第26章 A.D.16-19(5)

That sight caused keener grief and rage among the Germans than their wounds, their mourning, and their losses.Those who but now were preparing to quit their settlements and to retreat to the further side of the Elbe, longed for battle and flew to arms.Common people and chiefs, young and old, rushed on the Roman army, and spread disorder.At last they chose a spot closed in by a river and by forests, within which was a narrow swampy plain.The woods too were surrounded by a bottomless morass, only on one side of it the Angrivarii had raised a broad earthwork, as a boundary between themselves and the Cherusci.Here their infantry was ranged.Their cavalry they concealed in neighbouring woods, so as to be on the legions' rear, as soon as they entered the forest.

All this was known to Caesar.He was acquainted with their plans, their positions, with what met the eye, and what was hidden, and he prepared to turn the enemy's stratagems to their own destruction.To Seius Tubero, his chief officer, he assigned the cavalry and the plain.His infantry he drew up so that part might advance on level ground into the forest, and part clamber up the earthwork which confronted them.He charged himself with what was the specially difficult operation, leaving the rest to his officers.Those who had the level ground easily forced a passage.Those who had to assault the earthwork encountered heavy blows from above, as if they were scaling a wall.The general saw how unequal this close fighting was, and having withdrawn his legions to a little distance, ordered the slingers and artillerymen to discharge a volley of missiles and scatter the enemy.Spears were hurled from the engines, and the more conspicuous were the defenders of the position, the more the wounds with which they were driven from it.Caesar with some praetorian cohorts was the first, after the storming of the ramparts, to dash into the woods.There they fought at close quarters.A morass was in the enemy's rear, and the Romans were hemmed in by the river or by the hills.Both were in a desperate plight from their position; valour was their only hope, victory their only safety.

The Germans were equally brave, but they were beaten by the nature of the fighting and of the weapons, for their vast host in so confined a space could neither thrust out nor recover their immense lances, or avail themselves of their nimble movements and lithe frames, forced as they were to a close engagement.Our soldiers, on the other hand, with their shields pressed to their breasts, and their hands grasping their sword-hilts, struck at the huge limbs and exposed faces of the barbarians, cutting a passage through the slaughtered enemy, for Arminius was now less active, either from incessant perils, or because he was partially disabled by his recent wound.As for Inguiomerus, who flew hither and thither over the battlefield, it was fortune rather than courage which forsook him.Germanicus, too, that he might be the better known, took his helmet off his head and begged his men to follow up the slaughter, as they wanted not prisoners, and the utter destruction of the nation would be the only conclusion of the war.And now, late in the day, he withdrew one of his legions from the field, to intrench a camp, while the rest till nightfall glutted themselves with the enemy's blood.Our cavalry fought with indecisive success.

Having publicly praised his victorious troops, Caesar raised a pile of arms with the proud inscription, "The army of Tiberius Caesar, after thoroughly conquering the tribes between the Rhine and the Elbe, has dedicated this monument to Mars, Jupiter, and Augustus." He added nothing about himself, fearing jealousy, or thinking that the conciousness of the achievement was enough.Next he charged Stertinius with making war on the Angrivarii, but they hastened to surrender.

And, as suppliants, by refusing nothing, they obtained a full pardon.

When, however, summer was at its height some of the legions were sent back overland into winter-quarters, but most of them Caesar put on board the fleet and brought down the river Amisia to the ocean.

At first the calm waters merely sounded with the oars of a thousand vessels or were ruffled by the sailing ships.Soon, a hailstorm bursting from a black mass of clouds, while the waves rolled hither and thither under tempestuous gales from every quarter, rendered clear sight impossible, and the steering difficult, while our soldiers, terrorstricken and without any experience of disasters on the sea, by embarrassing the sailors or giving them clumsy aid, neutralized the services of the skilled crews.After a while, wind and wave shifted wholly to the south, and from the hilly lands and deep rivers of Germany came with a huge line of rolling clouds, a strong blast, all the more frightful from the frozen north which was so near to them, and instantly caught and drove the ships hither and thither into the open ocean, or on islands with steep cliffs or which hidden shoals made perilous.these they just escaped, with difficulty, and when the tide changed and bore them the same way as the wind, they could not hold to their anchors or bale out the water which rushed in upon them.Horses, beasts of burden, baggage, were thrown overboard, in order to lighten the hulls which leaked copiously through their sides, while the waves too dashed over them.

As the ocean is stormier than all other seas, and as Germany is conspicuous for the terrors of its climate, so in novelty and extent did this disaster transcend every other, for all around were hostile coasts, or an expanse so vast and deep that it is thought to be the remotest shoreless sea.Some of the vessels were swallowed up; many were wrecked on distant islands, and the soldiers, finding there no form of human life, perished of hunger, except some who supported existence on carcases of horses washed on the same shores.