Tacitus · a new plain-English translation from the original language
1| At the start of that same year, Titus Caesar, chosen by his father to complete the conquest of Judea and already distinguished by his own service before that, now operated with greater force and greater fame, as the provinces and armies vied to win his favor. He himself, wanting to be thought greater than his fortune, made a show of looking sharp and ready under arms, winning devotion through friendliness and easy talk, often mixing with the common soldiers at work or on the march, all without cheapening his rank as commander. Three legions received him in Judea — the Fifth, the Tenth, and the Fifteenth, veterans of Vespasian's army. He added the Twelfth from Syria, and men of the Twenty-Second and the Third brought from Alexandria. With him marched twenty allied cohorts, eight cavalry wings, the kings Agrippa and Sohaemus, auxiliaries from King Antiochus, and a strong band of Arabs, hostile to the Jews with the usual hatred of neighbors. Many others came from Rome and Italy, each drawn by hope of getting close to a prince whose favor was still up for grabs. With these forces he crossed into enemy territory in tight formation, scouting everything, ready for battle, and made camp not far from Jerusalem.
2| But since we are about to tell of that famous city's last day, it seems right to first open up its origins.
3| Some say the Jews were refugees from Crete who settled the far edge of Libya, in the age when Saturn was driven from his kingdom by the force of Jupiter — an argument they draw from the name: Crete's famous Mount Ida, whose inhabitants, the Idaei, had their name barbarized into Judaei. Others say that under Isis's reign, Egypt's overflowing population was unloaded into neighboring lands under the leaders Hierosolymus and Judas. Many hold them for children of Ethiopia, driven from their homes by fear and hatred under King Cepheus. Still others claim they were a mixed Assyrian people, landless, who seized part of Egypt before settling their own cities and Hebrew lands and the country nearer Syria. Others give the Jews a more distinguished origin: the Solymi, a people celebrated in Homer's poems, who founded a city and named it Hierosolyma after themselves.
4| Most authors agree on this: a plague broke out across Egypt that disfigured bodies, and King Bocchoris, seeking a cure at the oracle of Ammon, was told to purge his kingdom and cart off this race, hateful to the gods, into other lands. So this crowd was rounded up and gathered, and once abandoned in the wasteland, while the rest sat helpless in tears, one exile, Moses, urged them to expect no help from gods or men, since both had abandoned them, but to trust in a leader sent from heaven — himself, since his aid had already ended their present misery. They agreed, and, knowing nothing of where they were, set out at random. Nothing wore them down like thirst, and they had already collapsed across the plains, close to death, when a herd of wild asses left their pasture and made for a rock shaded by trees. Moses followed them and, guessing from the green ground, uncovered rich veins of water. That was their relief; and after marching six days straight, on the seventh they drove out the inhabitants and took the land, in which they built their city and consecrated their temple.
5| To bind the people to himself for the future, Moses gave them new rites, the opposite of everyone else's. What we hold sacred, they treat as profane; what is forbidden to us, they allow. In their innermost shrine they set up the image of the animal that had led them out of their wandering and their thirst, and they sacrifice a ram, as if to insult Ammon; they sacrifice a bull too, since the Egyptians worship Apis. They avoid pork, remembering a plague of scabs that once disfigured them, an affliction that animal carries. They still confess to a long-ago famine through their frequent fasts, and their bread, made without leaven, is a lasting reminder of the grain they seized in haste. They say they chose to rest on the seventh day because it ended their toils; then, tempted further by idleness, they gave over a whole seventh year to laziness as well. Others say the honor belongs to Saturn, either because the Idaei, whom we take to have been driven out along with Saturn and to have founded this people, passed down the first principles of the religion, or because of the seven stars that govern human affairs, Saturn's star moves in the highest orbit with the greatest power, and most heavenly bodies complete their courses in cycles of seven.
