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40. Amid the alarm all condemned Germanicus for not going to the Upper Army, where he might find obedience and help against the rebels. "Enough and more than enough blunders," they said, "had been made by granting discharges and money, indeed, by conciliatory measures. Even if Germanicus held his own life cheap, why should he keep a little son and a pregnant wife among madmen who outraged every human right? Let these, at least, be restored safely to their grandsire and to the State." When his wife spurned the notion, protesting that she was a descendant of the Divine Augustus and could face peril with no degenerate spirit, he at last embraced her and the son of their love with many tears, and after long delay compelled her to depart. Slowly moved along a pitiable procession of women, a general's fugitive wife with a little son in her bosom, her friends' wives weeping round her, as with her they were dragging themselves from the camp. Not less sorrowful were those who remained.
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40. Eo in metu arguere Germanicum omnes quod non ad superiorem exercitum pergeret, ubi obsequia et contra rebellis auxilium: satis superque missione et pecunia et mollibus consultis peccatum vel si vilis ipsi salus, cur filium parvulum, cur gravidam coniugem inter furentis et omnis humani iuris violatores haberet? illos saltem avo et rei publicae redderet. diu cunctatus aspernantem uxorem, cum se divo Augusto ortam neque degenerem ad pericula testaretur, postremo uterum eius et communem filium multo cum fletu complexus, ut abiret perpulit. incedebat muliebre et miserabile agmen, profuga ducis uxor, parvulum sinu filium gerens, lamentantes circum amicorum coniuges quae simul trahebantur nec minus tristes qui manebant.
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41. There was no appearance of the triumphant general about Germanicus, and he seemed to be in a conquered city rather than in his own camp, while groans and wailings attracted the ears and looks even of the soldiers. They came out of their tents, asking "what was that mournful sound? What meant the sad sight? Here were ladies of rank, not a centurion to escort them, not a soldier, no sign of a prince's wife, none of the usual retinue. Could they be going to the Treveri, to be subjects of the foreigner?" Then they felt shame and pity, and remembered his father Agrippa, her grandfather Augustus, her father-in-law Drusus, her own glory as a mother of children, her noble purity. And there was her little child too, born in the camp, brought up amid the tents of the legions, whom they used to call in soldiers' fashion, Caligula, because he often wore the shoe so called, to win the men's goodwill. But nothing moved them so much as jealousy towards the Treveri. They entreated, stopped the way, that Agrippina might return and remain, some running to meet her, while most of them went back to Germanicus. He, with a grief and anger that were yet fresh, thus began to address the throng around him -
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41. Non florentis Caesaris neque suis in castris, sed velut in urbe victa facies gemitusque ac planctus etiam militum auris oraque advertere: progrediuntur contuberniis. quis ille flebilis sonus? quod tam triste? feminas inlustris, non centurionem ad tutelam, non militem, nihil imperatoriae uxoris aut comitatus soliti: pergere ad Treviros [et] externae fidei. pudor inde et miseratio et patris Agrippae, Augusti avi memoria, socer Drusus, ipsa insigni fecunditate, praeclara pudicitia; iam infans in castris genitus, in contubernio legionum eductus, quem militari vocabulo Caligulam appellabant, quia plerumque ad concilianda vulgi studia eo tegmine pedum induebatur. sed nihil aeque flexit quam invidia in Treviros: orant obsistunt, rediret maneret, pars Agrippinae occursantes, plurimi ad Germanicum regressi. isque ut erat recens dolore et ira apud circumfusos ita coepit.
