Dacians

For much of this period, Tiberius was otherwise once again on campaign, having accompanied Augustus to Gaul.

He was subsequently sent on to Pannonia to repel an invasion there by the Dacians, a people from the Eastern Balkans, and put down another uprising of Dalmatians along the coast of the Western Balkans.

It was in the late summer that Drusus the Elder's second son, a boy who was named Claudius, was born in Lugdunum, the Roman name for the city of Lyon in Gaul.

This Claudius would one day many decades later become Emperor of Rome, despite suffering from a limp and partial deafness, disabilities which typically rendered an individual unfit to hold office in the eyes of the Romans.

Germany is separated from the Gali, the Rishi and Pannonii, by the rivers Rhine and Danube.

Mountain ranges are the fear which each feels for the other, divided from the Samatai and Desi.

Elsewhere ocean girds it, embracing broad peninsulas and islands of unexplored extent, where certain tribes and kingdoms are newly known to us, revealed by war.

The Rhine springs from the precipitous and inaccessible height of the Russian Alps, bends slightly westward, and mingles with the northern ocean.

There too was present the unwieldy frame of Montanus, and crispiness reeking at early dawn, with odours enough to out-scent two funerals more ruthless than he Pompeius.

whose gentle whisper would cut men's throats, and Fuscus, who planned battles in his marble halls, keeping his death for the Dacian vultures.

then along with the sage veiento came the deaf-dealing catulus who burned with love for a maiden whom he had never seen a mighty and notable marvel even in these days of ours a blind flatterer a dire courtier from a beggar's stand well fitted to beg at the wheels of chariots and blow soft kisses to them as they rolled down the aretian hill none marvelled more at the fish than he turning to the left as he spoke, only the creature happened to be on his right.

in like fashion would he commend the thrusts of a calician gladiator or the machine which whisks up the boys into the awning but veiento was not to be outdone and like a seer inspired o bellona by thine own gadfly he burst into prophecy a mighty presage hast thou o emperor of a great and glorious victory some king will be thy captive or arviragus will be hurled from his british chariot the brute is foreign-born dost thou not see the prickles bristling upon his back nothing remained for fabricius but to tell the turbot's age and birthplace what then do you advise quoth the emperor shall we cut it up nay nay rejoins montanus let that indignity be spared him let a deep vessel be provided to gather his huge dimensions within its slender walls some great and unforeseen prometheus is destined for the dish haste haste with clay and wheel but from this day forth o caesar let potters always attend upon thy camp this proposal so worthy of the man gained a day well known to him were the old debauches of the imperial court which nero carried on to midnight till a second hunger came and veins were heated with hot falernian no one in my time had more skill in the eating art than he he could tell at the first bite whether an oyster had been bred at circei or on the lucrine rocks or on the beds of rutupiae one glance would tell him the native shore of a sea-urchin the council rises and the counsellors are dismissed men whom the mighty emperor had dragged in terror and hot haste to his alban castle as though to give them news of the chatty or the savage sicambri or as though an alarming despatch had arrived on wings of speed from some remote quarter of the earth and yet would that he had rather given to folly such as these all those days of cruelty when he robbed a city of its noblest and choicest souls with none to punish or avenge.

See verbo.com slash trust for details.

