Paccius Africanus and drove him out too, on the charge that he had pointed Nero toward the Scribonius brothers, whose harmony and wealth had brought them to ruin. Africanus dared not admit it and could not deny it; turning instead on Vibius Crispus, whose questions were wearing him down, he tried to spread the blame by mixing in charges he could not otherwise defend against.

44| Vipstanus Messala won great fame that day for devotion and eloquence, though not yet of senatorial age, by daring to plead for his brother Aquilius Regulus. Regulus had brought upon himself deep hatred by helping bring down the houses of the Crassi and Orfitus; he seemed to have taken up the prosecution as a very young man not out of any need to avert danger to himself, but in hope of future power. Sulpicia Praetextata, Crassus's widow, and her four children stood ready as avengers if the senate would hear the case. So Messala did not defend the charge or the accused, but by placing himself in the path of his brother's danger, he won some over. Curtius Montanus met him with a savage speech, going so far as to charge that after Galba's murder Regulus had paid Piso's killer and had bitten at Piso's severed head. 'This much at least,' he said, 'Nero did not force on you, and you did not buy your rank or your safety with that savagery. Let us tolerate, if we must, the defenses of those who preferred to destroy others rather than risk themselves — but an exiled father had left you free of danger, his property divided among creditors, your age not yet fit for office, nothing about you for Nero to covet, nothing to fear. Out of bloodlust and a hunger for reward you steeped a talent still unknown, untested by any defense work, in a noble man's murder — when, amid the funeral of the republic, snatching the spoils of a consular, gorged on seven million sesterces and glittering with a priesthood, you struck down innocent boys, distinguished old men, and eminent women in the same ruin — when you mocked Nero's laziness, for wearing himself and his informers out house by house, when the whole senate could be brought down with a single word. Keep this man, conscript fathers, and preserve him — a man of such ready resource that every age can learn from him, so that our old men may imitate Marcellus and Crispus, and our young men Regulus. Even a wretched vice finds imitators; what if it should flourish and thrive? A man we don't yet dare offend as a mere ex-quaestor — will we dare to offend him as an ex-praetor, an ex-consul? Do you think Nero was the last of tyrants? Those who outlived Tiberius, who outlived Gaius, believed the same, and yet meanwhile one still more intolerable and savage arose. We do not fear Vespasian; such is the emperor's age, such his restraint — but examples outlast character. We have gone soft, conscript fathers: this is no longer the senate that once, right after Nero fell, insisted the informers and their agents be punished as our ancestors would have punished them. The best day after a bad emperor is the first one.'

45| Montanus was heard with such approval from the senate that Helvidius began to hope even Marcellus could be brought down. So, opening with praise of Cluvius Rufus, who though just as rich and just as famous for his eloquence had never brought danger on anyone under Nero, he pressed Eprius Marcellus with both the charge and the precedent, while the senators' anger flared. When Marcellus sensed this, he made as if to leave the chamber, saying, 'We are going, Priscus, and we leave you your senate — go reign, with Caesar looking on.' Vibius Crispus followed him, both men angry, their faces different — Marcellus with threatening eyes, Crispus smiling — until friends rushed up and pulled them back. As the quarrel grew, on one side many good men, on the other a few but powerful ones, pressed on with stubborn hatred, and the day was consumed in discord.

46| At the next session, when Caesar opened by urging that resentment and anger and the necessities of past times be set aside, Mucianus spoke at length in defense of the informers, and gently, almost as if pleading, warned those renewing prosecutions they had begun and then dropped to think again. The senators, once opposed, let drop the freedom of speech they had begun to claim. Mucianus, so it would not seem that the senate's judgment was being scorned and that everything done under Nero was going unpunished, sent Octavius Sagitta and Antistius Sosianus, both of senatorial rank who had left their places of exile, back to the same islands. Octavius, driven mad with love, had murdered Pontia Postumina after seducing her, when she refused to marry him; Sosianus, through sheer viciousness, had ruined many. Both had been condemned and expelled by a severe decree of the senate; though others were allowed to return, these two were kept under the same penalty. Even so, resentment against Mucianus did not ease — for Sosianus and Sagitta were nobodies even if they came back, while it was the talent, wealth, and practiced power of the informer class, honed by evil arts, that people feared.

47| A senate inquiry run in the old-fashioned way briefly patched over the feelings of its members. Manlius Patruitus, himself a senator, complained that a crowd, acting on the magistrates' orders, had beaten him in the colony of Sena — and the injury didn't end there: they staged mourning, wailing, and the full trappings of a funeral in front of him, hurling insults and abuse not just at him but at the whole senate. Those accused were summoned, and once the case was examined, the guilty were punished, and a decree of the senate was added instructing the people of Sena to behave themselves. In the same days Antonius Flamma, prosecuted by the people of Cyrene, was condemned under the extortion law and sent into exile for his cruelty.

48| Meanwhile a mutiny among the soldiers nearly broke out. Men discharged by Vitellius, who had rallied to Vespasian, were demanding reinstatement in the Praetorian Guard; and men picked from the legions, hoping for the same, were shouting for the pay promised them. Driving the Vitellians out was impossible without heavy bloodshed, yet feeding and keeping such a mass of men would drain enormous sums. Mucianus went into the camp, so as to judge each man's service more fairly, and had the victors stand in ranks with their own badges and weapons, spaced apart from one another. Then the Vitellian soldiers — those who, as I mentioned, had surrendered at Bovillae, and the rest rounded up from the city and its surroundings — were brought out nearly stripped bare. Mucianus ordered them separated, and had the men from the German and British legions, and any from other armies, made to stand apart. The very sight of it stunned them at first, seeing across from them, as it were, a battle line bristling with weapons, while they themselves stood penned in, naked, and filthy. But once they began to be pulled this way and that, fear spread through all of them, and above all through the German troops, terrified that this separation marked them out for slaughter. They clutched at their comrades' chests, threw their arms around their necks, begged for last kisses, pleading not to be abandoned alone or made to suffer a different fate for the same offense; they called now on Mucianus, now on the absent emperor, and finally on heaven and the gods — until Mucianus, addressing them all as soldiers of the same oath, the same commander, met their groundless fear head-on; and indeed the victorious army's shouts helped ease their tears. That settled matters for the day. Some days on, Domitian spoke to them, and by then they had steadied and gave him a hearing; they refused the land grants on offer and asked instead for military service and pay. It was a plea that could not well be refused, so they were taken into the Praetorian camp. Then those of proper age and full service were discharged with honor; others for misconduct, but a few at a time and one by one, the safest way to weaken a mass movement of solidarity.

49| Whether from real poverty or only for appearance's sake, it was decided in the senate that sixty million sesterces should be borrowed from private citizens, and Pompeius Silvanus was put in charge of the matter. Not long after, the need vanished, or the pretense was dropped. Then, on Domitian's motion, a law annulled the consulships that Vitellius had granted, and a censor's funeral was held for Flavius Sabinus — great proof of how unstable fortune is, and how it mixes the highest with the lowest.

