A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology

4. A.CaecinaSeverus, a distinguished soldier and general in the reigns of Augustus and Tiberius, had served forty campaigns by the year A. D. 15, and lived several years afterwards. (Tac. Ann. 1.64, 3.33.) He was governor of Moesia in A. D. 6, when the formidable insurrection under the two Batos broke out in the neighboring provinces of Dalmatia and Pannonia. [Bato.] He immediately marched against the Breucians in Pannonia, whom he defeated after a hard-fought battle, in which many of his troops fell, but was recalled almost im mediately afterwards to his own province by the ravages of the Dacians and Sarmatians. In the following year, he gained another victory over the insurgents, who had attacked him while on his march from Moesia to join Germanicus in Pannonia. (D. C. 55.29, 30, 32; Vell. 2.112.)

In A. D. 14, Caecina had the command, as legate of Germanicus, of the Roman army in Lower Germany,

and was employed by Germanicus, in the following year, in the war against Arminius. With the view of distracting the attention of the enemy, Caecina was sent with forty cohorts through the territory of the Bructeri to the river Amisia; and when Germanicus determined upon retreating after a hard-fought but indecisive battle with Arminius, he ordered Caecina to lead back his division of the army to the Rhine. His way lay through an extensive marsh, over which there was a causeway known by the name of the Long Bridges. Here his army was attacked and nearly destroyed by Arminius; but he eventually defeated the Germans with great slaughter, and reached the Rhine in safety. [ARMINIUS.] On account of this victory, he received the insignia of a triumph. (Tac. Ann. 1.31, 32, 56, 60, 63_68, 72.)

This is the last military command which Caecina appears to have held. He is mentioned in A. D. 20 as the author of a proposition in the senate that an altar should be erected to the goddess of Vengeance, on account of the suppression of Piso's conspiracy; and again in A. D. 21, as proposing that the governors of provinces should not be allowed to take their wives with them into their provinces. Tacitus gives a speech of his on the latter of these motions, in which he states, that he had always lived in harmony with his wife, who had borne him six children. His motion, which was opposed by Valerius Messallinus and Drusus, was not carried. (Tac. Ann. 3.18, 33, 34.)