Res Gestae

While this was being done with all haste, Hortarius, a king previously allied with us, not intending any disloyalty but being a friend also to his neighbours, invited all the kings, princes, and kinglets to a banquet and detained them until the third watch, prolonging the feasting after the native fashion. And as they were leaving the feast, it chanced that our men unexpectedly attacked them, but were in no way able to kill or take any of them, aided as they were by the darkness and their horses, which carried them off wherever panic haste drove them; they did, however, slay the lackeys or slaves, who followed their masters on foot, except such as the darkness of the hour saved from danger.

When word at last came of the crossing of the Romans, who then, as in former campaigns, expected to find rest from their labours wherever they should succeed in finding the enemy, the panic-striken kings and their peoples, who were watching with eager intentness and dreading the building of the bridge, shuddering with fear, took to their heels in all directions; and their unbridled anger now laid aside, they hastened to transport their kindred and their possessions to a greater distance. And at once every difficulty was removed, the bridge was built, and before the anxious nations expected it our soldiers appeared in the land of the savages, and were passing through the realms of Hortarius without doing any damage.

But when they reached the territories of kings that were still hostile, they burned and pillaged everything,

The kings were at once followed also by Vadomarius, whose abode was over against the Rauraci, and since he presented a letter of the emperor Constantius, in which he was strongly commended, he was received kindly (as was fitting), since he had long before been taken by Augustus under the protection of the Roman empire.