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42. "Neither wife nor son are dearer to me than my father and the State. But he will surely have the protection of his own majesty, the empire of Rome that of our other armies. My wife and children whom, were it a question of your glory, I would willingly expose to destruction, I now remove to a distance from your fury, so that whatever wickedness is thereby threatened, may be expiated by my blood only, and that you may not be made more guilty by the slaughter of a great-grandson of Augustus, and the murder of a daughter-in-law of Tiberius. For what have you not dared, what have you not profaned during these days? What name shall I give to this gathering? Am I to call you soldiers, you who have beset with entrenchments and arms your general's son, or citizens, when you have trampled under foot the authority of the Senate? Even the rights of public enemies, the sacred character of the ambassador, and the law of nations have been violated by you. The Divine Julius once quelled an army's mutiny with a single word by calling those who were renouncing their military obedience 'citizens.' The Divine Augustus cowed the legions who had fought at Actium with one look of his face. Though I am not yet what they were, still, descended as I am from them, it would be a strange and unworthy thing should I be spurned by the soldiery of Spain or Syria. First and twentieth legions, you who received your standards from Tiberius, you, men of the twentieth who have shared with me so many battles and have been enriched with so many rewards, is not this a fine gratitude with which you are repaying your general? Are these the tidings which I shall have to carry to my father when he hears only joyful intelligence from our other provinces, that his own recruits, his own veterans are not satisfied with discharge or pay; that here only centurions are murdered, tribunes driven away, envoys imprisoned, camps and rivers stained with blood, while I am myself dragging on a precarious existence amid those who hate me?
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42. 'Non mihi uxor aut filius patre et re publica cariores sunt, sed illum quidem sua maiestas, imperium Romanum ceteri exercitus defendent. coniugem et liberos meos, quos pro gloria vestra libens ad exitium offerrem, nunc procul a furentibus summoveo, ut quidquid istud sceleris imminet, meo tantum sanguine pietur, neve occisus Augusti pronepos, interfecta Tiberii nurus nocentiores vos faciant. quid enim per hos dies inausum intemeratumve vobis? quod nomen huic coetui dabo? militesne appellem, qui filium imperatoris vestri vallo et armis circumsedistis? an civis, quibus tam proiecta senatus auctoritas? hostium quoque ius et sacra legationis et fas gentium rupistis. divus Iulius seditionem exercitus verbo uno compescuit, Quirites vocando qui sacramentum eius detrectabant: divus Augustus vultu et aspectu Actiacas legiones exterruit: nos ut nondum eosdem, ita ex illis ortos si Hispaniae Syriaeve miles aspernaretur, tamen mirum et indignum erat. primane et vicesima legiones, illa signis a Tiberio acceptis, tu tot proeliorum socia, tot praemiis aucta, egregiam duci vestro gratiam refertis? hunc ego nuntium patri laeta omnia aliis e provinciis audienti feram? ipsius tirones, ipsius veteranos non missione, non pecunia satiatos: hic tantum interfici centuriones, eici tribunos, includi legatos, infecta sanguine castra, flumina, meque precariam animam inter infensos trahere.
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43. "Why, on the first day of our meeting, why did you, my friends, wrest from me, in your blindness, the steel which I was preparing to plunge into my breast? Better and more loving was the act of the man who offered me the sword. At any rate I should have perished before I was as yet conscious of all the disgraces of my army, while you would have chosen a general who though he might allow my death to pass unpunished would avenge the death of Varus and his three legions. Never indeed may heaven suffer the Belgae, though they proffer their aid, to have the glory and honour of having rescued the name of Rome and quelled the tribes of Germany. It is thy spirit, Divine Augustus, now received into heaven, thine image, father Drusus, and the remembrance of thee, which, with these same soldiers who are now stimulated by shame and ambition, should wipe out this blot and turn the wrath of civil strife to the destruction of the foe. You too, in whose faces and in whose hearts I perceive a change, if only you restore to the Senate their envoys, to the emperor his due allegiance, to myself my wife and son, do you stand aloof from pollution and separate the mutinous from among you. This will be a pledge of your repentance, a guarantee of your loyalty."
