The legions, without changing their route, came and camped
before the walls of Trier.
Highly elated by their success, Civilis and Classicus debated 63
whether they should allow their troops to sack Cologne. Their natural
savagery and lust for plunder inclined them to destroy the town, but
policy forbade; and they felt that in inaugurating a new empire a
reputation for clemency would be an asset. Civilis was also moved by
the memory of a past service, for at the beginning of the outbreak his
son had been arrested in Cologne, and they had kept him in honourable
custody. However, the tribes across the Rhine were jealous of this
rich and rising community, and held that the war could only be ended
either by throwing the settlement open to all Germans without
distinction or by destroying it and thereby dispersing the Ubii 64
together with its other inhabitants.[406] Accordingly the
Tencteri,[407] their nearest neighbours across the Rhine, dispatched a
deputation to lay a message before a public meeting of the town. This
was delivered by the haughtiest of the delegates in some such terms as
these:--'We give thanks to the national gods of Germany and above all
others, to the god of war, that you are again incorporate in the
German nation and the German name, and we congratulate you that you
will now at last become free members of a free community. Until to-day
the Romans had closed to us the roads and rivers, and almost the very
air of heaven, to prevent all intercourse between us; or else they
offered a still fouler insult to born warriors, that we should meet
under supervision, unarmed and almost naked,[408] and should pay for
the privilege.
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