# Tacitus (Donne)/Chapter 7

CHAPTER VII.
'HISTORY.'
VITELLIUS.
The legions in Syria and Egypt had taken the oath to Galba and Otho without a murmur, but when required for the third time within a few weeks to transfer their allegiance to an enemy of both those Cæsars, they hesitated for a while and then obeyed with an ill grace. Between the armies of the northern and eastern provinces there had long been jealousies and rivalry, and the choice of Vitellius by the German, excited angry feelings in the Syrian camps. They were not less numerous, they were better disciplined and disposed, they had been very recently winning new laurels in the north of Palestine; why should they not put forward their claim to appoint a Cæsar as well as the lazy and over-paid prætorians, or the mutinous legions of the Rhine? In one very important respect, indeed, they were better situated than either the body-guards or the Rhenish divisions. Neither Otho nor Vitellius could be termed a happy choice, unless to be a notorious profligate or an unsurpassed glutton were a recommendation for empire. They, at least at Antioch and in Galilee, had two leaders of ​mark and likelihood, who had already proved their fitness to rule by their obedience and ability in lower stations.
The characters of these very capable leaders are thus drawn in a few strokes by Tacitus:—
"Syria and its four legions were under the command of Licinius Mucianus, a man whose good and bad fortune was equally famous. In his youth, he had cultivated with many intrigues the friendship of the great. His resources soon failed, and his position became precarious, and as he also suspected that Claudius had taken some offence, he withdrew into a retired part of Asia [Minor], and was as like an exile as he was afterwards like an emperor. He was a compound of dissipation and energy, of arrogance and courtesy, of good and bad qualities. His self-indulgence was excessive when he had leisure, yet whenever he had served he had shown great qualities. In his public capacity he might be praised: his private life was in bad repute. Yet over subjects, friends, and colleagues, he exercised the influence of many fascinations. He was a man who would find it easier to transfer the imperial power to another than to hold it for himself. He was eminent for his magnificence, for his wealth, and for a greatness that transcended in all respects the condition of a subject. Readier of speech than Vespasian, he thoroughly understood the arrangement and direction of civil business."
"Vespasian was an energetic soldier: he could march at the head of his army, choose the place for his camp, and bring by night and day his skill, or, if ​the occasion required, his personal courage, to oppose the foe. His food was such as chance offered: his dress and appearance hardly distinguished him from the common soldier; in short, but for his avarice, he was equal to the generals of old."
The Cæsar "for whom fortune was now preparing, in a distant part of the world, the origin and rise of a new dynasty," had no illustrious images in the hall of his fathers. His family belonged to the Sabine burgh of Reatè, and had never risen to public honours, but he himself had seen much service. Nero's freedman and favourite, Narcissus, appointed him to the command of a legion in Britain, where he highly distinguished himself and earned triumphal ornaments. He was one of the consuls in the year 51 A.D. But those whom Narcissus promoted became the subject of the younger Agrippina's aversion, and not until after her fall did Vespasian obtain any further employment. In 52 he was proconsul of Africa, and, strange to tell, he left the province poorer than he came to it—a fact scarcely reconcilable with Tacitus's imputation of "avarice." He was not only an unready speaker, but also an indifferent courtier, and got into disgrace with Nero for going to sleep while the Cæsar was singing and playing before a delighted—or perchance a disgusted—audience of Corinthians, Olympians, or the fastidious men of Athens. Such behaviour was too much for Nero's patience, and the tasteless Vespasian was ordered to begone and take his impertinent naps in his own house. But when serious disturbances arose in Judæa, he was too good an officer to be overlooked, and was appointed to the government of Palestine, and to the command of the forces there, or to be ​sent thither, at the close of 66 A.D. At the time of this promotion he was in his sixty-first year.
Vespasian was proclaimed emperor by Tiberius Alexander, the prefect of Egypt, and it may be inferred without his own knowledge or consent at the moment. Long he pondered on the proposal even while surrounded by his own officers and men. It was, in fact, a very serious matter to be hailed "Imperator." Within a few months three Cæsars had perished—Nero by the hand of a slave, Galba by the swords of the prætorians, and Otho by his own dagger. The supplications of the army, and the urgency of Mucianus—they had been on bad terms, but were now reconciled—overcame his scruples, and he confirmed the choice of the prefect of Egypt by accepting the purple from the Syrian legionaries. An intensely practical man when not at a concert or a play, he instantly took measures for establishing his claim, but he did not hurry to Italy, although the eyes of all its better men had long been turned to Palestine. The forces of the east were divided into three portions. Of these, one was deemed sufficient to encounter the Vitellians; a second was retained in the east, to continue, under Titus, the Judæan war; to watch the Armenian and Parthian border was the task of the third. The revolt against Vitellius was making rapid strides: some provinces remained neutral; others, Britain and the Rhenish, could not afford to part with a cohort, and the emperor at Rome squandered in vulgar and brutal sensuality the money he needed for the payment of his troops.
