Considius Aequus too and Coelius Cursor, Roman knights, were punished
on the emperor’s proposal, by a decree of the Senate, for having attacked
the praetor, Magius Caecilianus, with false charges of treason. Both
these results were represented as an honour to Drusus. By moving in
society at Rome, amid popular talk, his father’s dark policy, it was
thought, was mitigated. Even voluptuousness in one so young gave little
offence. Better that he should incline that way, spend his days in
architecture, his nights in banquets, than that he should live in
solitude, cut off from every pleasure, and absorbed in a gloomy vigilance
and mischievous schemes.

Tiberius indeed and the informers were never weary. Ancharius Priscus
had prosecuted Caesius Cordus, proconsul of Crete, for extortion,
adding a charge of treason, which then crowned all indictments. Antistius
Vetus, one of the chief men of Macedonia, who had been acquitted of
adultery, was recalled by the emperor himself, with a censure on the
judges, to be tried for treason, as a seditious man who had been implicated
in the designs of Rhescuporis, when that king after the murder of
his brother Cotys had meditated war against us. The accused was accordingly
outlawed, with the further sentence that he was to be confined in
an island from which neither Macedonia nor Thrace were conveniently
accessible.

As for Thrace, since the division of the kingdom between Rhoemetalces
and the children of Cotys, who because of their tender age were under
the guardianship of Trebellienus Rufus, it was divided against itself,
from not being used to our rule, and blamed Rhoemetalces no less than
Trebellienus for allowing the wrongs of his countrymen to go unpunished.
The Coelaletae, Odrusae and Dii, powerful tribes, took up arms, under
different leaders, all on a level from their obscurity. This hindered
them from combining in a formidable war. Some roused their immediate
neighbourhood; others crossed Mount Haemus, to stir up remote tribes;
most of them, and the best disciplined, besieged the king in the city
of Philippopolis, founded by the Macedonian Philip.

When this was known to Publius Vellaeus who commanded the nearest
army, he sent some allied cavalry and light infantry to attack those
who were roaming in quest of plunder or of reinforcements, while he
marched in person with the main strength of the foot to raise the
siege. Every operation was at the same moment successful; the pillagers
were cut to pieces; dissensions broke out among the besiegers, and
the king made a well-timed sally just as the legion arrived. A battle
or even a skirmish it did not deserve to be called, in which merely
half-armed stragglers were slaughtered without bloodshed on our side.

That same year, some states of Gaul, under the pressure of heavy debts,
attempted a revolt. Its most active instigators were Julius Florus
among the Treveri and Julius Sacrovir among the Aedui. Both could
show noble birth and signal services rendered by ancestors, for which
Roman citizenship had formerly been granted them, when the gift was
rare and a recompense only of merit. In secret conferences to which
the fiercest spirits were admitted, or any to whom poverty or the
fear of guilt was an irresistible stimulus to crime, they arranged
that Florus was to rouse the Belgae, Sacrovir the Gauls nearer home.
These men accordingly talked sedition before small gatherings and
popular assemblies about the perpetual tributes, the oppressive usury,
the cruelty and arrogance of their governors, hinting too that there
was disaffection among our soldiers, since they had heard of the murder
of Germanicus. “It was,” they said, “a grand opportunity for the recovery
of freedom, if only they would contrast their own vigour with the
exhaustion of Italy, the unwarlike character of the city populace,
and the utter weakness of Rome’s armies in all but their foreign element.”

Scarcely a single community was untouched by the germs of this commotion.
First however in actual revolt were the Andecavi and Turoni. Of these
the former were put down by an officer, Acilius Aviola, who had summoned
a cohort which was on garrison duty at Lugdunum. The Turoni were quelled
by some legionary troops sent by Visellius Varro who commanded in
Lower Germany, and led by the same Aviola and some Gallic chieftains
who brought aid, in order that they might disguise their disaffection
and exhibit it at a better opportunity. Sacrovir too was conspicuous,
with head uncovered, cheering on his men to fight for Rome, to display,
as he said, his valour. But the prisoners asserted that he sought
recognition that he might not be a mark for missiles. Tiberius when
consulted on the matter disdained the information, and fostered the
war by his irresolution.
The Annals by Tacitus