Page:Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus.djvu/466

 parts of the country and committing great ravages. While the Franks and the Saxons who are on the frontiers of the Gauls were ravaging their country wherever they could effect an entrance by sea or land, plundering and burning, and murdering all the prisoners they could take.

6. To put a stop to these evils, if a favourable fortune should afford an opportunity, the new and energetic general repaired to that island situated at the extreme corner of the earth; and when he had reached the coast of Boulogne, which is separated from the opposite coast by a very narrow strait of the sea, which there rises and falls in a strange manner, being raised by violent tides, and then again sinking to a perfect level like a plain, without doing any injury to the sailors. From Boulogne he crossed the strait in a leisurely manner, and reached Richborough, a very tranquil station on the opposite coast.

7.  And when the Batavi, and Heruli, and the Jovian and Victorian legions who followed from the same place, had also arrived, he then, relying on their number and power, landed and marched towards Londinium, an ancient town which has since been named Augusta; and dividing his army into several detachments, he attacked the predatory and straggling bands of the enemy who were loaded with the weight of their plunder, and having speedily routed them while driving prisoners in chains and cattle before them, he deprived them of their booty which they had carried off from these miserable tributaries of Rome.

8.  To whom he restored the whole except a small portion which he allotted to his own weary soldiers: and then joyful and triumphant he made his entry into the city which had just before been overwhelmed by disasters, but was now suddenly re-established almost before it could have hoped for deliverance.

9.  This success encouraged him to deeds of grenter daring, and after considering what counsels might be the safest, he hesitated, being full of doubts as to the future, and convinced by the confession of his prisoners and the information given him by deserters that so vast a multitude, composed of various nations, all incredibly savage, could only be vanquished by secret stratagems and unexpected attacks.

10.  Then, by the publication of several edicts, in which  he