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Quote of the day: Urgulania's influence, however, was so f
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Annals by Tacitus
Translated by Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb
Book XIII Chapter 57: Events in the North. Chatti and Hermunduri[AD 58]
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The same summer a great battle was fought between the Hermunduri and the Chatti, both forcibly claiming a river which produced salt in plenty, and bounded their territories. They had not only a passion for settling every question by arms, but also a deep-rooted superstition that such localities are specially near to heaven, and that mortal prayers are nowhere more attentively heard by the gods. It is, they think, through the bounty of divine power, that in that river and in those forests salt is produced, not, as in other countries, by the drying up of an overflow of the sea, but by the combination of two opposite elements, fire and water, when the latter had been poured over a burning pile of wood. The war was a success for the Hermunduri, and the more disastrous to the Chatti because they had devoted, in the event of victory, the enemy's army to Mars and Mercury, a vow which consigns horses, men, everything indeed on the vanquished side to destruction. And so the hostile threat recoiled on themselves. Meanwhile, a state in alliance with us, that of the Ubii suffered grievously from an unexpected calamity. Fires suddenly bursting from the earth seized everywhere on country houses, crops, and villages, and were rushing on to the very walls of the newly founded colony. Nor could they be extinguished by the fall of rain, or by river-water, or by any other moisture, till some countrymen, in despair of a remedy and in fury at the disaster, flung stones from a distance, and then, approaching nearer, as the flames began to sink, tried to scare them away, like so many wild beasts, with the blows of clubs and other weapons. At last they stript off their clothes and threw them on the fire, which they were the more likely to quench, the more they had been soiled by common use.

Event: Events in the North

Eadem aestate inter Hermunduros Chattosque certatum magno proelio, dum flumen gignendo sale fecundum et conterminum vi trahunt, super libidinem cuncta armis agendi religione insita, eos maxime locos propinquare caelo precesque mortalium a deis nusquam propius audiri. inde indulgentia numinum illo in amne illisque silvis [s]alem provenire, non ut alias apud gentes eluvie maris arescente, sed unda super ardentem arborum struem fusa ex contrariis inter se elementis, igne atque aquis, concretum. sed bellum hermunduris prosperum, Chattis exitiosius fuit, quia victores diversam aciem marti ac Mercurio sacravere, quo voto equi viri, cuncta viva occidioni dantur. et minae quidem hostiles in ipsos vertebant. sed civitas Ubiorum socia nobis malo improviso adflicta est. nam ignes terra editi villas arva vicos passim corripiebant ferebanturque in ipsa conditae nuper coloniae moenia. neque exstingui poterant, non si imbres caderent, non [si] fluvialibus aquis aut quo alio humore, donec inopia remedii et ira cladis agrestes quidam eminus saxa iacere, dein residentibus flammis propius suggressi ictu fustium aliisque verberibus ut feras absterrebant. postremo tegmina corpori derepta iniciunt, quanto [magis] profana et usu polluta,