At last the
arrival of the reinforcements revealed the perversity of his strategy.
He had too few men to assume the offensive, even if they had been
unquestionably loyal, and their loyalty was under grave suspicion.
However, their sense of decency and respect for the general restrained
them for a while, though such ties are soon broken when troops are
disinclined for danger and indifferent to disgrace.[105] Fearing
trouble, he sent the Guards forward to Ariminum[106] with the cavalry
to secure the rear. Valens himself, with a few companions, whose
loyalty had survived misfortune, turned off into Umbria and thence to
Etruria, where he learnt the result of the battle of Cremona.
Thereupon he formed a plan, which was far from cowardly and might have
had alarming consequences, if it had succeeded. He was to seize ships
and cross to some point on the coast of Narbonnese Gaul, whence he
could rouse the provinces of Gaul and the native German tribes, and
thus raise forces for a fresh outbreak of war.
Valens' departure having dispirited the troops at Ariminum, 42
Cornelius Fuscus[107] advanced his force and, stationing
Liburnian[108] cruisers along the adjoining coast, invested the town
by land and sea. The Flavians thus occupied the Umbrian plain and the
sea-board of Picenum; and the Apennines now divided Italy between
Vitellius and Vespasian.
Valens, embarking from the Bay of Pisa, was either becalmed on a slow
sea or caught by an unfavourable wind and had to put in at the harbour
of Hercules Monoecus.
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