Res Gestae

There he chanced to find some of the traders[*](scurrae is used also of Germans serving in the Roman army. Cf. Lampr., Alex. Sev. 61, 3, unus ex Germanis, qui scurrarum officium sustinebat. Here perhaps campfollowers.) leading slaves intended for sale, and because he suspected that they would quickly run off and report what they had seen, he took their wares[*](I.e., the slaves.) from them and killed them all.

Then the generals,[*](Here iudices is used of military officials.) encouraged by the arrival of additional troops, encamped, with a view to a very short stay, since no one had a pack-animal or a tent, except the emperor, for whom a rug and a rough blanket[*](Cf. xvi. 5, 5.) sufficed for such a shelter. Then, after delaying for a time on account of the darkness of night, as soon as the morning-star uprose, since the campaign called for haste, they advanced farther, led by guides who knew the roads; and a large force of cavalry was ordered to precede them under command of Theodosius, that nothing might be unobserved[*](Here there is a lacuna of 3 1/2 lines. The general sense probably is, that the emperor went on to meet the king.) . . . was lying at the time; but he was prevented by the continuous noise made by his men; for although he constantly commanded them to abstain

Valentinian was robbed of this glory,[*](Of taking the king prisoner.) not by his own fault or that of his generals, but by the indiscipline of the soldiers, which has often caused the Roman state heavy losses; so, after reducing the enemy’s territory to ashes for fifty miles,[*](Some MSS. say five hundred.) he returned sadly to Treves.

There, as a lion, because he has lost a deer or a goat, gnashes his empty jaws, just when the forces of the enemy were broken and scattered by fear, in place of Macrianus he made Fraomarius king of the Bucinobantes, a tribe of the Alamanni dwelling opposite Mainz. And soon afterwards, since a recent invasion had utterly devastated that, canton, he transferred him to Britain with the rank of tribune, and gave him command of a troop[*](For this meaning of numeri, applied both to cohorts and legions, cf., for example, militares numeros, xiv. 7, 19; numeris Moesiacorum duobus, xx. 1, 3; Suet., Aug. 17. 3.) of the Alamanni which at that time was distinguished for its numbers and its strength. Bitheridus, indeed, and Hortarius (chiefs of the same nation) he appointed to commands in the army; but of these Hortarius was betrayed by a report of Florentius, commander in Germany, of having written certain things to the detriment of the state to Macrianus and the chiefs of the barbarians, and after the truth was wrung from him by torture he suffered the penalty of death by burning.