HKB
following of their own accord, they prevented the shame of being forced. Drusus seeing order and tranquillity restored, without staying for the return of the deputies, returned himself to Rome.
Almost at the same time, and from the same causes, the legions in Germany raised an insurrection, with greater numbers, and thence with more fury. Passionate too were their hopes that Germanicus would never brook the rule of another, but yield to the spirit of the legions, who had force sufficient to bring the whole Empire under his sway. Upon the Rhine were two armies; that called the higher, commanded by Caius Silius, Lieutenant-General; the lower, by Aulus Caecina: the command in chief rested in Germanicus, then busy collecting the tribute in Gaul. The forces however under Silius, with cautious ambiguity, watched the success of the revolt which others began: for the soldiers of the lower army had broken out into open outrages, which took its rise from the fifth legion, and the one-and-twentieth; who after them drew the first, and twentieth. These were altogether upon the frontiers of the Ubians, passing the campaign in utter idleness or light duty: so that upon the news that Augustus was dead, the whole swarm of new soldiers lately levied in the city, men accustomed to the effeminacies of Rome, and impatient of every military hardship, began to possess the ignorant minds of the rest with many turbulent expectations, "that now was presented the lucky juncture for veterans to demand entire dismission; the fresh soldiers, larger pay; and all, some mitigation of their miseries; as also to return due vengeance for the cruelties of the Centurions." These were not the harangues of a single incendiary, like Percennius amongst the Pannonian legions; nor uttered, as there, in the ears of men who, while they saw before their eyes armies greater than their own, mutinied with awe and trembling: but here was a sedition of many mouths, filled with many boasts, "that in their hands lay the power and fate of Rome; by their victories the empire was enlarged, and from them the Caesars took, as a compliment, the surname of Germanicus."
Neither did Caecina strive to restrain them. A madness so extensive had bereft him of all his bravery and firmness. In this precipitate frenzy they rushed at once, with swords drawn, upon the Centurions, the eternal objects of their resentment, and always the first victims to their vengeance. Them they dragged to the earth, and upon each bestowed a terrible portion of sixty blows; a number proportioned to that of Centurions in a legion. Then bruised, mangled, and half expiring, as they were, they cast them all out of the camp, some into the stream of the Rhine. Septimius, who had for refuge fled to the tribunal of Caecina, and lay clasping his feet, was demanded with such imperious vehemence, that he was forced to be surrendered to destruction. Cassius Cherea (afterwards famous to posterity for killing Caligula), then a young man of undaunted spirit, and one of the Centurions, boldly opened himself a passage with his sword through a crowd of armed foes striving to seize him. After this no further authority remained to the Tribunes, none to the Camp-Marshals. The seditious soldiers were their own officers; set the watch, appointed the guard, and gave all orders proper in the present exigency; hence those who dived deepest into the spirit of the soldiery, gathered a special indication how powerful and obdurate the present insurrection was like to prove; for in their conduct were no marks of a rabble, where every man's will guides him, or the instigation of a few controls the whole. Here, all at once they raged, and all at once kept silence; with so much concert and steadiness, that you would have believed them under the sovereign direction of one.