1It is not easy to say whether the envoys of the Helvetii found the emperor or the soldiers less easy to placate. 1The soldiers demand the destruction of the community, and thrust their weapons and fists in the envoys' faces. 1Not even Vitellius held back from words and threats, when Claudius Cossus, one of the envoys, a man of known eloquence but hiding his skill in speaking under a fitting nervousness, and all the more effective for it, softened the soldiers' mood. 1As is the way of a crowd, changeable at sudden impulses, they were as prone to pity as they had been unbounded in cruelty: pouring out tears and demanding milder measures ever more insistently, they won pardon and safety for the community.
Lectitō › Tacitus › Histories, Book 1
Tacitus · Historiae I
Histories 1.71
Helvetian envoys before Vitellius
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Tacitus, Historiae I. Latin text: C. D. Fisher, Cornelii Taciti Historiarum Libri (Oxford, 1911), public domain; digital text from the Perseus Digital Library, CC BY-SA. Word analysis: drafted by our own tagger (trained on the hand-checked texts on this site), with every doubtful word checked by hand. English translation and section titles: written for this app, each checked against the Latin by a second reader.