A madness so extensive had
bereft him of all his bravery and firmness. In this precipitate frenzy
they rushed at once, with swords drawn, upon the Centurions, the eternal
objects of their resentment, and always the first victims to their
vengeance. Them they dragged to the earth, and upon each bestowed a
terrible portion of sixty blows; a number proportioned to that of
Centurions in a legion. Then bruised, mangled, and half expiring, as they
were, they cast them all out of the camp, some into the stream of the
Rhine. Septimius, who had for refuge fled to the tribunal of Caecina, and
lay clasping his feet, was demanded with such imperious vehemence, that he
was forced to be surrendered to destruction. Cassius Cherea (afterwards
famous to posterity for killing Caligula), then a young man of undaunted
spirit, and one of the Centurions, boldly opened himself a passage with
his sword through a crowd of armed foes striving to seize him. After this
no further authority remained to the Tribunes, none to the Camp-Marshals.
The seditious soldiers were their own officers; set the watch, appointed
the guard, and gave all orders proper in the present exigency; hence those
who dived deepest into the spirit of the soldiery, gathered a special
indication how powerful and obdurate the present insurrection was like to
prove; for in their conduct were no marks of a rabble, where every man's
will guides him, or the instigation of a few controls the whole.
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