6| Whatever their origin, these rites are defended by their age. But their other customs are sinister, filthy, and have spread through sheer depravity. The worst sort of people, scorning their ancestral religions, poured tribute and gifts there, swelling Jewish wealth — and besides, the Jews are stubbornly loyal to one another, quick to pity their own, but they hold a hostile hatred for everyone else. They eat apart, sleep apart, and though as a people utterly given to lust, they abstain from sex with foreign women; among themselves nothing is forbidden. They adopted circumcision so as to be known by their difference. Converts to their ways take up the same practice, and the first things they're taught are to despise the gods, renounce their country, and hold their parents, children, and brothers cheap. Still, they take care to increase their numbers: it is a crime among them to kill any child born to them, and a soul lost in war or on the executioner's block, so they believe, does not perish but lives forever — hence their love of having children and their contempt for death. They bury rather than burn their dead, following Egyptian custom, and share the Egyptian concern and belief about the underworld, though their view of the heavens is the opposite. The Egyptians worship many animals and manufactured images; the Jews conceive of only one god, and that with the mind alone. They call it profane to make images of god in human form out of perishable material; that supreme and eternal being, they hold, can neither be portrayed nor destroyed. So they set up no statues in their cities, much less in their temples; they grant no such flattery to their kings, no such honor to the Caesars. But their priests played on pipe and drum and wore ivy crowns, and once a golden vine turned up in their temple — from which some have guessed the god they worship is Father Liber, conqueror of the East — though nothing else about their practices fits, since Liber established joyful, festive rites, while the Jewish custom is grim and squalid.
7| The land and its borders: to the east it is bounded by Arabia, to the south lies Egypt, to the west Phoenicia and the sea, and to the north it looks out across a long stretch of Syria. The people are healthy in body and able to bear hard labor. Rain is scarce, the soil rich: it yields our own crops in abundance, and besides these, balsam and palms. The palms are tall and handsome; the balsam is a modest tree — when a branch swells and you cut into it with iron, the sap-veins shrink back in fear, so it must be opened with a stone chip or a shard of pottery; the sap is used in medicine. The chief of the mountains, Lebanon, rises remarkably, keeping its shade and its snow faithfully even amid such heat; it also feeds and pours out the river Jordan. The Jordan does not flow into the sea but passes whole through one lake and then another, and is finally swallowed by a third. That lake, of vast circumference and resembling a sea, has a foul taste, and its heavy stench is harmful to those living nearby; it is never stirred by wind, and it supports neither fish nor the birds accustomed to water. Sluggish waves carry anything thrown on them as if it were solid ground; those who can swim and those who cannot are held up just the same. At a certain season it gives up bitumen, and the skill of gathering it, like every other craft, was learned by experience. The substance is naturally black and floats when vinegar is sprinkled on it; men whose task this is catch it by hand and haul it onto the deck, where it flows in on its own and weighs the boat down until you cut it loose — and it cannot be cut with bronze or iron, for it shrinks from anything stained with blood, even the blood women shed each month. So the old writers tell it; but those who actually know the region say that the floating masses of bitumen are driven by hand to shore, and once dried by the heat of the earth and the force of the sun, are split like timber or stone with axes and wedges.
8| Not far from there lie plains said once to have been fertile and covered with great cities, until they were burned by a stroke of lightning; traces remain, they say, and the soil itself, scorched in appearance, has lost its power to bear fruit. Whatever grows there on its own or is planted by hand, whether it rises only to grass or flower or reaches its usual full form, turns black and hollow, crumbling away like ash. For my part, I would grant that these once-famous cities burned by fire from heaven, but I think it is the lake's own vapor that poisons the ground, corrupting the air above it, and that this is why the crops and the autumn harvest rot, since both soil and sky alike carry the same sickness. The river Belus also flows into the Jewish sea; around its mouth fine sand is gathered and, mixed with soda, smelted into glass. The stretch of shore that yields it is small, but it never runs dry no matter how much is taken.
9| Most of Judea is scattered with villages, though it also has towns; Jerusalem is the capital of the nation. There stands a temple of immense wealth. The city itself is protected by an outer ring of fortifications, then the royal palace, and the temple enclosed within the innermost walls. Only Jews may approach its doors; the threshold itself is barred to all but priests. While the East belonged to the Assyrians, Medes, and Persians, no subject people was held in lower regard. After the Macedonians rose to power, King Antiochus tried to strip away their superstition and bring in Greek customs, and might well have reformed this thoroughly repellent nation for the better, had he not been stopped by war with the Parthians, since Arsaces had just then broken away. With the Macedonians weakened and the Parthians not yet grown strong — and Rome still far off — the Jews set up kings of their own. These kings, driven out by the fickleness of the mob, seized back power by force, and dared everything typical of kings: exiling citizens, tearing down cities, murdering brothers, wives, and parents. All the while they encouraged the old superstition, since holding the priesthood gave their power its foundation.
