8.
The influence of this state is by far the most considerable of any of the
countries on the whole sea coast, because the Veneti both have a
very great number of ships, with which they have been accustomed to sail to
Britain, and
[thus] excel the rest in their knowledge and experience of nautical affairs; and
as only a few ports lie scattered along that stormy and open sea, of which they
are in possession, they hold as tributaries almost all those who are accustomed
to traffic in that sea. With them arose the beginning [of the revolt] by their
detaining Silius and Velanius;
for they thought that they should recover by their means the hostages which they
had given to Crassus. The neighboring people led on by
their influence (as the measures of the Gauls are
sudden and hasty), detain Trebius and Terrasidius for the same motive; and quickly sending embassadors, by
means of their leading men, they enter into a mutual compact to do nothing
except by general consent, and abide the same issue of fortune; and they solicit
the other states to choose rather to continue in that liberty which they had
received from their ancestors, than endure slavery under the Romans. All the sea coast being quickly brought over to their
sentiments, they send a common embassy to P. Crassus
[to say], "If he wished to receive back his officers, let him send back to them
their hostages."
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.