Dio's Rome, Volume 3: An Historical Narrative Originally Composed in Greek During The Reigns of Septimius Severus, Geta and Caracalla, Macrinus, Elagabalus and Alexander Severus: and Now Presented in English FormCassius Dio Cocceianus
History
Dio's Rome, Volume 3: An Historical Narrative Originally Composed in Greek During The Reigns of Septimius Severus, Geta and Caracalla, Macrinus, Elagabalus and Alexander Severus: and Now Presented in English Form
Cassius Dio Cocceianus
Rome -- History
heart and after urgent supplications were allowed to enter the service
anew. For Caesar, being in need of soldiers and fearing that Antony would
appropriate them, said that he pardoned them, and he found them most
useful for all tasks.
[-35-] It was later that they proved their sincerity. At this time he
himself led the campaign against the Iapudes, assigning the rest of the
tribes to others to subdue. Those that were on his side of the mountains,
dwelling not far from the sea, he reduced with comparatively little
trouble, but he overcame those on the heights and beyond them with no
small hardship. They strengthened Metulum, the largest of their cities,
and repulsed many assaults of the Romans, burned to the ground many
engines and laid low Octavius himself as he was trying to step from a
wooden tower upon the circuit of the wall. Later, when he still did not
desist but kept sending for additional forces, they pretended to wish to
negotiate terms and received members of garrisons into their citadel.
Then by night they destroyed all of these and set fire to their houses,
some killing themselves and some their wives and children in addition, so
that nothing whatever remained for Caesar. For not only they but also
such as were captured alive destroyed themselves voluntarily shortly
afterward.
[-36-] When these had perished and the rest had been subdued without
performing any exploit of note, he made a campaign against the
Pannonians. He had no complaint to bring against them, not having been
wronged by them in any way, but he wanted both to give his soldiers
practice and to support them abroad: for he regarded every demonstration
against a weaker party as just, when it pleased the man whom weapons made
their superior. The Pannonians are settled near Dalmatia close along
the Ister from Noricum to European Moesia and lead the most miserable
existence of mankind. They are not well off in the matter of land or sky,
they cultivate no olives or vines except to the slightest extent, and
these wretched varieties, since the greater part of their days is passed
in the midst of most rigorous winter, but they drink as well as eat
barley and millet. They have been considered very brave, however, during
all periods of which we have cognizance. For they are very quick to anger
and ready to slay, inasmuch as they possess nothing which can give them
a happy life. This I know not by hearsay or reading only, but I have
learned it from actual experience as their governor. For after my term as
ruler in Africa and in Dalmatia,--the latter position my father also held
for a time,--I was appointed[55] to Upper Pannonia, so-called, and hence
my record is founded on exact knowledge of all conditions among them.
Their name is due to the fact that they cut up a kind of toga in a way
peculiar to themselves into strips which they call _panni_, and then
stitch these together into sleeved tunics for themselves.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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