第93章 A.D.54-58(15)

Of this same territory, the Ampsivarii now possessed themselves, a tribe more powerful not only from their numbers, but from having the sympathy of the neighbouring peoples, as they had been expelled by the Chauci and had to beg, as homeless outcasts, a secure exile.Their cause was pleaded by a man, famous among those nations and loyal to Rome, Boiocalus by name, who reminded us that on the Cheruscan revolt he had been imprisoned by the order of Arminius, that afterwards he had served under the leadership of Tiberius and of Germanicus, and that to a fifty years' obedience he was adding the merit of subjecting his tribe to our dominion."What an extent of plain," he would say, "lies open into which the flocks and herds of the Roman soldiers may some day be sent! Let them by all means keep retreats for their cattle, while men are starving; only let them not prefer a waste and a solitude to friendly nations.Once these fields belonged to the Chamavi; then to the Tubantes; after them to the Usipii.As heaven is for the gods, so the earth has been given to mankind, and lands uninhabited are common to all." Then looking up to the sun and invoking the other heavenly bodies, he asked them, as though standing in their presence, "whether they wished to behold an empty soil; rather let them submerge it beneath the sea against the plunderers of the land."Avitus was impressed by this language and said that people must submit to the rule of their betters; that the gods to whom they appealed, had willed that the decision as to what should be given or taken from them, was to rest with the Romans, who would allow none but themselves to be judges.This was his public answer to the Ampsivarii;to Boiocalus his reply was that in remembrance of past friendship he would cede the lands in question.Boiocalus spurned the offer as the price of treason, adding, "We may lack a land to live in; we cannot lack one to die in." And so they parted with mutual exasperation.

The Ampsivarii now called on the Bructeri, the Tencteri, and yet more distant tribes to be their allies in war.Avitus, having written to Curtilius Mancia, commander of the Upper army, asking him to cross the Rhine and display his troops in the enemy's rear, himself led his legions into the territory of the Tencteri, and threatened them with extermination unless they dissociated themselves from the cause.When upon this the Tencteri stood aloof, the Bructeri were cowed by a like terror.And so, as the rest too were for averting perils which did not concern them, the Ampsivarian tribe in its isolation retreated to the Usipii and Tubantes.Driven out of these countries, they sought refuge with the Chatti and then with the Cherusci, and after long wanderings, as destitute outcasts, received now as friends now as foes, their entire youth were slain in a strange land, and all who could not fight, were apportioned as booty.

The same summer a great battle was fought between the Hermunduri and the Chatti, both forcibly claiming a river which produced salt in plenty, and bounded their territories.They had not only a passion for settling every question by arms, but also a deep-rooted superstition that such localities are specially near to heaven, and that mortal prayers are nowhere more attentively heard by the gods.It is, they think, through the bounty of divine power, that in that river and in those forests salt is produced, not, as in other countries, by the drying up of an overflow of the sea, but by the combination of two opposite elements, fire and water, when the latter had been poured over a burning pile of wood.The war was a success for the Hermunduri, and the more disastrous to the Chatti because they had devoted, in the event of victory, the enemy's army to Mars and Mercury, a vow which consigns horses, men, everything indeed on the vanquished side to destruction.And so the hostile threat recoiled on themselves.

Meanwhile, a state in alliance with us, that of the Ubii, suffered grievously from an unexpected calamity.Fires suddenly bursting from the earth seized everywhere on country houses, crops, and villages, and were rushing on to the very walls of the newly founded colony.Nor could they be extinguished by the fall of rain, or by river-water, or by any other moisture, till some countrymen, in despair of a remedy and in fury at the disaster, flung stones from a distance, and then, approaching nearer, as the flames began to sink, tried to scare them away, like so many wild beasts, with the blows of clubs and other weapons.At last they stript off their clothes and threw them on the fire, which they were the more likely to quench, the more they had been soiled by common use.

That same year, the fact that the tree in the Comitium, which 840years before had sheltered the infancy of Romulus and Remus, was impaired by the decay of its boughs and by the withering of its stem, was accounted a portent, till it began to renew its life with fresh shoots.