The march of the Vespasians did not materially differ from that of the Vitellians. Again Italy north ​of the Po was ravaged, and once more on the field of Bedriacum an empire was lost and won. But among the leaders of the eastern army was one who by his energy and enterprise relieves the uniformity of the narrative. In Antonius Primus we find a Paladin; a Charles Mordaunt, Earl of Peterborough, the hero of the Succession War in Spain. At the head of three legions he seized the passes of the Julian Alps. Far inferior to the enemy in strength, his officers advised him to await the arrival of Mucianus. But delay suited not the eager spirit of Antonius, who, moreover, was resolved to win the victory alone. Twice he restored the fortune of the day at Bedriacum; and after a brave defence by the Vitellians, he broke through their camp before the walls of Cremona, and received the keys of that proverbially unfortunate city. From that moment the fate of Vitellius himself was decided.
The city had surrendered under a promise of protection, but Antonius did not, perhaps could not, keep his word. As yet he had not rewarded his soldiers with booty or licence. It is said that when taking a bath after the fatigues of the assault, he had complained of the water not being warm enough. "It soon shall be hotter," said an attendant; and his words were caught up by the soldiers as if they were a signal for burning the town. In a few hours one of the most beautiful of Cisalpine cities was reduced to ashes.
Vitellius, content with sending to the seat of war Cæcina and Fabius Valens, abandoned himself to his wonted coarse indulgences; he neither attended to his soldiers nor showed himself to the people. "Buried in the shades of his gardens, among the woods of La Riccia [Aricia], like those sluggish animals which, ​if you supply them with food, lie motionless and torpid, he had dismissed with the same forgetfulness the past, the present, and the future." For cruelties, indeed, he found leisure occasionally. He was startled by tidings of revolt and disaffection. The fleet at Ravenna had gone over to the enemy, Cæcina had made an attempt, an abortive one, to pass over to Vespasian. "In that dull soul joy was more powerful than apprehension." As soon as he learned that his own soldiers had put Cæcina in irons, he returned exulting to Rome. Before a crowded assembly of the people he applauded the obedience of the legions, and sent to prison the prefect of the prætorian guard, who, as a friend of Cæcina, micht, he thought, follow his example.
Antonius had crossed the Apennines. In the valley of the Nar the two armies once more confronted one another; but deserted by their emperor, and without leaders, the Vitellians had no spirit for fighting. They were incorporated with the Vespasians. The slothful emperor, says Tacitus, "would have forgotten that he was, or rather had been one, had not his foes reminded him of his rank." Antonius offered him terms, which were confirmed by Mucianus. His life should he spared; a quiet retreat in Campania, the garden and the vineyard of Rome, with a large income, was proposed to and accepted by him.
But Rome had yet to drink the cup of woe to the dregs. Once more, as in the civil wars of the commonwealth, the city was to be sacked and the temple of the Capitoline Jupiter to he burnt. Terms were being drawn up for a peaceful surrender of the capital and the abdication of the emperor. Flavius Sabinus, the ​elder brother of Vespasian, had remained during all these revolutions in Rome, and new represented him. In the temple of Apollo, on the Palatine, "the transfer of the empire was debated and settled."
Bui it was not accomplished so easily. Rome was filled with fugitives from the scat of war, and well aware that no mercy for them could be looked for if Antonius were once master of the city, they dinned in the ears of their sluggish chief, that for him the post of danger was a private station. Was Antonius a man to keep his word? Would legions who had shown themselves false, be true to promises or covenants? How long would he enjoy his Campanian retreat, or his ample revenues? He was compelled to return to his palace, not indeed to resume his functions, but to await his doom. For the last time he entered the Palatine house, hardly knowing whether he were still emperor or not.