10| The first Roman to subdue the Jews was Gnaeus Pompey. Conquest gave him the right of entry into their temple, and that is the source of the tale that no divine image stood within — just an empty room, nothing worth calling a secret. Jerusalem's walls came down, though the shrine was spared. Later, in the course of our civil wars, after the province had passed under Mark Antony's control, the Parthian king Pacorus took Judea for himself, only to be killed by Ventidius, and the Parthians were pushed back across the Euphrates. It was Gaius Sosius who broke the Jews' resistance. Herod received the kingdom from Antony, and Augustus, once he had won out, made it larger still. After Herod's death, a certain Simon, without waiting to see what Caesar would decide, seized the royal title. He was punished by Quintilius Varus, governor of Syria, and the nation, brought back under control, was ruled by Herod's three sons together. Under Tiberius things were quiet. Then, ordered by Gaius Caesar to set up his statue in the temple, the Jews took up arms instead — and only Caesar's death called off that crisis. Once the line of kings had died out or been cut down to size, Claudius handed Judea over as a province to Roman knights or freedmen to govern. One of these, Antonius Felix, exercised royal power with a slave's instincts, indulging every cruelty and lust — he had married Drusilla, granddaughter of Cleopatra and Antony, which made Felix, oddly enough, the grandson-in-law of the same Antony whose grandson Claudius was.
11| The Jews' patience held out until Gessius Florus became procurator. Under him the war broke out. Cestius Gallus, governor of Syria, tried to put it down but met with a string of battles, mostly losses. When he died — fate or exhaustion, take your pick — Nero sent Vespasian, who with luck, reputation, and excellent officers had, within two summers, brought the whole open country and every city but Jerusalem under his army's control. The next year was taken up with civil war, and as far as the Jews were concerned it passed quietly. Once peace was restored in Italy, attention returned to foreign matters, and anger grew sharper at the thought that the Jews alone had not submitted. At the same time it seemed useful, given how uncertain any new reign could be, for Titus to remain with the army.
12| So, camp pitched before the walls of Jerusalem as already mentioned, Titus put his legions on display in battle order. The Jews formed their line right up against the walls, ready to press further if things went well, and with a safe retreat if they were pushed back. Cavalry with light infantry were sent against them and fought an uncertain engagement; the enemy soon gave ground, and over the following days kept up frequent skirmishes before the gates, until steady losses drove them back inside the walls for good. The Romans turned to a siege — it seemed beneath them to simply wait the enemy out with hunger, and the men wanted the danger, some out of genuine courage, many out of aggression and hunger for plunder. Titus himself had Rome, its wealth and pleasures, before his eyes, and any delay before Jerusalem fell felt like time stolen from him. But the city's position was formidable, and its fortifications strong enough to have made even flat ground defensible. Two enormously high hills were enclosed by walls built with real skill, angled or curving inward so that any attacker's flank was exposed to fire. The cliff edges were sheer, and towers rose sixty feet where the mountain already helped, and up to a hundred and twenty where the ground fell away — a striking sight, and from a distance they looked all the same height. Inside stood another ring of walls around the royal palace, and towering over it all, the Antonia fortress, named by Herod in honor of Mark Antony.
13| The temple itself was built like a citadel, with its own walls, worked and fortified with more effort than anywhere else; even the colonnades that ran around it made a formidable defensive line on their own. There was a spring that never ran dry, mountains hollowed out underground, and pools and cisterns to store rainwater. The founders had foreseen, from the very nature of a people so different from their neighbors, that wars would be frequent, so everything was built to withstand a long siege. What Pompey's conquest taught them, both from fear and from practical need, shaped most of it. And by buying, through the greed of Claudius's officials, the right to fortify, they built walls in peacetime as if for war — strengthened by the great flood of refugees swelling their numbers as other cities fell, since every diehard had fled there, which only made them more prone to internal strife. Three leaders, three armies: Simon held the outer and largest stretch of the walls, John — also called Bargioras — held the middle of the city, and Eleazar had fortified the temple. In numbers and weapons John and Simon had the advantage; Eleazar had position. But between themselves there was fighting, treachery, fires, and a great store of grain burned to ash. Eventually John, sending men in under the pretense of offering sacrifice, had Eleazar and his men cut down, and took the temple for himself. So the city split into two factions, until the approach of the Romans forced an external war to produce internal peace.
