Book 26
7.16
So this is the old loyalty of Roman armies and their oaths bound by firm religious rites! Is this your pleasure, my brave men? All this mass of Roman swords uplifted for strangers! That a base Pannonian should shake and trample upon the world, to gain a throne which he never so much as dared to pray for, we groan over your wounds and ours! No, no—follow rather the house of your own royal line, one who has taken up arms with the greatest justice, not in order to seize what is another’s, but to restore himself to the possession of his ancestral majesty.
7.17
Through these calm words, all the men who had come to fight hotly against him were pacified, and willingly went over to his side with the eagles and the tips of their standards lowered; and in place of terrible shouts that the barbarians call barritusThe battle-cry, or war-song, of the Gauls and Germans described in xvi. 12, 43; the word seems to be of Germanio origin, but was borrowed, with the battle-cry itself, by the Romans, xxi. 13, 15; xxxi. 7, 11, quam, gentilitate, barritum vocant. he was hailed as emperor; all crowded about him in the customary manner, and in harmony escorted him back to the camp, swearing, in the soldiers’ manner, by Jupiter that Procopius would be invincible.
