The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus: During the Reigns of the Emperors Constantius, Julian, Jovianus, Valentinian, and ValensAmmianus Marcellinus
History
The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus: During the Reigns of the Emperors Constantius, Julian, Jovianus, Valentinian, and Valens
Ammianus Marcellinus
Rome -- History -- Empire, 284-476
10. To arrest these men, Teutomeres, the chief of the Protectores, was
sent with his colleague; and he loaded them all with chains, and
conducted them, as he had been ordered, to the emperor's court. But when
they arrived at Aquileia, Marinus, who from having been a drillmaster
had been promoted to a tribuneship, but who at that time had had no
particular duty, being a man who had held dangerous language, and who
was in other respects of an intemperate disposition, being left in an
inn while things necessary for the journey were being prepared, stabbed
himself with a knife which he accidentally found, and his bowels gushed
out, so that he died. The rest were conducted to Milan, and subjected to
torture; and having been forced by their agony to confess that while at
the banquet they had used some petulant expressions, were ordered to be
kept in penal confinement, with some hope, though an uncertain one, of
eventual release. But Teutomeres and his colleague, being accused of
having allowed Marinus to kill himself, were condemned to banishment,
though they were afterwards pardoned through the intercession of
Arbetio.
IV.
§ 1. Soon after this transaction had been thus terminated, war was
declared against the tribes of the Allemanni around Lentia,[34] who had
often made extensive incursions into the contiguous Roman territories.
The emperor himself set out on the expedition, and went as far as
Rhætia, and the district of the Canini.[35] And there, after long and
careful deliberation, it was decided to be both honourable and expedient
that Arbetio, the master of the horse, should march with a division of
the troops, in fact with the greater part of the army, along the borders
of the lake of Brigantia, with the object of coming to an immediate
engagement with the barbarians. And I will here describe the character
of the ground briefly, as well as I can.
2. The Rhine rising among the defiles of lofty mountains, and forcing
its way with immense violence through steep rocks, stretches its onward
course without receiving any foreign waters, in the same manner as the
Nile pours down with headlong descent through the cataracts. And it is
so abundantly full by its own natural riches that it would be navigable
up to its very source were it not like a torrent rather than a stream.
3. And soon after it has disentangled itself from its defiles, rolling
onward between high banks, it enters a vast lake of circular form, which
the Rhætian natives call Brigantia,[36] being four hundred and sixty
furlongs in length, and of nearly equal extent in breadth,
unapproachable on account of a vast mass of dark woods, except where the
energy of the Romans has made a wide road through them, in spite of the
hostility of the barbarians, and the unfavourable character both of the
ground and the climate.
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