50| Around the same time, Lucius Piso, proconsul, was killed. I'll lay out this killing as accurately as I can, but first I need to go back a little to the beginning and the causes—not unreasonable ones—of crimes like this. In Africa, the legion and the auxiliary troops guarding the empire's borders answered to the proconsul under the emperors Augustus and Tiberius. Then Gaius Caesar, a restless spirit who feared Marcus Silanus, the governor of Africa, took the legion away from the proconsul and handed it to a legate sent for that purpose. The two offices were given equal shares of patronage, and mixing their jurisdictions created friction, which grew worse through their perverse rivalry. The legates' authority grew over time in office, partly because lesser men are keener to compete, while the most distinguished proconsuls cared more about their own safety than about power.

51| Command of the legion in Africa at that time belonged to Valerius Festus—a young man given to excess, driven by boundless ambition, and made uneasy by his marriage tie to Vitellius. Whether he repeatedly tried, in private conversations, to draw Piso into revolution, or whether he resisted Piso's own overtures, is uncertain—no one was present at their private talks—and once Piso was killed, most people leaned toward flattering the killer. What is not in doubt is that the province and its soldiers had turned hostile toward Vespasian. Some Vitellians who had fled Rome kept telling Piso that the Gallic provinces were wavering, that Germany was ready, that he himself was in danger, and that even in peacetime he was under suspicion—so war was the safer course. Meanwhile Claudius Sagitta, prefect of the Petrian cavalry wing, had a fast crossing and got ahead of the centurion Papirius, whom Mucianus had sent. He assured Piso that the centurion carried orders to kill him: that Piso's cousin and son-in-law Galerianus was already dead; that Piso's only hope of safety lay in boldness, and there were two paths open—take up arms at once, or make for Gaul by ship and present himself to the Vitellian armies as their leader. Piso was unmoved by any of this. The centurion sent by Mucianus, on reaching the port of Carthage, loudly and joyfully proclaimed everything to Piso as if he were already emperor, and urged the bystanders, stunned by the sudden news, to raise the same shout. The credulous crowd rushed to the forum demanding Piso appear; joy and shouting mixed everything together, out of carelessness for the truth and eagerness to flatter. Piso, warned by Sagitta's report—or simply from his natural restraint—did not go out in public or give himself over to the crowd's enthusiasm. He questioned the centurion, and once he learned that the charge against him was invented and that murder was intended, he ordered the man executed—less to save his own skin than out of rage at the man who wanted him dead—a man who, having already helped murder Clodius Macer, now brought a legate's blood on his hands to the slaying of a proconsul as well. Then, in an anxious edict rebuking the people of Carthage, he did not even carry out his usual duties, but shut himself in his house, so that no chance incident might spark further unrest.

52| But once Festus learned—through the way rumor always exaggerates—of the crowd's panic, the centurion's execution, and a mixture of truth and falsehood, he sent cavalry to kill Piso. They rode fast and, while it was still barely light, burst into the proconsul's house with swords drawn—most of them not even knowing Piso by sight, since Festus had picked Punic and Moorish auxiliaries for the killing. Not far from the bedroom they happened to meet a slave and asked him who and where Piso was. With a splendid lie the slave said he was Piso himself, and was instantly cut down. Piso was killed not long after; someone was there who recognized him—Baebius Massa, one of the procurators of Africa, already at that time a menace to every good man, and someone who would recur often among the causes of the troubles we later endured. Festus, who had stopped at Hadrumetum to watch how things unfolded, hurried to the legion and ordered the camp prefect Caetronius Pisanus put in chains—officially calling him Piso's accomplice, but really settling a personal grudge. He punished some soldiers and centurions and rewarded others, neither group on real merit, simply to be seen as having crushed a rebellion. He then settled a quarrel between the people of Oea and Lepcis, which had started small, over stolen crops and livestock among the country folk, and had grown into open warfare. The Oeans, outnumbered, had called in the Garamantes, an untamable people notorious among their neighbors for banditry. This left the Lepcitans hard-pressed; their fields were laid waste far and wide, and they cowered inside their walls until cohorts and cavalry wings arrived, scattered the Garamantes, and recovered all the plunder—except what the raiders, wandering through inaccessible desert camps, had already sold farther off.

53| Meanwhile, after the battle at Cremona and news of success pouring in from every side, word reached Vespasian that Vitellius was dead—brought by many men of every rank who had braved the winter sea with equal daring and equal luck. Envoys from King Vologaeses also arrived, offering forty thousand Parthian cavalry. It was a splendid and gratifying thing to be courted by such powerful allies and yet not need them: thanks were given to Vologaeses, with instructions to send envoys to the Senate and to know that peace prevailed. Vespasian, now focused on Italy and the affairs of Rome, heard an unfavorable report about Domitian—that he was overstepping the bounds proper to his age and to what had been granted his son. So he handed over the strongest part of the army to Titus, to finish what remained of the Jewish war.

54| Before Titus set out, it's said he spoke at length with his father, urging him not to be quick to anger at reports from accusers, and to stay open and forgiving toward his son. Neither legions nor fleets, he said, were as solid a defense of power as a number of children—friends could be diminished, shifted, or lost through time, chance, ambition, or sometimes mistakes, but one's own blood could not be taken from anyone, least of all from emperors, whose good fortune others enjoy but whose misfortunes fall hardest on those closest to them. Even brothers would not stay in harmony unless their father set the example. Vespasian was not so much won over on Domitian's account as pleased by Titus's devotion; he told him to keep his spirits up and build the state's strength through war and arms—peace and the household would be his own concern. Then he sent the fastest grain ships out onto a sea still rough with winter storms, because the crisis in Rome was so severe that the granaries held no more than ten days' supply of grain when Vespasian's shipments came to the rescue.

55| He put Lucius Vestinus in charge of restoring the Capitol—a man of equestrian rank, but with the authority and reputation to stand among the greatest. The soothsayers he consulted advised that the remains of the old temple should be carried off to the marshes and the new temple raised on the very same site: the gods did not want the old design changed. On the eleventh day before the Kalends of July, under a clear sky, the whole area marked out for the temple was wrapped in ribbons and garlands. Soldiers with auspicious names entered carrying branches of good omen; then the Vestal Virgins, together with boys and girls whose parents were both still living, sprinkled the ground with water drawn from springs and rivers. Then the praetor Helvidius Priscus, guided by the pontiff Plautius Aelianus, purified the site with the sacrifice of a pig, a sheep, and a bull, laid the entrails on turf, and prayed to Jupiter, Juno, Minerva, and the guardian gods of the empire to bless the work in progress and, through human devotion, to raise by divine power the dwelling they had begun. Then he touched the ribbons that bound the foundation stone and the ropes attached to it; and at the same moment the other magistrates, the priests, the senate, the knights, and a great part of the people, straining together in eager delight, hauled the huge stone into place. From every side coins of silver and gold, and unworked ores of metal fresh from the earth, were thrown into the foundations—the soothsayers had warned that the work must not be defiled with stone or gold meant for any other purpose. The building was raised higher than before; that was the only change religion approved, and it was thought the one thing lacking from the splendor of the old temple.