14| Portents had occurred which this people — bound to superstition, hostile to religion — considered it unlawful to appease with sacrifice or vow. Armies were seen clashing in the sky, weapons flashing red, and the temple suddenly lit by fire from the clouds. The doors of the shrine flew open on their own, and a voice greater than human was heard saying the gods were leaving — and at the same moment came a great rush of departure. Few read this as a warning; most were convinced that ancient priestly writings held a prophecy that at that very time the East would grow strong, and men setting out from Judea would rule the world. This riddle had actually foretold Vespasian and Titus. But the common people, as people tend to do, twisted so great a destiny to fit their own hopes, and not even disaster could shake them from believing it. We are told the besieged numbered six hundred thousand of every age and both sexes; all who could bear arms did, and more were willing than their numbers would suggest. Men and women showed the same stubborn resolve — if forced to leave their homes, they feared that more than death itself. Against this city and this people, Caesar Titus, since neither a swift assault nor sudden action suited the ground, decided to fight it out with earthworks and siege-sheds. The legions split the work between them, and the fighting eased off until every device ever devised for taking cities, old or newly invented, had been brought to bear.
15| Meanwhile Civilis, after his defeat among the Treveri, rebuilt his army from across Germany and made camp at Vetera, a position that was safe in itself and also let the memory of past success there swell the confidence of his barbarian troops. Cerialis followed him to that same position; the Second, Thirteenth, and Fourteenth legions had now joined him, doubling his strength, and the auxiliary cohorts and cavalry wings summoned earlier had likewise hurried up once the victory was won. Neither commander was inclined to delay, but the sheer breadth of the naturally waterlogged plain held them back. Civilis had added to this by building an angled dam into the Rhine, which threw the river back to flood the surrounding land. The ground, treacherous with uncertain shallows, favored them and worked against us — the Roman soldier, weighed down by arms and no swimmer, was at a disadvantage, while the Germans, used to rivers, were helped by their light equipment and tall frames.
16| So when the Batavians provoked them, our fiercest men rushed into the fight, and confusion followed as horses and weapons sank into the deep marsh. The Germans, knowing the shallows, bounded across them, mostly bypassing the front line to circle round the flanks and rear. This was nothing like an infantry battle fought face to face — men drifted through the water as if in a naval fight, or, where solid ground turned up, threw their whole weight into the struggle there; wounded men tangled with the unhurt, swimmers with those who couldn't swim, dragging each other down to mutual ruin. The slaughter, though, was smaller than the chaos suggested, since the Germans didn't dare come out of the marsh and pulled back to camp. The outcome of that fight pushed both commanders, for opposite reasons, to force a decisive engagement soon. Civilis wanted to press his luck; Cerialis wanted to wipe out the disgrace. The Germans were emboldened by success, the Romans stung by shame. That night the barbarians passed in singing and shouting; ours in anger and threats.
17| At first light Cerialis drew up his cavalry and auxiliary cohorts in the front line, with the legions placed behind them; he kept a picked reserve of his own for emergencies. Civilis did not spread his line out but formed it in wedges: the Batavians and Cugerni on the right, and on the left, nearer the river, the tribes from across the Rhine. The commanders' exhortations were not delivered as one speech to the whole army but given man to man as they rode along the ranks. Cerialis spoke of the old glory of the Roman name, of victories ancient and recent; he urged them to wipe out this treacherous, cowardly, already-beaten enemy for good — this called for vengeance more than a battle. A smaller Roman force had recently fought a larger German one, and still routed them — that was the true measure of German strength; what remained now were men who carried flight in their hearts and wounds on their backs. To the legions he added arguments of their own: he called the Fourteenth the conquerors of Britain, reminded the Sixth that Galba had been made emperor on their authority, and told the Second that in this, their first battle, they would dedicate their new standards and their new eagle. Then, riding past to the army from Upper Germany, he stretched out his hands, urging them to win back their own riverbank, their own camp, with enemy blood. A livelier shout rose from the whole army — some hungry for battle after a long peace, others, worn out by war, longing for peace, and all hoping for rewards and rest to come.
18| Civilis did not draw up his line in silence. He called the battlefield itself to witness their courage: the Germans and Batavians, he said, stood on the ground of their own glory, treading the ashes and bones of legions. Wherever the Romans looked, they would see captivity, disaster, everything horrible. They should not be frightened by the mixed outcome of the battle at the Treveran country: their own victory there had been ruined by the Germans themselves, who dropped their weapons to grab plunder with both hands; everything since had gone well, and badly for the enemy. Whatever a shrewd commander ought to have foreseen, he had foreseen: the ground was wet, and while his men knew it, the marshes would be poison to the Romans. The Rhine and the gods of Germany were right there in view; fighting under their power, and remembering their wives, their parents, their homeland, this day would be either the most glorious in their history or the most shameful before their descendants. When this speech won approval — by the clash of weapons and the war-dance, their custom — the battle opened with stones, sling-bullets, and other missiles, our soldiers refusing to enter the marsh and the Germans provoking them to try.
