The Italian temperament seems to have been peculiarly susceptible to the effects of long training and peculiarly in need of it. Cæsar has given us a lively picture of the panic which affected his own army, while still young, at the prospect of meeting the Germans. Even the officers "could not keep their countenance, nor sometimes refrain even from tears; they buried themselves in their tents bemoaning the common danger along with their friends. Throughout the camp men were making their wills. . . . Some even reported to Cæsar that, if he ordered an advance, the soldiers would refuse obedience and not dare to go forward with the colours." The tables were now turned; Cæsar had fashioned these unpromising recruits into invincible warriors, and they in turn would face without hesitation double their number of raw soldiers. In the account of the first battle at Forum Gallorum, written to Cicero by an officer who took part in it,[1] we find Antony hastening to take the initiative in attack with two of his legions "because he thinks that he has only four legions of recruits opposed to him." The unexpected intervention of the veteran "Martian" legion turns the scale against him.
The fear of these veteran troops is constantly before the eyes of men, and the need for humouring them is the favourite argument of the trimmers against Cicero's call for vigorous action on the part of the Senate. Sextus Pompeius is anxious to intervene in the war before Mutina, but abstains "for fear
- ↑ Servius Sulpicius Galba, one of the assassins of Cæsar, and an ancestor of the future emperor. Ad Fam., x., 30.
