Plate 11: Civilis' Troops Crossing the Maas River by Antonio Tempesta & Otto van Veen 1611

"But there were many things that exasperated their rebellious temper: there was a lack of pay and grain, and at the same time the Gallic provinces scornfully refused a levy and tribute; the Rhine hardly floated boats, owing to a drought unprecedented in that climate; reprovisionment was hampered; detachments were posted all along the bank of the Rhine to keep the Germans from fording it, and for the same reason there was less grain while there were more to eat it. The ignorant regarded even the low water as a prodigy, as if the very rivers, the ancient defences of our empire, were failing us: what they would have called in time of peace an act of chance or nature, they then called fate and the wrath of the Gods."

-Tacitus, The Histories: Book 4, Chapter 26

Plate 11: Civilis' Troops Crossing the Maas River by Antonio Tempesta & Otto van Veen 1611, from The War of the Romans Against the Batavians (Romanorvm et Batavorvm societas). 6 5/16 × 8 1/4 in. (16.1 × 21 cm). Current location: MET Museum. Antonio Tempesta in collaboration with Otto van Veen published in 1612 in Antwerp a series of thirty-six etchings on the Batavians and the Romans in a book entitled Batavorum cum Romanis bellum.

Copy of Antonio Tempesta & Otto van Veen's work by an unknown artist in the 1700s.

Source:

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/401439

https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/nl/collectie/RP-P-OB-77.954(R)


Quote:

https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Tacitus/Histories/4A*.html