56| Meanwhile, once news of Vitellius's death reached Gaul and Germany, it doubled the war. Civilis dropped all pretense and threw himself against Rome; the Vitellian legions said they would rather serve even a foreign master than obey Vespasian as emperor. The Gauls' spirits rose; they assumed our armies everywhere were faring the same way, since rumor had spread that the winter camps in Moesia and Pannonia were under siege by the Sarmatians and Dacians, and similar tales were invented about Britain. But nothing drove them to believe the empire's end was at hand quite like the burning of the Capitol. The city had once been captured by the Gauls, they said, but because Jupiter's temple had stood untouched, the empire survived; now, though, this fated fire was a sign of heavenly wrath, and—so the Druids chanted, in their empty superstition—it foretold that control of human affairs was passing to the peoples beyond the Alps. Rumor had also spread that the leading men of Gaul, sent by Otho against Vitellius, had pledged before they parted not to abandon their people's freedom if a continuous series of civil wars and internal troubles should ever break Rome.

57| Before the killing of Hordeonius Flaccus, nothing had come to light that would reveal a conspiracy; but once Hordeonius was dead, messengers began moving between Civilis and Classicus, prefect of the Treviran cavalry wing. Classicus surpassed the others in noble birth and wealth; his family was royal, and his line was distinguished in both peace and war—he himself boasted more of ancestors who had been enemies of Rome than allies. Two more joined the conspiracy, Julius Tutor and Julius Sabinus—one a Treviran, the other a Lingonian. Vitellius had already given Tutor charge of the Rhine bank. Sabinus, on top of his natural vanity, was further inflamed by pride in a false lineage: he claimed his great-grandmother had caught the eye of the deified Julius during his campaigns in Gaul and become his mistress. These men sounded out the loyalties of the rest in private talks, and once they had bound to their cause those they judged suitable, they met in a private house in the colony of Cologne—since publicly the community shrank from such schemes. Even so, some Ubii and Tungri were present. But the greatest strength lay with the Treviri and Lingones, and they would not tolerate delay in deciding. They proclaimed, each outdoing the other, that the Roman people were raging with internal discord, that legions had been cut down, Italy laid waste, the very city on the verge of capture, every army tied down by its own war; if the Alps were secured with garrisons, then Gaul, once united in freedom, could decide for itself what limit to set on its own strength.

58| This was said and approved alike. What to do with the remnants of Vitellius's army was another matter. Most argued for killing them — a turbulent, treacherous lot, stained with the blood of their own commanders. But the policy of mercy won out: killing off all hope of pardon would only harden their resistance. Better to draw them into the alliance. Only the legionary commanders would be executed; the rank and file, guilty as they were and eager for immunity, would come over easily. That was the shape of the first council. Agents were sent through Gaul to stir up war, feigning obedience to the Romans so as to catch Vocula off guard. Some did warn Vocula, but he lacked the strength to act — his legions were thin and untrustworthy. Caught between wavering soldiers and hidden enemies, he judged his best move, given the circumstances, was to match deception with deception and attack them with the same methods being used against him. He marched down to Cologne. There Claudius Labeo — the man we said was captured and quietly shipped off among the Frisians — bribed his guards and escaped. He promised that, given a garrison, he would go among the Batavians and win back the better part of the tribe for Rome. Given a modest force of infantry and cavalry, he accomplished nothing among the Batavians, but did draw some of the Nervii and Baetasii into arms, and raided the Cannenefates and Marsaci more by stealth than open war.

59| Vocula, misled by Gallic trickery, advanced toward the enemy. He was not far from Vetera when Classicus and Tutor, going ahead on the pretext of scouting, met with the German commanders and sealed a pact. That was the first time they set their own camp apart from the legions, behind its own rampart, despite Vocula's protest that Rome's cause was not so shattered by civil war that even the Treviri and Lingones could hold it in contempt. Loyal provinces still stood, victorious armies still stood, the empire's fortune and its avenging gods still stood. Sacrovir and the Aedui had once collapsed in a single battle, and Vindex and the Gauls more recently, the same. The same divine powers, the same fate, awaited these breakers of treaties. Divus Julius and Divus Augustus had known their spirit better; it was Galba, and the lightening of tribute, that had put hostile ideas into their heads. They were enemies now because servitude was easy; once stripped and plundered, they'd be friends again. He spoke boldly, but seeing Classicus and Tutor still set on treachery, he changed course and withdrew to Novaesium. The Gauls camped two miles off, in open country. There, passing centurions and soldiers had their loyalty bought — an unheard-of disgrace — so that a Roman army swore allegiance to a foreign power, sealing so great a crime with the death or imprisonment of its own commanders. Vocula, though most urged flight, judged that boldness was called for, called an assembly, and spoke as follows.

60| 'Never have I addressed you more anxious on your account or more careless of my own. I hear gladly that death is being prepared for me, and amid so many miseries I look for it as an end to suffering. It is you I pity and am ashamed for — you, against whom no battle line, no proper fight is being readied (that at least would be the fair law of war and the right of enemies): Classicus hopes to wage war on the Roman people with your hands, and dangles before you an empire and an oath of loyalty to Gaul. Have fortune and courage deserted us for the moment so completely that even the old examples fail us — how often Roman legions have chosen death over giving ground? Our allies have often endured their cities razed, themselves burned alive with wives and children, gaining nothing from their end but loyalty and reputation. At this very moment the legions at Vetera are enduring want and siege, unmoved by terror or promises. We, besides arms and men and the excellent defenses of this camp, have grain and supplies enough for a long war. Even money — for a donative, no less — reached us not long ago; whether you prefer to credit Vespasian or Vitellius for it, you received it, at any rate, from a Roman emperor. You who have won so many wars, at Gelduba, at Vetera, routing the enemy again and again — if you now dread a pitched battle, shameful as that would be, there is still the rampart, the walls, the arts of delay, until help and armies gather from the nearest provinces. Suppose I displease you — there are other legates, tribunes, even a centurion or a common soldier will do. But do not let this monstrosity be broadcast to the whole world: that you served as Civilis's and Classicus's escort into Italy. Suppose the Germans and Gauls march their forces right up to Rome's walls — would you actually draw your weapons on your own homeland? My mind recoils at the very image of such an outrage. Will Tutor the Trevian set the watch? Will a Batavian give the signal for war, while you fill out the ranks of German warbands? What end can such a crime have, when Roman legions stand arrayed against you? Deserters from deserters, traitors among traitors, hated by the gods, you will wander between an old oath and a new one. You, Jupiter, best and greatest, whom we have worshiped through eight hundred and twenty years and so many triumphs; you, Quirinus, father of the city of Rome — I beg and beseech you: if you did not wish this camp, under my command, to stay pure and unbreached, then at least spare it from being fouled and defiled by Tutor and Classicus. Grant these Roman soldiers either innocence, or a swift repentance without harm.'

