On our progress to Rome I saw similar inconsistencies in their behavior.
They never so much as entered Fidentia, but marched round it, acquiescent
to the gentle suggestion of a trembling and incoherent alderman, quaking
with fear and barely able to enunciate some disjointed sentences. At Parma
they emptied two _ergastula_ and never so much as approached the others,
repeating this inconsistency at Mutina and Bononia. Outside of Faventia
something, I never learned what, enraged a knot of the veterans, so that
their fury communicated itself to all the soldiery from Britain and
inflamed their associates, Gallic and Italian. Whereupon we burst the
Bononia Gate of Faventia, flocked into the town, sacked some of the shops,
left a score of corpses in the market-place and some in the streets near
it, set fire to a block of buildings, and burst out of the Ariminum Gate,
tumultuous and excited, but without so much as trying the outer doors of
any _ergastulum_.
Yet, after this riotous performance, we did no damage at Ariminum, not
even entering the town, not even enquiring if it had an _ergastulum_, as
it must have had.
Similarly at Pisaurum, at Fanum Fortunae, at Forum Sempronii, though these
were small towns and could not have resisted us, we camped outside,
accepted gracefully the tents and food provided for us and made no move to
maltreat anyone or do any looting.
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