1The state of the Lingones had sent gifts to the legions, according to ancient custom, of clasped right hands, the emblem of hospitality. 1Their envoys, got up in squalor and grief, going round the headquarters and the tents, complaining now of their own injuries, now of the rewards of neighbouring states, and, when they found the soldiers' ears receptive, of the dangers and insults suffered by the army itself, inflamed their minds. 1They were not far from mutiny when Hordeonius Flaccus orders the envoys to leave, and, so that their departure might be more secret, to quit the camp by night. 1Hence a dreadful rumour, most declaring that they had been killed, and that unless the soldiers looked after themselves, the fiercest of them, who had complained of the present state of things, would be killed under cover of darkness and without the knowledge of the rest.
1The legions bind themselves together in a tacit compact; the auxiliary soldiers are brought in, at first distrusted, as though an attack on the legions were being prepared by surrounding them with the cohorts and cavalry squadrons, but soon turning over the same thoughts more fiercely, since bad men agree more easily for war than for concord in peace.