61| The speech met a mixed reception — hope, fear, and shame all at once. Vocula withdrew and was weighing his final options when his freedmen and slaves stopped him from forestalling a shameful death by his own hand. So Classicus sent Aemilius Longinus, a First Legion deserter, to hurry his death; for the legates Herennius and Numisius, mere binding was judged sufficient. Then, taking up the insignia of Roman command, Classicus entered the camp. Hardened as he was to every crime, he found no more words than were needed to recite the oath — those present swore allegiance to the empire of Gaul. Vocula's killer he raised to high rank; the rest, according to how each had distinguished himself in villainy, he rewarded.

62| The work was then divided between Tutor and Classicus. Tutor, with a strong force, surrounded the people of Cologne and forced them, along with all the soldiers on the upper bank of the Rhine, into the same oath, killing the tribunes at Mainz and driving out the camp commander, who had refused. Classicus ordered the most corrupted of those who had surrendered to go to the besieged, dangling pardon if they would follow the new order — otherwise nothing but hope of starvation, the sword, and the worst extremities. Those sent added their own example as persuasion.

63| The besieged were torn, on one side by loyalty, on the other by hunger, between honor and disgrace. As they hesitated, food both ordinary and extraordinary ran out; pack animals, horses, and every other creature had been consumed — things vile and forbidden that necessity turned to use. In the end they were pulling up shrubs, roots, and grass sprouting between the stones — proof of their suffering and endurance, until they stained a noble record with a shameful end, sending envoys to Civilis to beg for their lives. Their plea was not admitted until they swore the oath to Gaul. Only then, having struck his bargain for the plunder of the camp, did he post guards to hold back the money, camp-servants, and baggage, and men to escort the lightly-laden garrison out. At about the fifth milestone the Germans rose up and fell on the unsuspecting column. The bravest died where they stood; many, scattered, fell as they fled. The rest ran back to the camp — with Civilis loudly complaining and rebuking the Germans for breaking faith through such a crime. Whether this was staged, or he simply could not restrain their fury, is not clearly established. They plundered the camp, set it ablaze, and fire consumed all who had survived the fighting.

64| Civilis, in fulfillment of a barbarian vow made when he first took up arms against Rome, had let his hair grow long and dyed it red; only now, with the slaughter of the legions accomplished, did he cut it. It was said he offered up some of the captives to his small son, to be pierced with a child's arrows and darts. But he never forced himself, nor any Batavian, to swear the oath to Gaul — trusting instead in German strength, and, should it come to a contest with the Gauls over supremacy, confident in his own greater fame and standing. Munius Lupercus, a legionary commander, was sent as a gift, among other offerings, to Veleda. She was a virgin of the Bructeri who held wide sway, by the old German custom of regarding many women as prophetic and, as superstition grew, even as goddesses. Veleda's authority was then at its height, for she had foretold both German success and the destruction of the legions. But Lupercus was killed on the way. A few centurions and tribunes born in Gaul were kept back as pledges of the alliance. The winter camps of the auxiliary cohorts, cavalry wings, and legions were torn down and burned, all but those at Mainz and Windisch.

65| The Sixteenth Legion, along with the auxiliaries who had surrendered with it, was ordered to move from Novaesium to the colony of the Treveri, with a fixed day set by which it had to be out of camp. They spent the whole intervening time in various kinds of anguish. The most cowardly among them, remembering the slaughter at Vetera, were afraid; the better men felt shame and disgrace. What kind of march was this? Who would lead the way? Everything now lay in the hands of men they themselves had made masters of their life and death. Some, with no thought for their dignity, packed up money or whatever they held most dear; others got their weapons ready, arming themselves as if for battle. While they brooded on all this, the hour of departure arrived, grimmer than anything they had imagined — for behind the rampart their disgrace had not been so plain to see, but the open field and daylight exposed the shame fully. The images of the emperors were torn down, the standards stripped of honor, while the banners of the Gauls flashed on every side. Without a sound the column moved, resembling nothing so much as a lengthy funeral cortege. Their leader, Claudius Sanctus, was missing an eye — his stern face rendered still grimmer by a dull mind. The disgrace doubled when the men from the abandoned camp at Bonn merged with this legion. And once word spread that the legions had been captured, everyone who not long before had trembled at the name of Rome came pouring out of the fields and houses, gathering from every direction to gorge themselves on this unfamiliar spectacle. The Picentine cavalry wing could not stomach the crowd's gloating and, ignoring both Sanctus's promises and his threats, rode off to Mainz. There they happened to run into Longinus, the killer of Vocula, and by hurling their spears at him made a start — for the future — at working off their guilt. The legions changed their route not at all, and made camp before the walls of the Treveri.

66| Civilis and Classicus, elated by their successes, debated whether to let their armies plunder the colony of Cologne. Their savage tempers and greed for loot pulled them toward destroying the city; against that stood military calculation, and, for men just starting a new regime, the value of a reputation for mercy. Civilis, too, was swayed by remembering a kindness done him — for at the very start of the uprising his son had been seized in Cologne and kept there in honorable custody. But the tribes across the Rhine hated the city for its wealth and growth, and thought the war could end no other way than by throwing that settlement open to all Germans, or, failing that, by scattering it and driving out the Ubii as well.

67| So the Tencteri, a people separated from Cologne by the Rhine, sent envoys with instructions to be read out before the city's council. The fiercest of the envoys delivered them in these words: 'We thank the gods we hold in common, and above all Mars, chief of the gods, that you have returned to the body and the name of Germany, and we congratulate you that at last you will be free among free peoples. Until this day the Romans had somehow shut off rivers, land, and even the sky itself, to keep us from meeting and talking together — or, what is more insulting to men born for war, made us come together unarmed and all but stripped, under guard and for a price. But so that our friendship and alliance may stand forever, we demand that you tear down the walls of your colony, those fortifications of slavery — even wild animals forget their courage if you keep them penned up — and that you kill every Roman within your borders: freedom and masters do not mix easily. Let the property of the slain be pooled in common, so no one can hide anything away or look after his own interest alone. Let both of us, you and we, be free to live on either bank, as our ancestors once did. Just as nature opened light and day to all men alike, so she opened every land to brave men. Take back the customs and ways of your fathers, and cut yourselves off from the pleasures by which the Romans hold power over their subjects more than by force of arms. A people pure, untainted, and free of the memory of servitude will either live as equals or rule over others.'