19| Once the missiles ran out and the fighting caught fire, the enemy pressed forward more fiercely: huge men with very long spears speared our soldiers from a distance as they floundered and slipped in the mud. At the same time a wedge of Bructeri swam across from the mole we mentioned earlier, built out into the Rhine. Things fell into confusion there, and the line of allied cohorts was being driven back, until the legions took up the fight and, once the enemy's ferocity was checked, the battle evened out. Meanwhile a Batavian deserter approached Cerialis, promising to expose the enemy's rear if cavalry were sent to the far edge of the marsh: the ground there was firm, he said, and the Cugerni posted to guard it were careless. Two squadrons of cavalry were sent with the deserter and surrounded the unsuspecting enemy. When the shout revealed what was happening, the legions pressed forward from the front, and the beaten Germans fled for the Rhine. The war would have ended that day if the Roman fleet had moved quickly enough to pursue; not even the cavalry followed up, because rain suddenly poured down and night was near.
20| The next day the Fourteenth Legion was sent to the upper province under Annius Gallus; the Tenth Legion, arriving from Spain, brought Cerialis's army back to strength; auxiliaries from the Chauci came to Civilis. He did not, however, dare to defend the Batavian stronghold by force. He seized what could be carried, burned the rest, and withdrew to the island, knowing the Romans lacked ships to build a bridge and had no other way across. He even tore down the dam built by Drusus Germanicus, which had kept the Rhine's current in check, and let the river pour toward Gaul unobstructed once the barriers were cleared away. With the river's force drained off this way, the shrunken channel made the island look like part of the mainland, joined to German territory. Tutor and Classicus also crossed the Rhine, along with a hundred and thirteen Treveran senators, among them Alpinius Montanus, whom we mentioned earlier as sent by Primus Antonius into Gaul. His brother Decimus Alpinius went with him; and the rest, by playing on pity and handing out gifts, stirred up support among tribes hungry for danger.
21| So much war remained that Civilis struck the garrisons of cohorts, cavalry wings, and legions in four separate places within one day: Arenacum, where the Tenth Legion lay; Batavodurum, held by the Second; and the twin camps of Grinnes and Vada, garrisoned by cohorts and horsemen. He split his forces so that he himself, his sister's son Verax, Classicus, and Tutor each led their own band — not confident of succeeding everywhere, but trusting that daring much would bring luck somewhere. At the same time, he reasoned, Cerialis was careless and kept dashing from place to place on scattered reports, so he might be caught somewhere in between. Those sent against the Tenth Legion's camp judged a frontal attack too dangerous, and instead ambushed the woodcutting party outside: the camp prefect died there, along with five senior centurions and a handful of soldiers, while the survivors held the ramparts. Meanwhile a German force at Batavodurum tried to break up the half-finished bridge; night cut short the indecisive fighting.
22| The greater danger was at Grinnes and Vada. Civilis attacked Vada, Classicus attacked Grinnes. Nothing halted them until the defenders' bravest men were dead — Briganticus among them, the cavalry prefect we noted earlier as faithful to Rome and no friend to his uncle Civilis. But then Cerialis came up with a chosen body of horse, and the tide of luck reversed: the Germans were flung headlong toward the river. Civilis tried to rally the men now running for their lives; recognized and targeted, he left his horse behind and swam for it. Verax got clear the same way, while Tutor and Classicus were taken off by boats that had put ashore. Even then the Roman fleet was not on hand for the battle, though it had been ordered out — fear held it back, and the rowers were scattered on other duties. Cerialis, it's true, gave too little time for carrying out his orders, quick to act and lucky in the outcome rather than careful in planning; fortune stood by him even where skill was lacking, and this bred carelessness about discipline in both him and his army. A few days later, though he had escaped the danger of capture, he did not escape disgrace.
