THE COMBAT BETWEEN TREBONIUS AND THE BRITONS
‘At midday Caesar having sent three legions and all his cavalry on a foraging expedition under one of his generals, Gaius Trebonius, they [the enemy] suddenly swooped down from all points on the foragers, not hesitating to attack the ordered ranks of the legions’ (Sed meridie cum Caesar pabulandi causa tres legiones atque omnem equitatum cum C. Trebonio legato misisset, repente ex omnibus partibus [hostes] ad pabulatores advolaverunt, sic uti ab signis legionibusque non absisterent[3477]). To a plain man these words are perfectly intelligible; and no military commentator, so far as I know, has ever found any difficulty in them: but Kraner[3478] must needs rewrite the last clause. This is what he makes of it:—sicubi ab signis legionibusque absisterent. So, according to Kraner, the enemy attacked the foragers at every point where they were separated from the legions. The unpractical fellow fails to perceive that, as the foragers could not forage while they were in their ranks, there was no point where they were not separated from the legions. The legions, or rather a due proportion of the cohorts which composed them, were there to protect the foragers; and of course what Caesar means is that the enemy, flushed with their easy success in driving off the foragers and compelling them to rejoin their respective cohorts, had the temerity to attack the cohorts themselves.