68| The people of Cologne took time to deliberate, since fear of what might come kept them from simply submitting to the terms, while their present situation kept them from openly rejecting them either. In the end they answered like this: 'The first chance at freedom that came our way, we seized too eagerly and too little cautiously, hoping to join you and the rest of the Germans, our kinsmen. As it is, with Roman armies gathering close by, it is safer for us to strengthen our city's walls than to tear them down. If there were any foreigners among us from Italy or the provinces, the war has already used them up, or each has fled back to his own home. This is the homeland now of those who settled here long ago and were joined to us by marriage, and of their children born since. We do not think you so unjust as to want us to kill our own parents, brothers, and children. We are lifting the tax and the burdens on trade: let crossings be unguarded, but only by day and unarmed, until new and still-fresh arrangements harden into settled custom over time. We will accept Civilis and Veleda as arbiters, and before them our agreement will be sealed.' So the Tencteri were won over, and envoys were sent to Civilis and Veleda bearing gifts, and they carried out everything exactly as Cologne wished. But they were not allowed to approach Veleda or speak with her face to face — she was kept from their sight so as to inspire more awe. She herself stayed up in a high tower; a chosen relative carried questions and answers back and forth, like a messenger between men and a god.

69| Strengthened by his alliance with Cologne, Civilis decided to win over the neighboring peoples, or make war on any who resisted. He occupied the territory of the Sunuci and organized their young men into cohorts. Claudius Labeo tried to stop him going any further, with a scratch force of Baetasii, Tungri, and Nervii, relying on his position, since he had already seized the bridge over the Meuse. The fighting in that narrow ground went back and forth until Germans swam across and struck Labeo from behind. At the same moment Civilis — whether on impulse or by arrangement, it is unclear — rode in among the Tungrian ranks and called out: 'We did not take up this war so that the Batavi and Treveri could rule over other peoples — such arrogance is far from us. Accept our alliance: I am coming over to your side, whether you want me as your commander or as an ordinary soldier.' The crowd wavered and began sheathing their swords, when Campanus and Iuvenalis, leading men of the Tungri, surrendered the whole people to him. Labeo fled before he could be surrounded. Civilis took the Baetasii and Nervii into his good graces as well and added them to his own forces — his power now immense, since the spirit of these peoples was either already broken or bending willingly.

70| Meanwhile Julius Sabinus threw away every record of the treaty with Rome and had himself hailed as Caesar. He swept a huge, disorganized mass of his countrymen into the territory of the Sequani, a neighboring people loyal to us, and the Sequani did not shrink from the fight. Fortune favored the better side: the Lingones were routed. Sabinus abandoned the battle, fought rashly and in haste, gripped by the same panic as his men, and to spread word of his own death he burned down the villa he had fled to, so that people would believe he had died there by his own hand. By what tricks and hiding places he in fact dragged out his life for the next nine years, and the remarkable loyalty of his friends, and the striking example set by his wife Epponina, we will tell in their proper place. After the Sequani's victory the momentum of the war stalled. The tribes gradually came to their senses and looked back to duty and treaty obligations, led by the Remi, who sent word throughout the Gallic provinces that envoys should be sent to a common council to decide, together, whether they wanted freedom or peace.

71| At Rome, all the news, growing steadily worse, weighed on Mucianus — worried that his commanders, outstanding though they were (he had already chosen Annius Gallus and Petilius Cerialis), might not be equal to bearing the full weight of the war. Nor could the city be left without someone in charge; and Domitian's unchecked appetites were a source of real worry, along with suspicions, as already mentioned, about Antonius Primus and Arrius Varus. Varus, in command of the Praetorians, still held real force and arms in his grip; Mucianus removed him from that post, but so he would not go without some consolation, made him prefect of the grain supply instead. And to soothe Domitian, who was not unfriendly to Varus, Mucianus put Arrecinus Clemens in command of the Praetorians — a man tied to Vespasian's household by marriage and very much in Domitian's favor — pointing out that Clemens's father had held the same post with distinction under Caligula, that the soldiers would welcome the same family name again, and that Clemens himself, though of senatorial rank, was equal to both duties. The most distinguished men of the city were recruited to the cause, along with others driven by ambition. At the same time Domitian and Mucianus were both preparing to move, though in very different spirits — Domitian eager, fired by hope and youth; Mucianus dragging his feet, looking for ways to hold back a young man burning with impatience, for fear that if he got hold of an army, his youthful recklessness, egged on by bad advisers, would handle both peace and war badly. The victorious legions — the Eighth, Eleventh, and Thirteenth, along with the Twenty-first, once Vitellius's own — were brought across, together with the newly raised Second, some over the Pennine and Cottian Alps, others by the Graian pass; from Britain came the summons for the Fourteenth Legion, while Spain sent the Sixth and the First.

72| So, hearing news of the approaching army and inclined by their own temper toward milder counsels, the Gallic tribes gathered at Reims. The Treveran delegation was already waiting there, spurred on hardest by Julius Valentinus, the fiercest advocate of war. In a carefully rehearsed speech he poured out every complaint usually leveled at great empires, along with insults and resentment against the Roman people, a man skilled at stirring up unrest and popular with the crowd for his reckless eloquence.

73| But Julius Auspex, one of the leading men of the Remi, spoke of Rome's power and the benefits of peace, arguing that war could be started even by cowards but had to be fought out at the risk of the bravest, and that the legions were already all but on top of them. By this he held back the wisest men through respect and loyalty, and the younger ones through fear of danger. People praised Valentinus's spirit, but followed Auspex's advice. It is well established that among the Gallic peoples the Treveri and Lingones were held back by the memory that they had sided with Verginius during Vindex's uprising. Rivalry among the provinces put off most of the rest as well: who would lead this war? From whom would authority and the right to take the auspices come? If everything went well, what city would they choose as the seat of empire? Before any victory was even won, discord had already set in — some boasting of their treaties, others of their wealth and manpower or the antiquity of their origins, and quarreling over it. Weariness with these prospects made the present situation seem preferable. Letters were sent to the Treveri in the name of the Gallic peoples urging them to lay down arms, with pardon easily obtainable and men ready to plead their case if they had a change of heart. Valentinus alone stood firm against this and shut his people's ears to it, less intent on actually preparing for war than on constantly haranguing public meetings.