23| Cerialis had traveled to Novaesium and Bonn to check on the winter camps being raised there for the legions; now he was sailing back, his vessels strung out in a straggling line and the watch kept without care. The Germans noticed this and set an ambush: they chose a night black with cloud, and swept downstream with the current, unopposed, they entered the camp. Trickery aided the first killing: they cut the tent ropes and slaughtered men trapped under their own canvas. Another band threw the fleet into disorder, hurling grappling lines and towing off ships; and though they had begun in silence to avoid detection, once the killing started they filled the air with shouting on purpose, to spread more terror. The Romans, roused by their wounds, groped for weapons and ran through the lanes, few in proper uniform, most with cloaks wound around their arms and swords drawn. Their commander, half-asleep and nearly naked, was saved by the enemy's own mistake: they seized the flagship, marked by its pennant, thinking the commander was aboard. Cerialis, as most people believed, had spent the night elsewhere, over an affair with Claudia Sacrata, a woman of the Ubii. The sentries covered up their own failure by blaming their commander's disgrace, claiming they had been ordered to keep quiet so as not to disturb his rest; that was why the trumpet signal and the watch-calls had lapsed, and they too had drifted off to sleep. Well after daylight the enemy withdrew with captured ships, towing the flagship trireme down the river Lippe as a gift for Veleda.
24| Civilis was seized with a desire to put on a display of naval strength. He manned every two-banked and single-banked ship he had, and added a huge number of small boats, each carrying thirty or forty men and rigged like Liburnian galleys; captured boats were fitted out too, using colored cloaks in place of sails, which did not look bad at all. He chose, as it were, an open stretch of water where the Meuse pours the Rhine's flow into the Ocean. His reason for assembling a fleet, apart from his people's natural love of show, was to use the display to frighten off supply convoys coming from Gaul. Cerialis brought out his own fleet, more out of astonishment than fear — fewer ships, but stronger in trained rowers, skilled helmsmen, and larger vessels. His ships had the current with them, the enemy's the wind; they sailed past each other, exchanged a few light missiles, and then drew apart. Civilis attempted nothing further and withdrew across the Rhine. Cerialis ravaged the Batavian island as an enemy would, but by the familiar trick of commanders left Civilis's own farms and villas untouched. Meanwhile, with the turn of autumn and the heavy rains around the equinox, the river overflowed and covered the low, marshy island until it looked like a lake. Neither fleet nor supplies were on hand, and the camp, pitched on level ground, kept being swept away by the force of the water.
25| Civilis later claimed that the legions could have been crushed then, and that his Germans wanted to do it, but that he had turned them aside by a trick — a claim not implausible, since surrender followed only a few days later. For Cerialis, through secret messengers, was holding out peace to the Batavians and pardon to Civilis, while warning Veleda and her relatives that the fortunes of war, which had gone against them through so many defeats, could be changed by a timely service to the Roman people: the Treveri had been cut down, the Ubii taken back into favor, the Batavians' own homeland stripped from them; friendship with Civilis had brought nothing but wounds, flight, and grief. Taking in an exile and an outcast would only burden them, and they had already sinned enough by crossing the Rhine so many times. If they tried anything further, the wrong and the blame would be theirs, the vengeance and the gods on the Roman side.
26| Promises mixed with threats. The loyalty of the peoples across the Rhine wavered, and talk began among the Batavians too: this ruin should not be dragged out any further — one nation could not hold back the enslavement of the whole world. What had they gained by slaughtering legions and burning camps, except to bring more and stronger ones down on themselves? If they had fought this war for Vespasian's sake, then Vespasian now held power; but if they were taking up arms against the Roman people itself, how small a fraction of the human race were the Batavians? Let them look to the Raeti and the Norici and the burdens borne by other allied peoples: from the Batavians Rome demanded not tribute but courage and men — the condition closest to freedom; and if a choice of masters had to be made, it was more honorable to put up with Roman emperors than German women. This was the talk of the common people; the leading men spoke more harshly still: Civilis's madness had driven them into war, and he had set the ruin of his people against his own private troubles. The gods had turned against the Batavians precisely when the legions were besieged and the envoys murdered — a war necessary for one man alone, and fatal to his own people, had been taken up. They had come to the last extremity, unless they began to come to their senses and, by punishing the guilty man, confessed their regret.
27| That shift in mood did not escape Civilis, and he decided to get ahead of it — driven not only by weariness of the war's miseries but by hope of life, which usually breaks even great spirits. He asked for a conference. The bridge over the river Nabalia was cut apart, and the two commanders advanced onto the broken ends. Civilis began: 'If I were defending myself before a governor of Vitellius, my actions would deserve no pardon and my words no credit. Everything between us was hostile: he began the enmity, and I only enlarged it. Toward Vespasian I have long shown respect, and when he was still a private citizen we were called friends. Primus Antonius knew this — it was his letters that drove me to war, so that the German legions and the young men of Gaul would not cross the Alps. What Antonius urged by letter, Hordeonius Flaccus urged in person. I raised arms in Germany, as Mucianus did in Syria, Aponius in Moesia, and Flavianus in Pannonia [text breaks off]