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43. 'Cur enim primo contionis die ferrum illud, quod pectori meo infigere parabam, detraxistis, o inprovidi amici? melius et amantius ille qui gladium offerebat. cecidissem certe nondum tot flagitiorum exercitu meo conscius; legissetis ducem, qui meam quidem mortem inpunitam sineret, Vari tamen et trium legionum ulcisceretur. neque enim di sinant ut Belgarum quamquam offerentium decus istud et claritudo sit subvenisse Romano nomini, compressisse Germaniae populos. tua, dive Auguste, caelo recepta mens, tua, pater Druse, imago, tui memoria isdem istis cum militibus, quos iam pudor et gloria intrat, eluant hanc maculam irasque civilis in exitium hostibus vertant. vos quoque, quorum alia nunc ora, alia pectora contueor, si legatos senatui, obsequium imperatori, si mihi coniugem et filium redditis, discedite a contactu ac dividite turbidos: id stabile ad paenitentiam, id fidei vinculum erit.'
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44. Thereupon, as suppliants confessing that his reproaches were true, they implored him to punish the guilty, pardon those who had erred, and lead them against the enemy. And he was to recall his wife, to let the nursling of the legions return and not be handed over as a hostage to the Gauls. As to Agrippina's return, he made the excuse of her approaching confinement and of winter. His son, he said, would come, and the rest they might settle themselves. Away they hurried hither and thither, altered men, and dragged the chief mutineers in chains to Caius Caetronius commander of the first legion, who tried and punished them one by one in the following fashion. In front of the throng stood the legions with drawn swords. Each accused man was on a raised platform and was pointed out by a tribune. If they shouted out that he was guilty, he was thrown headlong and cut to pieces. The soldiers gloated over the bloodshed as though it gave them absolution. Nor did Caesar check them, seeing that without any order from himself the same men were responsible for all the cruelty and all the odium of the deed. The example was followed by the veterans, who were soon afterwards sent into Raetia, nominally to defend the province against a threatened invasion of the Suevi but really that they might tear themselves from a camp stamped with the horror of a dreadful remedy no less than with the memory of guilt. Then the general revised the list of centurions. Each, at his summons, stated his name, his rank, his birthplace, the number of his campaigns, what brave deeds he had done in battle, his military rewards, if any. If the tribunes and the legion commended his energy and good behaviour, he retained his rank; where they unanimously charged him with rapacity or cruelty, he was dismissed the service.
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44. Supplices ad haec et vera exprobrari fatentes orabant puniret noxios, ignosceret lapsis et duceret in hostem: revocaretur coniunx, rediret legionum alumnus neve obses Gallis traderetur. reditum Agrippinae excusavit ob inminentem partum et hiemem: venturum filium: cetera ipsi exsequerentur. discurrunt mutati et seditiosissimum quemque vinctos trahunt ad legatum legionis primae C. Caetronium, qui iudicium et poenas de singulis in hunc modum exercuit. stabant pro contione legiones destrictis gladiis: reus in suggestu per tribunum ostendebatur: si nocentem adclamaverant, praeceps datus trucidabatur. et gaudebat caedibus miles tamquam semet absolveret; nec Caesar arcebat, quando nullo ipsius iussu penes eosdem saevitia facti et invidia erat. secuti exemplum veterani haud multo post in Raetiam mittuntur, specie defendendae provinciae ob imminentis Suebos ceterum ut avellerentur castris trucibus adhuc non minus asperitate remedii quam sceleris memoria. centurionatum inde egit. citatus ab imperatore nomen, ordinem, patriam, numerum stipendiorum, quae strenue in proeliis fecisset, et cui erant, dona militaria edebat. si tribuni, si legio industriam innocentiamque ad probaverant, retinebat ordinem: ubi avaritiam aut crudelitatem consensu obiectavissent, solvebatur militia.
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45. Quiet being thus restored for the present, a no less formidable difficulty remained through the turbulence of the fifth and twenty-first legions, who were in winter quarters sixty miles away at Old Camp, as the place was called. These, in fact, had been the first to begin the mutiny, and the most atrocious deeds had been committed by their hands. Unawed by the punishment of their comrades, and unmoved by their contrition, they still retained their resentment. Caesar accordingly proposed to send an armed fleet with some of our allies down the Rhine, resolved to make war on them should they reject his authority.