The transfer which the soldiers refused to ratify was, however, considered valid by the senate, the knights, the magistrates and police of the city, and they urged Sabinus to arm against the German cohorts, to vindicate his brother's claim to the purple, and to defend Rome, the citizens, and himself from the fury of these ruffians. Sabinus complied; but his force was small; his measures were hurried and insufficient; he was attacked and routed by the Vitellians, and compelled to take refuge in the Capital. Some communications took place between Sabinus and Vitellius, but they were idle, for the reply of the nominal emperor was merely an apology for the conduct of his supporters. He indeed "had not now the power either to command or to forbid. He ​was no longer emperor; he was merely the cause of war."
The following description has the appearance of being written by an eyewitness of the respective scenes:—
The envoy of Sabinus "had hardly returned to the Capitol, when the infuriated soldiery arrived, without any leader, every man acting on his own impulse. They hurried at quick march past the Forum and the temples which hang over it, and advanced their line up the opposite hill as far as the outer gates of the Capitol. There were formerly certain colonnades on the right side of the slope as one went up; the defenders, issuing forth on the roof of these buildings, showered tiles and stones on the Vitellians. The assailants were not armed with anything but swords, and it seemed too tedious to send for machines and missiles. They threw lighted brands at a projecting colonnade, and following the track of the fire would have burst through the half-burnt gates of the Capitol, had not Sabinus, tearing down on all sites the statues, the glories of former generations, formed them into a barricade across the opening. They then assailed the opposite approaches to the Capitol, near the grove of the Asylum, and where the Tarpeian rock is mounted by a hundred steps. Both these attacks were unexpected: the closer and fiercer of the two threatened the Asylum. The assailants could not be cheeked as they mounted the continuous line of buildings, which, as was natural in a time of profound peace, had grown up to such a height as to be on a level with the soil of the Capitol. A doubt arises at this point, whether it was the assailants who threw lighted brands on to the roofs, or whether, ​as the more general account has it, the besieged thought thus to repel the assailants, who were now making vigorous progress. From them the fire passed to the colonnades adjoining the temples: the eagles supporting the pediment, which were of old timber, caught the flames. And so the Capitol, with its gates shut, neither defended by friends nor spoiled by a foe, was burnt to the ground."
The historian proceeds to relate the final victory of the Vitellians. The besiegers "burst in, carrying everywhere the firebrand and the sword." Some of the Vespasian leaders were cut down at once: the younger of the Flavian princes, Domitian, unluckily for his own fame and the empire, escaped in the disguise of an acolyte of the temple, while Sabinus and the consul Quinctius Atticus were loaded with chains and brought before Vitellius. He received his captives "with anything but anger in his words and looks, amidst the murmurs of those who demanded the privilege of slaying them and their pay for the work they had done." He was preparing to intercede: he was compelled to yield; he was now a mere cipher; and the body of Sabinus, pierced and mutilated, and with the head severed from it, was dragged to the Gemoniæ.
In a few days the Flavian legions were at the gates of Rome. Numerous engagements took place before the walls, and amid the beautiful gardens in the suburbs, generally ending in favour of the Flavians. The Vitellians were defeated at every point. But they rallied again within the city.
"The populace," says Tacitus, "stood by and watched the combatants," as the people of Paris did when ​the Allies were, in 1814, fighting with the French for the possession of Montmartre; "and as though it had been a mimic combat"—of gladiators in the arena, or of the Red and Blue factions of charioteers in the Flaminian Circus—"encouraged first one party and then the other by their shouts and plaudits. Whenever either side gave way, they cried out that those who concealed themselves in the shops, or took refuge in any private house, should be dragged out and butchered, and they secured the larger share of the booty; for, while the soldiers were busy with bloodshed and massacre, the spoils fell to the crowd. It was a terrible and hideous sight that presented itself throughout the city. Here battle and death were raging: there the bath and the tavern were crowded. In one spot were pools of blood and heaps of corpses, and close by prostitutes and men of character as infamous. There were all the debaucheries of luxurious peace, all the horrors of a city most cruelly sacked, till one was ready to believe the country to be mad at once with rage and lust."
Amid this scene of carnage, it is some satisfaction to know that consign punishment fell on the German soldiers. They were driven to their last stronghold. The prætorian camp to which they had fled was desperately defended as well as strenuously assailed. The Flavians, expecting that Rome itself would stand a siege, had brought with them their artillery: with their catapults they cleared the battlements: they raised mounds or towers to the level of the ramparts: they applied fire to the gates. The gates were battered down; the walls were breached; quarter was denied; and, according to one account, fifty thousand men were slain.
