Meanwhile the enemy moved not till the army began to defile in column
through the woods, then made slight skirmishing attacks on its flanks
and van, and with his whole force charged the rear. The light cohorts
were thrown into confusion by the dense masses of the Germans, when
Caesar rode up to the men of the twentieth legion, and in a loud voice
exclaimed that this was the time for wiping out the mutiny. “Advance,”
he said, “and hasten to turn your guilt into glory.” This fired their
courage, and at a single dash they broke through the enemy, and drove
him back with great slaughter into the open country. At the same moment
the troops of the van emerged from the woods and intrenched a camp.
After this their march was uninterrupted, and the soldiery, with the
confidence of recent success, and forgetful of the past, were placed
in winter-quarters.

The news was a source of joy and also of anxiety to Tiberius. He rejoiced
that the mutiny was crushed, but the fact that Germanicus had won
the soldiers’ favour by lavishing money, and promptly granting the
discharge, as well as his fame as a soldier, annoyed him. Still, he
brought his achievements under the notice of the Senate, and spoke
much of his greatness in language elaborated for effect, more so than
could be believed to come from his inmost heart. He bestowed a briefer
praise on Drusus, and on the termination of the disturbance in Illyricum,
but he was more earnest, and his speech more hearty. And he confirmed,
too, in the armies of Pannonia all the concessions of Germanicus.

That same year Julia ended her days. For her profligacy she had formerly
been confined by her father Augustus in the island of Pandateria,
and then in the town of the Regini on the shores of the straits of
Sicily. She had been the wife of Tiberius while Caius and Lucius Caesar
were in their glory, and had disdained him as an unequal match. This
was Tiberius’s special reason for retiring to Rhodes. When he obtained
the empire, he left her in banishment and disgrace, deprived of all
hope after the murder of Postumus Agrippa, and let her perish by a
lingering death of destitution, with the idea that an obscurity would
hang over her end from the length of her exile. He had a like motive
for cruel vengeance on Sempronius Gracchus, a man of noble family,
of shrewd understanding, and a perverse eloquence, who had seduced
this same Julia when she was the wife of Marcus Agrippa. And this
was not the end of the intrigue. When she had been handed over to
Tiberius, her persistent paramour inflamed her with disobedience and
hatred towards her husband; and a letter which Julia wrote to her
father, Augustus, inveighing against Tiberius, was supposed to be
the composition of Gracchus. He was accordingly banished to Cercina,
where he endured an exile of fourteen years. Then the soldiers who
were sent to slay him, found him on a promontory, expecting no good.
On their arrival, he begged a brief interval in which to give by letter
his last instructions to his wife Alliaria, and then offered his neck
to the executioners, dying with a courage not unworthy of the Sempronian
name, which his degenerate life had dishonoured. Some have related
that these soldiers were not sent from Rome, but by Lucius Asprenas,
proconsul of Africa, on the authority of Tiberius, who had vainly
hoped that the infamy of the murder might be shifted on Asprenas.

The same year witnessed the establishment of religious ceremonies
in a new priesthood of the brotherhood of the Augustales, just as
in former days Titus Tatius, to retain the rites of the Sabines, had
instituted the Titian brotherhood. Twenty-one were chosen by lot from
the chief men of the State; Tiberius, Drusus, Claudius, and Germanicus,
were added to the number. The Augustal game’s which were then inaugurated,
were disturbed by quarrels arising out of rivalry between the actors.
Augustus had shown indulgence to the entertainment by way of humouring
Maecenas’s extravagant passion for Bathyllus, nor did he himself dislike
such amusements, and he thought it citizenlike to mingle in the pleasures
of the populace. Very different was the tendency of Tiberius’s character.
But a people so many years indulgently treated, he did not yet venture
to put under harsher control.

In the consulship of Drusus Caesar and Caius Norbanus, Germanicus
had a triumph decreed him, though war still lasted. And though it
was for the summer campaign that he was most vigorously preparing,
he anticipated it by a sudden inroad on the Chatti in the beginning
of spring. There had, in fact, sprung up a hope of the enemy being
divided between Arminius and Segestes, famous, respectively, for treachery
and loyalty towards us. Arminius was the disturber of Germany. Segestes
often revealed the fact that a rebellion was being organized, more
especially at that last banquet after which they rushed to arms, and
he urged Varus to arrest himself and Arminius and all the other chiefs,
assuring him that the people would attempt nothing if the leading
men were removed, and that he would then have an opportunity of sifting
accusations and distinguishing the innocent. But Varus fell by fate
and by the sword of Arminius, with whom Segestes, though dragged into
war by the unanimous voice of the nation, continued to be at feud,
his resentment being heightened by personal motives, as Arminius had
married his daughter who was betrothed to another. With a son-in-law
detested, and fathers-in-law also at enmity, what are bonds of love
between united hearts became with bitter foes incentives to fury.

Germanicus accordingly gave Caecina four legions, five thousand auxiliaries,
with some hastily raised levies from the Germans dwelling on the left
bank of the Rhine. He was himself at the head of an equal number of
legions and twice as many allies. Having established a fort on the
site of his father’s entrenchments on Mount Taunus he hurried his
troops in quick marching order against the Chatti, leaving Lucius
Apronius to direct works connected with roads and bridges. With a
dry season and comparatively shallow streams, a rare circumstance
in that climate, he had accomplished, without obstruction, rapid march,
and he feared for his return heavy rains and swollen rivers. But so
suddenly did he come on the Chatti that all the helpless from age
or sex were at once captured or slaughtered. Their able-bodied men
had swum across the river Adrana, and were trying to keep back the
Romans as they were commencing a bridge. Subsequently they were driven
back by missiles and arrows, and having in vain attempted for peace,
some took refuge with Germanicus, while the rest leaving their cantons
and villages dispersed themselves in their forests.
The Annals by Tacitus