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45. Sic compositis praesentibus haud minor moles supererat ob ferociam quintae et unetvicesimae legionum, sexagesimum apud lapidem (loco Vetera nomen est) hibernantium. nam primi seditionem coeptaverant: atrocisslmum quodque facinus horum manibus patratum; nec poena commilitonum exterriti nec paenitentia conversi iras retinebant. igitur Caesar arma classem socios demittere Rheno parat, si imperium detrectetur, bello certaturus.
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46. At Rome, meanwhile, when the result of affairs in Illyrium was not yet known, and men had heard of the commotion among the German legions, the citizens in alarm reproached Tiberius for the hypocritical irresolution with which he was befooling the senate and the people, feeble and disarmed as they were, while the soldiery were all the time in revolt, and could not be quelled by the yet imperfectly-matured authority of two striplings. "He ought to have gone himself and confronted with his imperial majesty those who would have soon yielded, when they once saw a sovereign of long experience, who was the supreme dispenser of rigour or of bounty. Could Augustus, with the feebleness of age on him, so often visit Germany, and is Tiberius, in the vigour of life, to sit in the Senate and criticise its members' words? He had taken good care that there should be slavery at Rome; he should now apply some soothing medicine to the spirit of soldiers, that they might be willing to endure peace."
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46. At Romae nondum cognito qui fuisset exitus in Illyrico, et legionum Germanicarum motu audito, trepida civitas incusare Tiberium quod, dum patres et plebem, invalida et inermia, cunctatione ficta ludificetur, dissideat interim miles neque duorum adulescentium nondum adulta auctoritate comprimi queat. ire ipsum et opponere maiestatem imperatoriam debuisse cessuris ubi principem longa experientia eundemque severitatis et munificentiae summum vidissent. an Augustum fessa aetate totiens in Germanias commeare potuisse: Tiberium vigentem annis sedere in senatu, verba patrum cavillantem? satis prospectum urbanae servituti: militaribus animis adhibenda fomenta ut ferre pacem velint.
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47. Notwithstanding these remonstrances, it was the inflexible purpose of Tiberius not to quit the head-quarters of empire or to imperil himself and the State. Indeed, many conflicting thoughts troubled him. The army in Germany was the stronger; that in Pannonia the nearer; the first was supported by all the strength of Gaul; the latter menaced Italy. Which was he to prefer, without the fear that those whom he slighted would be infuriated by the affront? But his sons might alike visit both, and not compromise the imperial dignity, which inspired the greatest awe at a distance. There was also an excuse for mere youths referring some matters to their father, with the possibility that he could conciliate or crush those who resisted Germanicus or Drusus. What resource remained, if they despised the emperor? However, as if on the eve of departure, he selected his attendants, provided his camp-equipage, and prepared a fleet; then winter and matters of business were the various pretexts with which he amused, first, sensible men, then the populace, last, and longest of all, the provinces.
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47. Immotum adversus eos sermones fixumque Tiberio fuit non omittere caput rerum neque se remque publicam in casum dare. multa quippe et diversa angebant: validior per Germaniam exercitus, propior apud Pannoniam; ille Galliarum opibus subnixus, hic Italiae inminens: quos igitur anteferret? ac ne postpositi contumelia incenderentur. at per filios pariter adiri maiestate salva, cui maior e longinquo reverentia. simul adulescentibus excusatum quaedam ad patrem reicere, resistentisque Germanico aut Druso posse a se mitigari vel infringi: quod aliud subsidium si imperatorem sprevissent? ceterum ut iam iamque iturus legit comites, conquisivit impedimenta, adornavit navis: mox hiemem aut negotia varie causatus primo prudentis, dein vulgum, diutissime provincias fefellit.
