Book 1
46
When they had fought in this way continuously for five hours, and our men were being grievously harassed by superior numbers, having spent all their missiles, they draw their swords and, breasting the hill, charge the cohorts, and after laying a few low, they force the rest to retreat. When the cohorts were thus pushed close up to the wall, and to some extent driven by terror to enter the town, an easy withdrawal was allowed our men. Our cavalry, however, on each flank, though it had been stationed on low-lying ground at the foot of the cliff, yet forces its way with the utmost valour to the ridge, and, riding between the two lines of battle, allows our men a more convenient and safer withdrawal. Thus the contest was waged with varying fortune. At the first attack about seventy of our men fell, among them Q. Fulginius, a principal centurion of the Fourteenth Legion, who by his remarkable valour had risen to that post from the lower rank of centurions, and more than six hundred are wounded. Among the Afranians, T. Caecilius, a centurion of the first company, is slain, and besides him four centurions and more than two hundred men.
