In the Consulship of Lentulus Getulicus and Caius Calvisius, the triumphal
ensigns were decreed to Poppeus Sabinus for having routed some clans of
Thracians, who living wildly on the high mountains, acted thence with the
more outrage and contumacy. The ground of their late commotion, not to
mention the savage genius of the people, was their scorn and impatience,
to have recruits raised amongst them, and all their stoutest men enlisted
in our armies; accustomed as they were not even to obey their native kings
further than their own humour, nor to aid them with forces but under
captains of their own choosing, nor to fight against any enemy but their
own borderers. Their discontents too were inflamed by a rumour which then
ran current amongst them; that they were to be dispersed into different
regions; and exterminated from their own, to be mixed with other nations.
But before they took arms and began hostilities, they sent ambassadors to
Sabinus, to represent "their past friendship and submission, and that the
same should continue, if they were provoked by no fresh impositions: but,
if like a people subdued by war, they were doomed to bondage; they had
able men and steel, and souls determined upon liberty or death.
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