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48. Germanicus meantime, though he had concentrated his army and prepared vengeance against the mutineers, thought that he ought still to allow them an interval, in case they might, with the late warning before them, regard their safety. He sent a despatch to Caecina, which said that he was on the way with a strong force, and that, unless they forestalled his arrival by the execution of the guilty, he would resort to an indiscriminate massacre. Caecina read the letter confidentially to the eagle and standardbearers, and to all in the camp who were least tainted by disloyalty, and urged them to save the whole army from disgrace, and themselves from destruction. "In peace," he said, "the merits of a man's case are carefully weighed; when war bursts on us, innocent and guilty alike perish." Upon this, they sounded those whom they thought best for their purpose, and when they saw that a majority of their legions remained loyal, at the commander's suggestion they fixed a time for falling with the sword on all the vilest and foremost of the mutineers. Then, at a mutually given signal, they rushed into the tents, and butchered the unsuspecting men, none but those in the secret knowing what was the beginning or what was to be the end of the slaughter.
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48. At Germanicus, quamquam contracto exercitu et parata in defectores ultione, dandum adhuc spatium ratus, si recenti exemplo sibi ipsi consulerent, praemittit litteras ad Caecinam, venire se valida manu ac, ni supplicium in malos praesumant, usurum promisca caede. eas Caecina aquiliferis signiferisque et quod maxime castrorum sincerum erat occulte recitat, utque cunctos infamiae, se ipsos morti eximant hortatur: nam in pace causas et merita spectari, ubi bellum ingruat innocentis ac noxios iuxta cadere. illi temptatis quos idoneos rebantur, postquam maiorem legionum partem in officio vident, de sententia legati statuunt tempus, quo foedissimum quemque et seditioni promptum ferro invadant. tunc signo inter se dato inrumpunt contubernia, trucidant ignaros, nullo nisi consciis noscente quod caedis initium, quis finis.
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49. The scene was a contrast to all civil wars which have ever occurred. It was not in battle, it was not from opposing camps, it was from those same dwellings where day saw them at their common meals, night resting from labour, that they divided themselves into two factions, and showered on each other their missiles. Uproar, wounds, bloodshed, were everywhere visible; the cause was a mystery. All else was at the disposal of chance. Even some loyal men were slain, for, on its being once understood who were the objects of fury, some of the worst mutineers too had seized on weapons. Neither commander nor tribune was present to control them; the men were allowed license and vengeance to their heart's content. Soon afterwards Germanicus entered the camp, and exclaiming with a flood of tears, that this was destruction rather than remedy, ordered the bodies to be burnt. Even then their savage spirit was seized with desire to march against the enemy, as an atonement for their frenzy, and it was felt that the shades of their fellow-soldiers could be appeased only by exposing such impious breasts to honourable scars. Caesar followed up the enthusiasm of the men, and having bridged over the Rhine, he sent across it 12,000 from the legions, with six-and-twenty allied cohorts, and eight squadrons of cavalry, whose discipline had been without a stain during the mutiny.
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49. Diversa omnium, quae umquam accidere, civilium armorum facies. non proelio, non adversis e castris, sed isdem e cubilibus, quos simul vescentis dies, simul quietos nox habuerat, discedunt in partis, ingerunt tela clamor vulnera sanguis palam, causa in occulto; cetera fors regit. et quidam bonorum caesi, postquam intellecto in quos saeviretur pessimi quoque arma rapuerant. neque legatus aut tribunus moderator adfuit: permissa vulgo licentia atque ultio et satietas. mox ingressus castra Germanicus, non medicinam illud plurimis cum lacrimis sed cladem appellans, cremari corpora iubet. Truces etiam tum animos cupido involat eundi in hostem, piaculum furoris; nec aliter posse placari commilitonum manis quam si pectoribus impiis honesta vulnera accepissent. sequitur ardorem militum Caesar iunctoque ponte tramittit duodecim milia e legionibus, sex et viginti socias cohortis, octo equitum alas, quarum ea seditione intemerata modestia fuit.
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