Plate 33: Dutch and Roman Flotillas on the Rhine by Antonio Tempesta & Otto van Veen 1611

"Civilis was now seized with a desire to make a naval demonstration; he therefore manned all the biremes and all the ships that had but a single bank of oars; to this fleet he added a vast number of boats, [putting in each] thirty or forty men, the ordinary complement of a Liburnian cruiser; and at the same time the boats that he had captured were fitted with particoloured plaids for sails, which made a fine show and helped their movement. The place chosen for the display was a small sea, so to speak, formed at the point where the mouth of the Maas discharges the water of the Rhine into the ocean. Now his purpose in marshalling this fleet, apart from the native vanity of a Batavian, was to frighten away the convoys of supplies that were coming from Gaul."

-Tacitus, The Histories: Book 5, Chapter 23

Plate 33: Dutch and Roman Flotillas on the Rhine by Antonio Tempesta & Otto van Veen 1611, from The War of the Romans Against the Batavians (Romanorvm et Batavorvm societas). 6 5/16 × 8 1/16 in. (16 × 20.4 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/401502


Quote:

https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Tacitus/Histories/5B*.html