Res Gestae

When their bands suddenly came in sight, our careful leader prepared for a hand-to-hand conflict and opened an attack upon these marauders of both nations, which even then were threatening cruel carnage; he killed a large number and he would have slaughtered them all to the last man, leaving not even anyone to report the disaster, had he not, after the fall of Farnobius, before this a dreaded inciter of turmoil, and many others with him, spared the survivors in response to their earnest entreaties. But though he spared their

We have learned that these Taifali were a shameful folk, so sunken in a life of shame and obscenity, that in their country the boys are coupled with the men in a union of unmentionable lust, to consume the flower of their youth in the polluted intercourse of those paramours. We may add that, if any grown person alone catches a boar or kills a huge bear, he is purified thereby from the shame of unchastity.

This is what, throughout Thrace, the destructive[*](377 f. A.D.) storms of affairs swept together as autumn was verging upon winter. And this madness of the times, as if the Furies were stirring up the whole world, spread widely and made its way also to distant regions.

And now the Lentienses, an Alamannic race bordering on Raetia, by treacherous raids broke the treaty which had long since been concluded with them[*](Since the year 354; of. xv. 4, 1.) and made an attempt upon our frontier; the ruinous beginning of this disaster was the following occurrence.

One of their nation, who was serving among the emperor’s armour-bearers, returned to his home because of pressing business, and being a loose talker, when many asked him what was going

The Lentienses greedily seized upon this information, and, looking on these acts from the point of view of neighbours of the frontier, and being swift and hasty in action, they formed themselves into predatory bands, and in the month of February tried[*](378 A.D.) to cross the Rhine, which was sufficiently frozen over to be passable. But the Celts, who were encamped near by with the Petulantes,[*](Often mentioned with the Celts; for a possible explanation of this designation of a legion made up of foreign troops, see xx, 4, 2, note 5.) with mighty strength turned them back with great slaughter, yet not without loss to themselves.

But although the Germans were forced to retire, being aware that the greater part of the army had gone ahead to Illyricum, where the emperor was soon expected to appear, they were fired with hotter rage; and planning still greater enterprises, they gathered into one place the inhabitants of all the villages, and with forty thousand armed men, or seventy thousand, as some boasted in order to exaggerate the emperor’s glory, full of pride and confidence broke into our territory.

Gratian learned of this with great alarm, recalled the cohorts which he had sent on into Pannonia, brought together the others, which wise policy had kept in Gaul, and gave the command to Nannienus,[*](Cf. xxviii. 5, 1.)

Accordingly, while Nannienus[*](Cf. xxviii. 5, 1, where he is called Nannenus.) weighed the changeable events of fortune and hence believed that they ought to act deliberately, Mallobaudes, carried away (as usual) by his strong eagerness for battle and impatient of postponement, was tormented with longing to go against the foe.