Amongst us is found whatever can stimulate men to
victory. The Romans have no wives to hearten and to urge them. They have
here no fathers and mothers to upbraid them for flying. Many of them have
no country at all, or at least their country is elsewhere. But a few in
number they are, ignorant of the region and thence struck with dread,
whilst to their eyes, whatever they behold around them, is all wild and
strange, even the air and sky, with the woods and the sea; so that the
Gods have in some sort delivered them enclosed and bound into our hands.
"Be not dismayed with things of mere show, and with a glare of gold and of
silver: this is what can neither wound, nor save. In the very host of the
enemy we shall find bands of our own. The Britons will own and espouse
their own genuine cause. The Gauls will recollect their former liberty.
What the Usipians have lately done, the other Germans will do, and abandon
the Romans. Thereafter nothing remains to be feared. Their forts are
ungarrisoned; their colonies replenished with the aged and infirm; and
between the people and their magistrates, whilst the former are averse to
obedience, and the latter rule with injustice, the municipal cities are
weakened and full of dissensions.
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