74| So neither the Treveri nor the Lingones nor the other rebel states acted in a way that matched the scale of the danger they'd taken on; not even their leaders could agree on a common plan. Civilis was off wandering the Belgic backcountry, trying to capture or drive out Claudius Labeo. Classicus mostly drifted in idle ease, enjoying his supposed empire as if it were already won. Not even Tutor hurried to close off the upper bank of the Rhine and the mountain passes of the Alps with garrisons. Meanwhile the Twenty-First Legion broke in from Vindonissa, and Sextilius Felix with his auxiliary cohorts through Raetia, joined by the Singularian cavalry wing, once raised by Vitellius and later gone over to Vespasian's side. It was commanded by Julius Briganticus, son of Civilis's sister — and, as the bitterest hatreds are usually between close kin, he despised his uncle and was despised in turn. Tutor strengthened the Treveran forces, freshly reinforced by levies of Vangiones, Caeracates, and Triboci, with veteran infantry and cavalry, having won over the legionaries with a mix of hope and fear. These troops first killed a cohort Sextilius Felix had sent ahead; but soon, as the Roman commanders and army drew near, they deserted back with an honorable show, and the Triboci, Vangiones, and Caeracates followed them. Tutor, with the Treveri accompanying him, avoided Mainz and pulled back to Bingen, trusting the position because he'd broken the bridge over the Nahe — but he was betrayed and routed when the cohorts under Sextilius Felix charged in after finding a ford. Shaken by this defeat, the Treveri scattered, the common people throwing down their weapons and fleeing across the fields; some of the leading men, wanting to look like they'd been first to end the war, fled for refuge to states that had never broken with Rome. The legions that had been moved from Novaesium and Bonn into Treveran territory, as noted earlier, swore themselves back to Vespasian on their own initiative. All this happened while Valentinus was away. When he returned, furious, ready to plunge everything back into chaos and ruin, the legions withdrew into the territory of the Mediomatrici, an allied state. Valentinus and Tutor dragged the Treveri back into the war, killing the commanders Herennius and Numisius so that the bond of shared guilt would leave them less hope of pardon.

75| That was the state of the war when Petilius Cerialis arrived at Mainz. His coming lifted spirits. He himself was eager for battle and better at scorning the enemy than being cautious of them; his fierce talk fired up the troops, and he meant to lose no time once battle could be joined. He sent the men levied across Gaul back to their own communities, with word that the legions were enough to guard the empire: the allies could return to the tasks of peace, safe now, as if the war were already finished once Roman hands had taken it up. This move increased the Gauls' compliance — having their young men back, they bore the taxes more easily, and were readier to do their duty now that they weren't being treated with contempt. But when Civilis and Classicus heard that Tutor had been beaten, the Treveri cut down, everything going the Romans' way, they panicked and hurried to gather their scattered forces, sending Valentinus repeated warnings in the meantime not to risk everything on one throw. Cerialis moved all the faster: he sent word to the legions in Mediomatrican territory to turn against the enemy by the shorter road, gathered what troops he had at Mainz along with what he'd brought over with him, and in three days' march reached Rigodulum, where Valentinus had dug in with a large Treveran force, the position shielded by mountains and the Moselle, and further strengthened with ditches and barricades of stone. These defenses didn't stop the Roman commander from ordering his infantry to break straight through and sending his cavalry up the hill, ignoring the enemy — hastily assembled and no better served by the ground than his own men were by their courage. There was some delay in the climb while enemy missiles flew past; but once it came to close fighting, the enemy was toppled and sent tumbling down like a collapsing wall. And part of the cavalry, riding round by gentler slopes, captured the noblest of the Belgae, including their leader Valentinus.

76| The next day Cerialis entered the Treveran capital, his soldiers eager to raze the town. This, they said, was the home of Classicus and of Tutor; it was their crime that had trapped and slaughtered the legions. What had Cremona done to deserve worse — Cremona, torn from Italy's own bosom, simply for having cost the victors one night's delay? Yet here stood this place, untouched, on the very border of Germany, gloating over the spoils of Roman armies and the massacre of their commanders. Let the plunder go to the treasury, they said — they themselves would be satisfied with fire, and with the ruin of this rebel colony, to make up for the destruction of so many camps. Cerialis, fearing the disgrace of being thought to let his men run wild in savagery, held back his anger — and they obeyed, now that the war against fellow citizens was over, more restrained when the enemy was foreign. Then their attention turned to the pitiable sight of the legions summoned back from the Mediomatrici. They stood there, weighed down by the shame of their own disgrace, eyes fixed on the ground; there was no exchange of greetings as the armies came together, and they gave no answer to those who tried to comfort or encourage them, but hid in their tents, avoiding even the daylight. It wasn't danger or fear that had stunned them so much as shame and humiliation — the victors themselves were struck silent too, not daring to speak or plead on their behalf, begging forgiveness only with tears and silence. At last Cerialis calmed their spirits, telling them that what had happened through the discord of soldiers and commanders, or through the enemy's treachery, should be blamed on fate. Let them count this as the first day of their service and their oath; of their earlier crimes, neither the emperor nor he himself would remember a thing. They were then taken back into the same camp, and an order went round the ranks that no one, in quarrel or dispute, was to throw a comrade's shame or disaster in his face.

77| Soon after, having called an assembly of the Treveri and Lingones, he spoke to them like this: 'I have never made a show of eloquence, and I've backed the greatness of the Roman people with arms rather than words — but since among you words carry the most weight, and good and bad are judged not by their own nature but by the voices of troublemakers, I've decided to say a few things which, now the war is nearly beaten, it will do you more good to hear than it does me to say. Roman generals and emperors entered your land and the rest of Gaul not out of any greed, but because your own ancestors called them in — worn down as they were by internal quarrels to the point of ruin, and because the Germans, summoned in to help, had imposed servitude on ally and enemy alike, without distinction. How many battles we fought against the Cimbri and Teutones, how great the toil of our armies, and with what outcome we carried on the German wars — that's well known enough. We didn't settle on the Rhine to protect Italy, but so that no second Ariovistus could seize control of the kingdom of the Gauls. Do you really believe you're dearer to Civilis and the Batavians and the tribes across the Rhine than your fathers and grandfathers were to their ancestors? The reason Germans have always crossed into Gaul is the same: appetite, greed, and the itch to change their homeland — to leave behind their own swamps and wastelands and take possession of this rich soil, and of you along with it. Freedom and fine-sounding names are just the pretext; no one has ever wanted to enslave and rule over others without wrapping it in exactly those same words.'

78| 'Kingdoms and wars were the constant condition of Gaul until you came under our authority. We, though provoked time and again, have used our right as victors to impose on you only what was needed to preserve the peace — for nations cannot be kept quiet without arms, arms cannot be kept up without pay, and pay cannot be raised without taxes: everything else you share equally with us. You yourselves very often command our legions, you yourselves govern these and other provinces; nothing is set apart or closed off to you. And you benefit just as much from good emperors even when you live far away, while it's those nearby who suffer under cruel ones. Just as you put up with drought or excessive rain or other natural evils, so too you must put up with the extravagance or greed of those who rule — such faults will exist as long as there are men, but they aren't constant, and they're balanced out when better men come along. Unless perhaps you imagine that under the rule of Tutor and Classicus you'd have a gentler government, or that smaller taxes than now would raise the armies needed to keep out the Germans and the Britons? Because if the Romans were driven out — which the gods forbid — what else would follow except wars among every nation against every other? The good fortune and discipline of eight hundred years have built up this structure, and it cannot be torn apart without ruining those who tear it. And the greatest danger falls on you, in whose hands lie the gold and the wealth — the chief causes of wars. So love and cherish the peace, and the city, which conquered and conquerors alike hold by the same right; let the lessons of both kinds of fortune warn you not to prefer defiance and ruin over obedience and safety.' With this speech he calmed and encouraged men who had feared much worse.

