These remarks of Galba's. were later reported to me by one of his staff, ;and I sent him a personal letter of thanks for his good opinion of me. I told him that he could count on me to give my generals a free hand in such campaigns as I ordered or authorized them to undertake. I would merely decide whether the expedition was to be one of conquest or whether it would have merely a punitive character. In the former case vigour was to be tempered with humanity as little damage as possible was to be done to captured villages and towns and to standing crops; the local Gods were not to be humiliated, and no butchery must be allowed once the enemy was broken in, battle. In the case, however, of a punitive expedition no mercy whatsoever need be shown: as much damage as possible must be done to crops, villages, towns, and temples, and such, of the inhabitants as were not worth taking home as slaves were to be massacred. I would also indicate the maximum number of reserves that could be called upon and the maximum number of Roman casualties that would be permitted. I would decide beforehand, in consultation with the general himself, the precise objectives of attack and ask him to state how many days or months he would need for taking them. I would leave all strategical and tactical dispositions to him, and only exercise my right of taking personal .command of the campaign, bringing with me such further reinforcements as I thought necessary, should the objectives not be reached within the agreed time, or should the Roman casualties rise beyond the, stipulated figure.
For I had a campaign in mind for Galba to make against the Chattians. It was to be a punitive expedition. I did not propose to enlarge the Empire beyond the natural and obvious frontier of the Rhine, but when the Chattians and the Northern tribesmen, the Istaevonians, failed to respect that frontier, a vigorous assertion of Roman dignity had to be made. My brother Germanicus always used to say that the only way to win the respect of Germans was to treat them with brutality; and that they were the only nation in the world of whom he would say this. The Spaniards, for example, could be impressed, by the courtesy of a conqueror, the French by his riches, the Greeks by his respect for the arts, the Jews by his moral integrity, the Africans by his calm authoritative bearing. But the German, who is impressed by none of these things, must always be struck to the dust, and .struck down again as he rises, and struck again, as he lies groaning. `While his wounds still pain him he will respect the hand that dealt them.' At the same time as Galba was advancing, another punitive expedition was to be made against the Istaevonian raiders, by Gambinius, the General commanding the four regiments on the Lower Rhine. Gabinius's expedition interested me far more than Galba's, for its object was not merely punitive. Before ordering it I sacrificed in Augustus's Temple and privately informed the God that I was bent on completing a task that my brother Germanicus had been prevented from completing, and which was, I knew, one in which He was Himself much interested: it was the rescue of the third and last of the lost Eagles of Varus, still in German hands after more than thirty years. My brother Germanicus, I reminded Him, had recaptured one Eagle in the year following His Deification and another in the campaigning season after that; but Tiberius had recalled him before he could avenge Varus in a last crushing battle and win back the Eagle that was still missing. I therefore begged the God to favour my arms and restore the honour of Rome. As the smoke of the sacrifice rose, the hands of Augustus's statue seemed to move in a blessing and his head to nod. It may only have been a trick of the smoke, but I took it for a favourable omen:
The fact was, I was now confident that I knew exactly where in Germany the Eagle was hidden, and proud of myself for the way I had discovered this secret. My predecessors could have done what I did if they had only thought of it; but they never did. It was always a pleasure to prove to myself that I was by no means the fool that they had all thought me, and that indeed I could manage some things better than they. It occurred to me that in my Household Battalion, composed of captured tribesmen from almost every district in Germany, there must be a half a dozen men at least who knew where the Eagle was hidden; yet when the question had once been put to them on parade by Caligula, with an offer of freedom and a large sum of money in return for the information, every face had immediately gone blank: it seemed that nobody knew. I tried a very different method of persuasion. I ordered them all out on parade one day and addressed them very kindly. I told them that as a reward for their faithful, services I was going to do them an unprecedented kindness: I was going to send back to Germany the dear, dear Fatherland about which they nightly sang such melancholy and tuneful songs - all members of the battalion who had completed twenty-five years' service with it I said that I should have liked to send them home with gifts of gold, weapons, horses, and the like, but unfortunately I was unable to do this or even to allow them to take back across the Rhine any possessions that they had acquired during their captivity. The obstacle was the still missing Eagle. Until this sacred emblem was returned, Roman honour was still in pawn, and it would create a: bad impression in the City if I were to reward with anything beyond, their bare freedom men who had in their youth taken part in the massacre of Varus's army. However, to true patriots liberty was better than gold and they would, I felt sure, accept the gift in the spirit that it was made in. I did not ask them, I said; to reveal to me the whereabouts of the Eagle, because no doubt this was a, secret which they had been bound by oaths to their Gods not to reveaclass="underline" and I would not ask any man to perjure himself for the sake of a bribe, as my predecessor had done. In two days' time, I promised, all the twenty-five-year veterans would be sent back across the Rhine under safe conduct.
I then dismissed the parade. The sequel was as I had foreseen. These veterans were even less anxious to return to Germany than the Romans captured by the Parthians at Carrhae were to return to Rome when, thirty years later, Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa bargained with the King for their exchange. Those Romans in Parthia had settled down, married, raised families, grown rich, and quite forgotten their past. And these Germans at Rome, though technically, slaves, lived: a most easy and enjoyable life; and their regret for home was not at all a sincere emotion; merely an excuse for tears when they were maudlin drunk. They came to me in a body and begged for permission to remain in my service. Many of them were fathers, and even grandfathers, by slave-women attached, to the Palace, and they were all comfortably off: Caligula had given them handsome presents from time to time. I pretended to be angry, called them ungrateful and base to refuse so priceless a gift as liberty and said that I had no further use for their services. They asked pardon and permission at. least to take their families with them. I refused this plea, mentioning the Eagle again. One of them, a Cheruscan, cried out: `It's all the fault of those cursed Chaucians that we have to go like this. Because they have sworn to keep the secret, we other innocent Germans are made to suffer.'
This was what I wanted. I dismissed from my, presence all but the representatives of the Greater and Lesser Chaucian tribes. (The Chaucians lived on. the North German coast between the Dutch Lakes and the Elbe; they had been confederates of Hermann's.) Then I said to these: `I have no intention of asking you Chaucians where the Eagle is, but if any of you have not sworn an oath about it, please tell me so at once.' The Greater Chaucians, the western half of the nation, all declared that they had not sworn any such oath. I believed them, because the second Eagle that my brother Germanicus won back had been found in a temple of theirs. It was unlikely that one tribe would have been awarded two Eagles in the distribution of spoils that followed Hermann's victory. I then addressed the chief man of the Lesser Chaucians: `I do not ask you to tell me where the Eagle is, or to what God you swore the oath. But perhaps you will tell me in what town or village you took that oath. If you tell me this I shall suspend my order for your repatriation.