Res Gestae

Hearing therefore that Strasburg, Brumath, Saverne, Seltz, Speyer, Worms, and Mayence were held by the savages, who were living on their lands (for the towns themselves they avoid as if they were tombs surrounded by nets),[*](In xxxi. 2, 4, a similar statement is made of the Huns, that they avoid houses as they would tombs. E. Maass, Neue Jahrb., xlix. (1922) pp. 205 ff., says that graves of women who died in childbed, and might return to get their offspring, were surrounded with nets.) he first of all seized Brumath, but while he was still approaching it a band of Germans met him and offered battle.

Julian drew up his forces in the form of a crescent, and when the fight began to come to close quarters, the enemy were overwhelmed by a double danger; some were captured, others were slain in the very heat of the battle, and the rest got away, saved by recourse to speed.

Accordingly, as after this no one offered resistance, Julian decided to go and recover Cologne, which had been destroyed before his arrival in Gaul.[*](See xv. 8, 19.) In all that region there is no city to be seen and no stronghold, except that at the Confluence, a place so called because there the river Moselle mingles with the Rhine, there is the town of Remagen[*](Near Coblenz, which gets its name from Confluentes. ) and a single tower near Cologne itself.

So, having entered Cologne, he did not stir from there until he had overawed the Frankish kings and lessened their pugnacity, had made a peace with them which would benefit the state meanwhile, and had recovered that very strongly fortified city.

Pleased with these first-fruits of victory, he passed through the land of the Treveri, and went to winter at Sens, a town which was then convenient. There, bearing on his shoulders, as the saying is, the burden of a flood of wars,[*](See p. 82, n. 5.) he was distracted by manifold cares—how the soldiers who had abandoned their usual posts might be taken back to danger-points, how he might scatter the tribes that had conspired to the hurt of the Roman cause, and how to see to it that food should not fail his army as it was about to range in different directions.

As he was anxiously weighing these problems, a host of the enemy attacked, fired with increased hope of taking the town, and full of confidence because they had learned from the statements of deserters that neither the targeteers nor the gentiles[*](See note 3, p. 56.) were at hand; for they had been distributed in the towns, so as to be more easily provisioned than before.

So, having shut the city gates and strengthened a weak section of the walls, Julian could be seen day and night with his soldiers among the bulwarks and battlements, boiling over with rage and fretting because however often he tried to sally forth, he was hampered by the scanty numbers of the troops at hand. Finally, after a month the savages withdrew crestfallen, muttering that they had been silly and foolish to have contemplated the blockade of the city.

But—a thing to be regarded as a shameful situation[*](I.e. the ill-treatment of Julian.) —while Caesar was in jeopardy, Marcellus, master of the horse, although he was stationed in neighbouring posts, postponed sending him reinforcements; whereas even if the city alone was endangered, to say nothing of the prince’s presence there, it ought to have been saved from the hardships of blockade by the intervention of a large force.

Once relieved of this fear, Caesar provided with the greatest efficiency and with unfailing solicitude that some rest should follow the long continued toil of the soldiers, a short one perhaps, but enough, at least, to restore their strength; and yet that region, a wilderness in its

But when this too had been provided for by his ever-watchful care, a happier hope of success was shed upon him, and with spirits revived he rose to the achievement of numerous enterprises.