​Vitellius made a vain attempt to escape. His wife Galeria had a house on the Aventine, and thither he was conveyed in a litter, purposing to fly in the night-time to his brother's camp at Terracina. But, infirm of purpose, he returned to the palace, whence even the meanest slaves had fled, or where those who remained in it shunned his presence. He wandered through its long corridors and halls, shrinking from every sound: "he tried the closed doors, he shuddered in the empty chambers," he trembled at the echo of his own footfalls. In the morning he was discovered; "his hands were bound behind his back; he was led along with tattered robes; many reviled, no one pitied him." He was cut down by a German soldier, who may have owed him a grudge, or have wished to release him from insult. The soldiers pricked him on with their weapons when his pace slackened, or stopped him to witness his own statues hurled from their pedestals and broken by their fall. He was compelled to gaze on the spot where a few months before Galba had fallen. A sword placed beneath his chin kept his head erect, exposing to a brutal mob his haggard looks; his visage was besmeared with mud and filth; and, wounded as he already was, he was smitten on the cheek as he passed through the long files of his persecutors. When he reached the Gemoniæ, where the corpse of Flavius Sabinus had so recently lain, he fell under a shower of blows; "and the mob," says Tacitus (and he might probably have added senators and knights also), "reviled him when dead with the same heartlessness with which they had flattered him living. One speech, it was his last, showed a spit not utterly degraded. To a tribune who in​sulted him he answered,—'Yet I was once your emperor.'"
We must not pass over, though we can merely refer to, an episode in the 'History' of Tacitus, that in which he treats of the revolt of the Germans. The destruction of three emperors, the disturbances in Judæa, the devastation of Italy, had severely strained the sinews of the empire. But its imminent danger at this period lay not south of the Alps, but on the borders of the Rhine and the Danube. The main interest of this episode consists not in sieges and battles, in the fidelity or faithlessness of States or individuals, in the lawless conduct of the armies, or the feeble and fluctuating measures of their generals. These were features common to every district visited by the civil, or more properly the imperial, wars of 69 and 70 A.D. The revolt of Germany was an insurrection against Roman rule itself, not against any one of the four competitors for the purple. It was a widely spread, for a while an ably organised movement, and at more than one period it had the appearance of a successful one. It reveals to us how deeply that rule had been affected by the extravagance and cruelty of such Cæsars as Caligula or Nero: to what extent by their indulgence they had demoralised the armies and degraded the majesty of the empire. Yet it also shows how strong and effective was its organisation: how unable to cope with it were the most valiant and disciplined of the rebels. Had the coalition of Germans and Gauls been sound and sincere, had the authors and leaders of it added to their enthusiasm the steady and sagacious temper of the warriors and statesmen who had made Rome the mistress of the world, it is difficult to see how the ​empire could have survived, bleeding and faint as it was at the time from a fierce civil conflict of about eighteen months. The purpose of the confederates was to throw off then and for ever the yoke of Rome,—to effect on a far grander scale what the Italians had attempted more than a century and half before, when they set up a new capital, Italica, and threatened to destroy the den of the Roman wolves. It was a hostile empire that the Germans aimed at,—a far more formidable one than the Parthian had ever been, or than the great Mithridates had ever imagined. Independent Germany would not supply the legions with recruits: independent Gaul would not pay into the Roman treasury bars of silver, or sesterces. Both Gauls and Germans were well acquainted with Roman tactics; many thousands of both nations were enrolled in the legions or served as auxiliaries, and so were the better able to encounter them in the field.
On the other hand, the eastern provinces were ill fitted to recruit the armies of Rome, now in some measure thinned and exhausted by the civil war. By Italy itself, at least south of the Po, a very few cohorts only could be furnished. The brave and hardy Samnites and Marsians no longer existed in any number. They had been swept off in the Social and earlier Civil wars. Much of their land had become sheep-walks; and the place of hardy shepherds, ploughmen, and vine-dressers was filled up by slaves. The once populous Latium was divided among a few landholders, and towns like Gabii or Ulubrae now stood in huge parks, and when not quite deserted, were inhabited by a few peasants or tavern-keepers. The large farms, said Pliny the Naturalist, have been the ruin of Italy.
​All these circumstances rendered the German revolt most grave and menacing. That it appeared so to Tacitus, is plain from several passages in his works. Could the Germans only be induced to destroy one another, Rome might sleep in comparative security, and thank her presiding deities for the feuds of her enemy. In his 'Germany' he writes thus of a happy accident of the kind: "The Chamavi and Angrivarii utterly exterminated the Bructeri, with the common help of the neighbouring tribes, either from hatred of their tyranny, or from the attractions of plunder, or from heaven's favourable regard to us. It did not even grudge us the spectacle of the conflict. I pray that there may long last among the nations, if not a love for us, at least a hatred for each other; for, while the destinies of empire hurry us on, fortune can bestow no greater boon than discord among our foes."
