Page:Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus.djvu/118

106 the tribune of the Cornuti, to try and perform some gallant exploit, if they could find an opportunity. And they, entering the shallow of the river, and sometimes, when there was occasion for swimming, putting their shields under them like canoes, reached a neighbouring island, and having landed, killed every one they found on it, men and women, without distinction of ago, like so many sheep. And having found some empty boats, though they were not very safe, they crossed in them, forcing their way into many places of the same land. When they were weary of slaughter, and loaded with a rich booty, some of which, however, they lost through the violence of the river, they returned back to the camp without losing a man.

10. And when this was known, the rest of the Germans, thinking they could no longer trust the garrisons left in the islands, removed their relations, and their magazines, and their barbaric treasures, into the inland parts.

11. After this Julian turned his attention to repair the fortress known by the name of Saverne, which had a little time before been destroyed by a violent attack of the enemy, but which, while it stood, manifestly prevented the Germans from forcing their way into the interior of the Gauls, as they had been accustomed to do; and he executed this work with greater rapidity than he expected, and he laid up for the garrison which he intended to post there sufficient magazines for a whole year's consumption, which his army collected from the crops of the barbarians, not without occasional contests with the owners.

12. Nor indeed was he contented with this, but he also collected provisions for himself and his army sufficient for twenty days. For the soldiers delighted in using the food which they had won with their own right hands, being especially indignant because, out of all the supplies which had been recently sent them, they were not able to obtain anything, inasmuch as Barbatio, when they were passing near his camp, had with great insolence seized on a portion of them, and had collected all the rest into a heap and burnt them. Whether he acted thus out of his own vanity and insane folly, or whether others were really the authors of this wickedness, relying on the command of the emperor himself, has never been known.