it is this that transforms these fellows into hyacinths it was this that she preferred to children and to country to sister and to husband what these women love is the sword had this same sergius received his discharge he would have been no better than a veiento do the concerns of a private household and the doings of epea affect you then look at those who rival the gods and hear what claudius endured as soon as his wife perceived that her husband was asleep this august harlot was shameless enough to prefer a common mat to the imperial couch assuming a night-cowl and attended by a single maid she issued forth then having concealed her raven locks under a light-coloured peruke she took her place in a brothel reeking with long-used coverlets entering an empty cell reserved for herself she there took her stand under the feigned name of lyciska her nipples bare and gilded and exposed to view the womb that bore thee o nobly born britannicus here she graciously received all comers asking from each his fee and when at length the keeper dismissed the rest she remained to the very last before closing her cell and with passion still raging hot within her went sorrowfully then exhausted but unsatisfied with soiled cheeks and begrimed with the smoke of lamps she took back to the imperial pillow all the odours of the steel why tell of love potions and incantations of poisons brewed and administered to step-sons or of the grosser crimes to which women are driven by the imperious power of sex their sins of lust are the least of all their sins but tell me why is quinsenia on her husband's testimony the best of wives she brought him a million sesterces that is the price at which he calls her chaste he has not pined under the darts of venus he was never burnt by her torch it was the dowry that lighted his fires the dowry that shot those arrows that dowry bought liberty for her she may make what signals and write what love-letter she pleases before her husband's face the rich woman who marries a money-loving husband is as good as unmarried why does sartorius burn with love for if you shake out the truth it is the face that he loves not the woman let three wrinkles make their appearance let her skin become dry and flabby let her teeth turn black and her eyes lose their lustre then will his freedman give her the order pack up your traps and be off you've become a nuisance you are forever blowing your nose be off and quick about it there's another wife coming who will not sniffle but till that day comes the lady rules the roast asking her husband for shepherds and canusian sheep and elms for her felanian vines but that's a mere nothing she asks for all his slave-boys in town and country everything that her neighbour possesses and that she does not possess must be bought then in the winter time when the merchant jason is shut out from view and his armed sailors are blocked out by the white booths she will carry off huge crystal vases vases bigger still of agate and finally made precious by the finger of berenice it was given as a present long ago by the barbarian agrippa to his incestuous sister in that country where kings celebrate festal sabbaths with bare feet and where a long-established clemency suffers pigs to attain old age do you say no worthy wife is to be found among all these crowds well let her be handsome charming rich and fertile let her have ancient ancestors ranged about her halls let her be more chaste than the dishevelled sabine maidens who stopped the war a prodigy as rare upon the earth as a black swan yet who could endure a wife that possessed all perfections i would rather have a venusian wench for my wife than you o cornelia mother of the gracchi if with all your virtues you bring me a haughty brow and reckon up triumphs as part of your marriage portion away with your hannibal i beseech you away with syphax overpowered in his camp take yourself off carthage and all be merciful i pray o apollo and thou o cordes lay down thine arrows these babes have done naught shoot down their mother thus prayed amphion but apollo bends his bow and niobe led forth to the grave her troop of sons and their father to boot because she deemed herself of nobler race than latona and more prolific than the white sow of alba for is any dignity in a wife any beauty worth the cost if she is for ever reckoning up her merits against you these high and transcendent qualities lose all their charm when spoilt by a pride that savours more of aloes than of honey and who was ever so enamoured as not to shrink from the woman whom he praises to the skies and to hate her for seven hours out of every twelve some small faults are intolerable to husbands what can be more offensive than this that no woman believes in her own beauty unless she has converted herself from a tuscan into a greekling or from a maid of sulmo into a maid of athens but Greek, though it is a greater shame for our people to be ignorant of Latin.

their fears and their wrath their joys and their troubles all the secrets of their souls are poured forth in greek their very loves are carried on in greek fashion all this might be pardoned in a girl but will you who are hard on your eighty-sixth year still talk in greek that tongue is not decent in an old woman's mouth when you come out with the wanton words you are using in public the language of the bedchamber caressing and naughty words like these incite to love but though you say them more tenderly than a hymus or a carpophorus they will cause no fluttering of the heart your years are counted up upon your face if you are not to love the woman betrothed and united to you in due form what reason have you for marrying Why waste the supper and the wedding cakes to be given to the well-filled guests when the company is slipping away, to say nothing of the first night's gift of a salver rich with glittering gold, inscribed with Dacian or Germanic victories? If you are honestly uxorious and devoted to one woman, then bow your head and submit your neck to the yoke.

never will you find a woman who spares the man who loves her for though she be herself a flame she delights to torment and plunder him so the better the man the more desirable he be as a husband the less good will he get out of his wife

Dacia in 106 CE was the last generally lucrative conquest.

The Dacian gold mines were a real windfall.

And Trajan celebrated with 123 straight days of games.

After that, expansion mostly stopped.