In Antonius Primus we have at least the semblance of an adventurous and able leader of a division. He is a sort of Achilles or Joachim Murat; but in Claudius Civilis we have an able general and statesman combined. Tacitus evidently bestowed great pains on his portraiture. Civilis was of a noble Batavian family, and had served twenty-five years in the Roman armies. He must have been forty at least when he formed the project of revolt, since for a quarter of a century he had fought wherever the imperial eagles flew, or been stationed wherever there was a Roman camp. For some offence he had incurred the displeasure of a Cæsar or his legate. "It is," he says, "a noble reward that I have received for my toils: my brother ​murdered, myself imprisoned, my death demanded by the savage clamour of a legion; and for which wrongs I by the law of nations now demand vengeance."
Civilis perceiving, or surmising, that since Nero's death Rome was in no condition to war successfully with a distant ally, devoted himself thenceforth to what he justly considered a noble cause. The Batavian Wallace was no barbarian. Like the Cheruscan German hero Arminius, he had received a Roman education, and he had learned more than schoolmasters, lecturers, or books could teach him. He had seen the capital in perhaps its most low and degraded state; he had witnessed the public excesses and prodigality of Nero; he had perhaps heard, whispered with bated breath, of the orgies of the palace. The hour, it seemed to him, had come when he might deliver the Batavian island, if not Germany itself, from the tyranny and the vices of Rome.
As to the Germans of the Rhine, they had little dread from the garrisons or camps of the Cæsar. Vitellius had withdrawn from many if not all of them their best troops when he despatched seven legions across the Alps; and in fact there was just then no Cæsar. Galba had been murdered, Otho had destroyed himself, and Vitellius was daily exhibiting his unfitness for empire. Vespasian, whose character he knew, might give cause for some alarm to Civilis. They had once been companions in arms, and even friends; for the Flavian competitor for the throne was at one time, like Civilis himself, an obscure adventurer, and his chance of victory was still doubtful. The very attempt, however, of the Flavian was favorable to the designs of the Batavian, since he could and for a while ​did, pretend that he was recruiting and drilling soldiers for his former comrade; and he had even instructions from Antonius Primus to hinder any more German levies from being sent southward. Here, then, was an excellent mask for the first movements of the conspiracy of Gaul and Teuton against Rome.
By his eloquence, his skill in political combination, and by his knowledge of the character and condition at the time of the leading men of Rome and the empire, Civilis was enabled to effect a general confederation of all the Netherland tribes, both Celtic and German. He availed himself of the popular religion or superstition. The name of Veleda has already been mentioned. "She was regarded," says Tacitus, "by many as a divinity." The dwelling of this Deborah of the Bructeri was a lofty tower in the neighbourhood of the river Lippe (Luppia). Many were those who consulted, but none were permitted to see her. Mystery, she justly held—and her opinion has been held by many prophetic persons both before and since Veleda delivered oracles—"inspired the greater respect." The questions of her suppliants and the answers to them were conveyed by a relative of the prophetess. The first successes of the revolt greatly increased her reputation, for she had foretold victory to the Germans. With her Civilis was in constant communication—doubtless supplied her with the latest news from Gaul, Italy, and the Rhine; and thus her predictions, being not without foundation in facts, gained for the Batavian leader some allies, and induced many tribes of Germany to send him subsidies or supplies for his army.
The advantages possessed by the Batavians are thus set forth by their commander. Collecting his ​countrymen in one of the sacred graves, he thus harangued them: "There is now no alliance, as once there was [with Rome]. We are treated as slaves. We are handed over to prefects and centurions, and when they are glutted with our spoils and our blood, then they are changed, and new receptacles for plunder, new terms for spoliation, are discovered. Now the conscription is at hand, tearing, we may say, for ever children from parents, and brothers from brothers. Never has the power of Rome been more depressed. In the winter quarters of the legions there is nothing but property to plunder and a few old men. Only dare to look up, and cease to tremble at the empty names of legions. For we have a vast force of horse and foot; we have the Germans our kinsmen; we have Gaul bent on the same objects."
