But there were many things to exasperate the already divided feelings of the soldiery. Pay and provisions were scanty, Gaul was rebelling against conscription and taxes, while the Rhine, owing to a drought unexampled in that climate, would hardly admit of navigation, and thus supplies were straitened at the same time that outposts had to be established along the entire bank to keep the Germans from fording the stream; the self-same cause thus bringing about a smaller supply of grain and a greater number of consumers. Among ignorant persons the very failure of the stream was regarded as a prodigy, as if the very rivers, the old defences of the Empire, were deserting us. What, in peace, would have seemed chance or nature, was now spoken of as destiny and the anger of heaven. As the army entered Novesium the sixteenth legion joined it; Herennius Gallus, its legate, was associated with Vocula in the responsibilities of command. As they did not venture to advance upon the enemy, they constructed a camp at a place called Gelduba. Here the generals sought to give steadiness to the troops by such exercises as forming in order of battle, constructing fortifications, making entrenchments, and whatever else might train them for war. In the hope that they might be fired to courage by the delights of plunder, Vocula led the army against the nearest villages of the Gugerni, who had accepted the alliance of Civilis. Some of the troops remained permanently with Herennius Gallus.
Complete Works of Tacitus. Tacitus. Alfred John Church. William Jackson Brodribb. Sara Bryant. edited for Perseus. New York. : Random House, Inc. Random House, Inc. 1873. reprinted 1942.