79| The Treveri were being held in check by the victorious army when Civilis and Classicus sent Cerialis letters, the gist of which was this: Vespasian, though they were suppressing the news, had died; Rome and Italy were being consumed by civil war; the names of Mucianus and Domitian were empty and powerless. If Cerialis wanted the rule of the Gauls for himself, they said, they would be content to stay within the borders of their own states; if he preferred battle, they wouldn't refuse that either. Cerialis gave Civilis and Classicus no answer at all; instead he sent the man who had carried the letters, along with the letters themselves, straight to Domitian.

80| The enemy came on from every side, their forces split up. Many blamed Cerialis for letting them join together when he could have caught them apart and cut them off. The Roman army surrounded its camp with a ditch and rampart, where before it had recklessly settled in without defenses.

81| Among the Germans opinions clashed. Civilis preferred to hold off until the tribes beyond the Rhine arrived, reckoning that the sheer terror they inspired would by itself the sheer terror they inspired would break and grind down the strength of the Roman people—for what were the Gauls, after all, but plunder waiting for the victors? And yet whatever real strength existed lay with the Belgae, who stood with them openly or in sympathy. Tutor argued that delay only let Rome grow stronger, as armies converged from every side: a legion had crossed from Britain, troops had been summoned from Spain, more were coming from Italy—and these were not raw recruits but veterans tested in war. As for the Germans they themselves hoped for, they took no orders, obeyed no commander, did everything on a whim; and money and gifts, the only things that could buy them, were on offer in greater amounts from Rome, and no man was so eager for battle that he wouldn't prefer the price of staying quiet to the price of danger. And if they engaged now, Cerialis had nothing but the remnants of the German army's legions, bound by treaties to the Gauls. The very fact that they had just routed Valentinus's disorganized band beyond their own expectation would only feed their recklessness and their commander's rashness: they would dare again, and this time run into the hands not of some green boy who rehearsed speeches and assemblies rather than iron and battle, but of Civilis and Classicus themselves—men whose mere sight would bring back into their hearts the old fear, the flight, the hunger, the precarious survival of men so often captured. Nor were the Treveri or the Lingones held by loyalty; they would take up arms again the moment fear lifted. Classicus ended the disagreement by backing Tutor's view, and they acted on it at once.

82| The center of the line was given to the Ubii and Lingones; on the right wing the Batavian cohorts, on the left the Bructeri and Tencteri. Some came down from the hills; others through the ground between the road and the river Moselle, and the attack fell so fast that Cerialis, who happened not to be sleeping in camp that night, learned from his own bed and bedchamber that his men were already fighting and already losing. At first he scolded the messengers as panic-mongers, until the full disaster came into view before him: the legions' camp broken into, the cavalry scattered, and the bridge over the Moselle, which linked the far bank to the colony, seized by the enemy. Undaunted amid the chaos, Cerialis grabbed fleeing men and hauled them back, exposed his body freely among the missiles, and by reckless luck and the rush of every brave man to his side, won back the bridge and held it with a picked force. Returning then to camp, he found the maniples of the legions lost at Novaesium and Bonn scattered and demoralized, few soldiers left at the standards, the eagles nearly surrounded. Burning with anger he cried: 'It's not Flaccus you're abandoning, not Vocula—there's no treachery here. I have no excuse to offer except that I foolishly believed you had forgotten your pact with the Gauls and remembered your oath to Rome. Count me among the Numisii and the Herennii, so that every one of your commanders falls either by his own men's hands or the enemy's. Go on, tell Vespasian—or tell Civilis and Classicus, since they're closer—that you left your commander on the battlefield. Legions will come that will see me avenged and you punished.'

83| It was all true, and the tribunes and prefects hammered the same point home. The men formed up by cohort and maniple; the line couldn't spread out, since the enemy was pouring in and the tents and baggage were in the way—the fighting was happening inside the rampart itself. Tutor, Classicus, and Civilis each drove the battle forward in their own sector, urging on the Gauls with the cause of freedom, the Batavians with glory, the Germans with plunder. And everything favored the enemy, until the Twenty-First Legion, massed together in a stretch of ground more open than the rest, held the charge and then threw it back. Not without something like divine help, the victors' spirits suddenly broke and they turned and ran. They themselves later said they had panicked at the sight of some cohorts which, scattered at the first onset, had regrouped on the high ridges and looked like fresh reinforcements arriving. But what really stopped the winning side was a shameful rivalry among themselves, abandoning the enemy to chase after loot. Cerialis, whose carelessness had nearly ruined everything, restored it by sheer resolve; and pressing his luck, he captured and destroyed the enemy camp that same day.

84| The troops got no rest for long. The people of Cologne begged for help and offered up Civilis's wife and sister and Classicus's daughter, hostages left in their keeping as pledges of alliance. Meanwhile they had already massacred the Germans scattered through their houses—hence their fear, and the urgency of their pleas, made before the enemy could regroup and turn to hope or revenge. For Civilis had indeed been heading that way, and not weakly, with the fiercest of his cohorts still intact, a unit made up of Chauci and Frisii stationed at Tolbiacum on the borders of Cologne's territory; but grim news turned him aside—that cohort had been wiped out by a trick of the Cologne people, who got the Germans drunk on lavish food and wine, then shut the doors and set the place on fire; Cerialis, meanwhile, came to their aid with a forced march. Another fear surrounded Civilis: that the Fourteenth Legion, joined by the British fleet, might strike the Batavians where the ocean surrounds their land. But the legion's commander Fabius Priscus led it overland instead against the Nervii and Tungri, and those peoples were received in surrender; the fleet, meanwhile, was attacked unprovoked by the Canninefates, who sank or captured most of its ships. The same Canninefates also routed a large body of Nervii who had risen up on their own to fight for Rome. Classicus too won a small victory over the cavalry Cerialis had sent ahead to Novaesium: these were modest but frequent losses, and they were tearing at the fresh glow of the victory just won.

85| In those same days Mucianus ordered Vitellius's son killed, claiming that discord would linger on unless he stamped out the seeds of war. Nor did he let Domitian bring Antonius Primus into his inner circle, anxious as he was over the soldiers' favor for the man and his arrogance—Primus was intolerant even of his equals, let alone his superiors. When Antonius went to Vespasian, he was received neither as warmly as he'd hoped nor with open hostility. Vespasian was pulled two ways: on one side by Antonius's service, since it was under his leadership beyond doubt that the war had been finished; on the other by Mucianus's letters. And everyone else attacked Antonius too, as dangerous and swollen with pride, piling on the charges of his earlier life. Antonius himself did nothing to help, provoking resentment through sheer arrogance, endlessly reminding people of what he'd earned, sneering at others as unwarlike and at Caecina as a captive and a turncoat. So little by little he came to be thought less of and valued less, though a show of friendship was kept up on the surface.