On another occasion, addressing the people of Trêves (Treveri) he says:—"What reward do you and other enslaved creatures expect for the blood which you have shed so often? What but a hateful service, perpetual tribute, the rod, the axe, and the passions of a ruling race? See how I, the prefect of a single cohort, with the Batavians and the Canninefates, a mere fraction of Gaul, have destroyed their vast but useless camps, or am pressing them with the close blockade of famine and the sword. In a word, either freedom will follow on our efforts, or, if we are vanquished, we shall but be what we were before."
The Roman view of the question Tacitus has given in the speech of Petilius Cærealis, the ablest officer engaged in the German war. He had shown in action ​that the union of Gauls and Germans could not be depended on: that although trained in Roman barracks, the tribes of Rhineland and Batavia were unable, in the long-run, to mate and master the discipline, the swift and precise movements, of the regular legions. Gauls, he said, can have no real affinity with Germans. He proceeds: "It was not to defend Italy that we"—the Romans—"occupied the borders of the Rhine, but to insure that no second Ariovistus should seize the empire of Gaul. Do you fancy yourselves to be dearer in the eyes of Civilis and the Batavians and the Transrhenane tribes than your fathers and grandfathers were to their ancestors? There have ever been the same causes to make the Germans cross over into Gaul—lust, avarice, and the longing for a new home, prompting them to leave their own marshes and deserts, and to possess themselves of this most fertile soil, and of you its inhabitants.
"Gaul has always had its petty kingdoms and intestine wars, till you submitted to our authority. We, though so often provoked, have used the right of conquest to burden you only with the cost of maintaining peace. For the tranquillity of nations cannot be preserved without armies; armies cannot exist without pay; pay cannot be furnished without tribute: all else is common between us. You often command our legions. You rule these and other provinces. There is no privilege, no exclusion. From worthy emperors you derive equal advantage, though you dwell so far away, while cruel rulers are most formidable to those near at hand. Endure the passions and rapacity of your masters, just as you bear barren seasons, and excessive rains, and other natural evils. ​There will be vices as long as there are men. But they are not perpetual, and they are compensated by the occurrence of better things."
Civilis was in the end unsuccessful. He was deserted, if not actually betrayed, by his allies; with the usual fickleness of barbarians, their zeal soon cooled down: some thought they did enough for him if they helped him to win a battle or two; some that they did enough for themselves when they had plundered a Roman colony or camp. Soldiers who went to their homes, or turned to common brigandage when they pleased, were not fitted to contend long with the severely disciplined Roman legions; and as soon as Vespasian was able to pour division after division into the seat of war, the Batavian commonwealth ceased to exist. Even Civilis perceived at last that he must come to terms with the legate, Petilius Cerialis. With the preparation for their interview the mutilated 'History' closes abruptly; the fragment, however, is too interesting to be omitted.
The lower classes of the Batavians were murmuring at the length of the war; the nobles were still more impatient and spoke in fiercer language. "We have been driven into war," they said, "by the fury of Civilis. He sought to counterbalance his private wrongs by the destruction of his nation. We are at the last extremity. The Germans already are falling away from us; the Gauls have returned to their servitude; we must repent, 'and avow our repentance by punishing the guilty.'
"These dispositions did not escape the notice of Civilis. He determined to anticipate them, moved not only by weariness of his sufferings, but also by the ​clinging to life which often breaks the noblest spirits. He asked for a conference. The bridge over the river Nabalia was cut down, and the two generals advanced to the broken extremities. Civilis thus opened the conference: 'If it were before a legate of Vitellius that I were defending myself, my acts would deserve no pardon, my words no credit. All the relations between us were those of hatred and hostility, first made so by him, and afterwards embittered by me. My respect for Vespasian is of long standing. While he was still a subject, we were called friends. This was known to Primus Antonius, whose letters urged me to take up arms, for he feared lest the legions of Germany and the youth of Gaul should cross the Alps. What Antonius advised by his letters, Herdeonius suggested by word of mouth. I fought the same battle in Germany as did Mucianus in Syria, Aponius in Mæsia, Flavianus in Pannonia.'" . . . . . .
The mutilation of ancient manuscripts is one of the curiosities, no less than of the calamities of literature. By an unaccountable coincidence—can it have been accident, or was it design?—the 'Annals' also, as we have them, close with an interrupted speech of the dying Thrasea. In each instance so great is our loss that we may well apply to Tacitus the lines of Milton—
* ↑ Hist., i. 10; ii. 5.
* ↑ Chap. 33.
* ↑ Hist., iv. ch. 14.
* ↑ Ibid. ch. 31.