Plate 19: Men from the Fortress Surrender and Pledge Their Lives to Civilis by Antonio Tempesta & Otto van Veen 1611

"Loyalty on the one hand, famine on the other, kept the besieged hesitating between honour and disgrace. As they thus wavered, their sources of food, both usual and even unusual, failed them, for they had consumed their beasts of burden, their horses, and all other animals, which, even though unclean and disgusting, necessity forced them to use. Finally, they tore up even shrubs and roots and grasses growing in the crevices of the rocks, giving thereby a proof at once of their miseries and of their endurance, until at last they shamefully stained what might have been a splendid reputation by sending a delegation to Civilis and begging for their lives. He refused to hear their appeals until they swore allegiance to the empire of Gaul..."

-Tacitus, The Histories: Book 4, Chapter 60

Plate 19: Men from the Fortress Surrender and Pledge Their Lives to Civilis by Antonio Tempesta & Otto van Veen 1611, from The War of the Romans Against the Batavians (Romanorvm et Batavorvm societas). 6 3/8 × 8 1/8 in. (16.2 × 20.6 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.

Source:

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/401469


Quote:

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