Other officers rushed to his help,
and the legionaries having their centurions with them recovered their
steadiness. Sextius Bacillus was again severely hurt, and fainted, but he
was carried off in safety. Some of the cohorts who were outside, and had
been for a time cut off, made their way into the camp to join the
defenders, and the Germans, who had come without any fixed purpose, merely
for plunder, gave way and galloped off again. They left the Romans,
however, still in the utmost consternation. The scene and the associations
of it suggested the most gloomy anticipations. They thought that German
cavalry could never be so far from the Rhine, unless their countrymen were
invading in force behind them. Caesar, it was supposed, must have been
surprised and destroyed, and they and every Roman in Gaul would soon share
the same fate. Brave as they were, the Roman soldiers seem to have been
curiously liable to panics of this kind. The faith with which they relied
upon their general avenged itself through the completeness with which they
were accustomed to depend upon him. He returned on the day which he had
fixed, and not unnaturally was displeased at the disregard of his orders.
He did not, or does not in his Commentaries, professedly blame Cicero. But
the Ciceros perhaps resented the loss of confidence which one of them had
brought upon himself.
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