The Sixteenth legion and the auxiliary troops who had surrendered 62 with it now received orders to migrate from their quarters at Novaesium to Trier, and a date was fixed by which they had to leave their camp.  They spent the meantime brooding on various anxieties, the cowards all shuddering at the precedent of the massacre at Vetera, the better sort covered with shame at their disgrace.  ’What sort of a march would this be?  Whom would they have to lead them?  Everything would be decided by the will of those into whose hands they had put their lives.’  Others, again, were quite indifferent to the disgrace, and simply stowed all their money and most cherished possessions about their persons, while many got their armour ready and buckled on their swords, as if for battle.  While they were still busy with these preparations the hour struck for their departure, and it proved more bitter than they had expected.  Inside the trenches their disgrace was not so noticeable.  The open country and the light of day revealed their depth of shame.  The emperors’ medallions had been torn down[403] and their standards desecrated, while Gallic ensigns glittered all around them.  They marched in silence, like a long funeral procession, led by Claudius Sanctus,[404] a man whose sinister appearance—­he had lost one eye—­was only surpassed by his weakness of intellect.  Their disgrace was doubled when they were joined by the First legion, who had left their camp at Bonn.  The famous news of their capture had spread, and all the people who shortly before had trembled at the very name of Rome, now came flocking out from fields and houses, and scattered far and wide in transports of joy at this unwonted sight.  Their insulting glee was too much for ’The Picenum Horse’.[405] Defying all Sanctus’ threats and promises, they turned off to Mainz, and coming by chance upon Longinus, the man who killed Vocula, they slew him with a shower of javelins and thus made a beginning of future amends.  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