86| During the months when Vespasian was waiting at Alexandria for the fixed season of summer winds and settled seas, many marvels occurred, seeming to show heaven's favor and a certain leaning of the gods toward him. A man of the Alexandrian common people, known for his wasted eyes, fell at his knees begging with groans for a cure for his blindness, on the instruction of the god Serapis, whom this superstition-steeped people worships above all others; he asked the emperor to deign to moisten his cheeks and eye sockets with his spit. Another man, with a crippled hand, asked, on the same god's prompting, that Caesar tread on it with his foot. Vespasian at first laughed it off and refused; then, as they kept pressing, he grew afraid of being mocked for vanity, and at other moments was drawn toward hope by their pleading and the flattering voices around him. Finally he ordered doctors to judge whether such blindness and such lameness could be overcome by human means. The doctors weighed it out: in the blind man's case, sight itself hadn't been destroyed and would come back once whatever blocked it was cleared; in the other, the joint had merely slipped from its proper place and could be made whole again if a healing force were applied. Perhaps, they said, this was the gods' pleasure, and the emperor had been chosen as heaven's instrument; in any case, if the cure worked, the glory would go to Caesar, and if it failed, the mockery would fall only on the poor wretches. So Vespasian, thinking that everything now lay open to his fortune and that nothing was too incredible anymore, put on a cheerful face before the expectant crowd and did as he was told. At once the hand recovered its use, and light returned to the blind man's eyes. Both events are still told today by people who were there, now that there's no reward left in lying about it.

87| From there Vespasian felt a stronger urge to visit the sacred shrine, to consult it about the state of the empire, and he ordered everyone kept out of the temple. Once inside, absorbed in prayer to the god, he glanced back and saw, among the leading Egyptians, a man named Basilides—a man he knew for certain was laid up by sickness, several days' journey from Alexandria. He questioned the priests on whether Basilides had come into the temple that day; he questioned everyone he met on whether the man had been spotted anywhere in the city; and at last he dispatched horsemen, who confirmed that at that same hour Basilides had been eighty miles distant. Then he took it as a divine vision, then he took it as a divine apparition, and read the force of the oracle in the name Basilides itself.

88| The god's origin has not yet been treated by our own writers. The priests of Egypt tell it this way. King Ptolemy, the first of the Macedonians to put Egypt's wealth on a firm footing, was adding walls, temples, and cults to his newly founded Alexandria when, in a dream, a young man of extraordinary beauty and more than human stature appeared to him. The figure told him to send his most trusted friends to Pontus and fetch his image from there; this would bring good fortune to the kingdom, and the place that received it would become great and famous. In the same vision he saw the young man borne up into the sky in a blaze of fire. Shaken by the omen and the marvel, Ptolemy laid the night's visions before the Egyptian priests, whose business it was to interpret such things. Since they knew little of Pontus or foreign lands, he turned to Timotheus, an Athenian of the Eumolpid clan, whom he had brought from Eleusis to oversee the sacred rites, and asked him what that cult was, what god it belonged to. Timotheus questioned men who had traveled to Pontus and learned that there was a city there called Sinope, and near it an old temple which the local people, by long tradition, held sacred to Jupiter Dis; a female figure stood beside the god, whom most called Proserpina. But Ptolemy, like most kings, was quick to fear and, once the fear passed, more inclined to pleasure than to religion. He let the matter slide and turned his mind to other business, until the same vision came again, more terrifying and more insistent now, threatening ruin to him and his kingdom unless his orders were carried out. He then ordered envoys and gifts prepared for King Scydrothemis, who ruled Sinope at the time, and instructed them, before sailing, to consult the Pythian Apollo. They had a smooth crossing, and the oracle's answer left no doubt: go, bring back the image of his father, and leave his sister behind.

89| When they reached Sinope, they laid their king's gifts, requests, and instructions before Scydrothemis. He wavered for a long time, torn between fear of the god and fear of his own people's hostile threats; often the envoys' gifts and promises nearly won him over. Three years passed, and still Ptolemy did not let up his effort or his pleading: he raised the rank of his envoys, the number of his ships, the weight of his gold. Then a menacing vision appeared to Scydrothemis, warning him not to delay any longer what the god had decreed. As he still hesitated, disasters and sicknesses of every kind, and the unmistakable anger of heaven, wore him down more each day. He called an assembly and laid out the god's commands, the visions he and Ptolemy had shared, and the misfortunes closing in on him. The common people turned against their king, resenting Egypt, fearing for themselves, and surrounded the temple. A grander version of the story that has come down to us holds that the god himself, of his own will, boarded the ships waiting at the shore. Strange to report, though the crossing was a long one, they reached Alexandria on the third day. A temple was built to match the greatness of the city, on a site called Rhacotis, where an old shrine to Serapis and Isis had stood since ancient times. This is the most widely told account of the god's origin and arrival. I am not unaware that some say he was brought instead from Seleucia in Syria, in the reign of the third Ptolemy; others name the same Ptolemy as the one responsible, but say his starting point was Memphis, once famous and the pride of ancient Egypt. As for the god himself, many take him for Aesculapius, since he heals the sick; some for Osiris, the oldest god of that people; most for Jupiter, as ruler of all things; but the majority take him for Father Dis, going by the emblems plainly visible on his image, or by inference where they are not.

90| Before Domitian and Mucianus drew near the Alps, they received news of successful operations in the territory of the Treviri. The clearest proof of the victory was Valentinus, the enemy leader, who showed in his face, far from any broken spirit, the same defiance he had always carried. He was granted a hearing only so his character could be seen for what it was; and when he was condemned, and someone taunted him with the fall of his homeland, and during the execution itself someone taunted him with the fall of his homeland, he answered that he took that as a consolation for his own death. Mucianus, meanwhile, brought out at last a plan he had long kept hidden. Since the enemy's strength, he said, had been broken by the kindness of the gods, it would hardly be fitting for Domitian to step in now, with the war all but finished, and claim credit that belonged to another. If the stability of the empire, or the safety of the Gallic provinces, had truly hung in the balance, then Caesar ought to have taken his place in the battle line, leaving the Canninefates and the Batavians to lesser commanders; as it was, he could better display the power and fortune of his position from close by, at Lugdunum, without exposing himself to small risks while still being ready for the greater ones.

91| The scheme was plain enough, but part of playing along lay in not letting it show; so they went on to Lugdunum. From there, it is believed, Domitian sent secret messages to Cerialis to test his loyalty—whether he would hand over his army and command to him in person, should he appear. Whether this scheme aimed at war against his father, or at gathering strength and resources against his brother, remained unclear; Cerialis, with prudent restraint, brushed it off as the idle wish of a boy playing at grown-up ambitions. Domitian, seeing that his youth was dismissed by his elders, gave up even the modest duties of command he had previously taken on, burying himself deep behind a show of simplicity and restraint, feigning devotion to literature and a love of poetry, to mask his real intentions and remove himself from rivalry with his brother—whose gentler, milder nature he read, in his own mind, as something quite different.

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