Plate 6: Romans Defeated Near the Rhine by Antonio Tempesta & Otto van Veen 1611

"He at once called in the Frisians, a tribe living across the Rhine, and assailed by sea the winter camp of two cohorts which were nearest to attack. The Roman troops had not foreseen the assault, and even if they had, they did not have enough strength to keep off the enemy: so the camp was captured and plundered. Then the enemy attacked the Roman foragers and traders who were scattered about the country as if it were a time of peace. At the same time they threatened to destroy the Roman forts, which the prefects of the cohorts burned, for they could not defend them. The Roman ensigns and standards with all the soldiers were concentrated in the upper part of the island under the leadership of Aquilius, a centurion of the first rank; but they had rather the name than the strength of an army: for when Vitellius had withdrawn the effective cohorts, he had gathered a useless crowd from the nearest cantons of the Nervii and Germans and burdened them with arms.

Thinking it best to proceed by craft, Civilis promptly rebuked the prefects for abandoning their forts, and declared that he would crush the revolt of the Canninefates with the cohort under his command; they were to return each to his winter quarters. It was clear that treachery lay behind his advice and that the cohorts when scattered could be more easily crushed; likewise it was plain that the real leader in this war was not Brinno but Civilis; the proofs of this gradually appeared, for the Germans, who delight in war, did not long conceal the facts. When treachery did not succeed, Civilis turned to force and organized the Canninefates, the Frisians, and the Batavians, each tribe in a troop by itself: the Roman line was drawn up to oppose them not far from the Rhine, and the vessels which had been brought here after the burning of the forts were turned to front the foe. The battle had not lasted long when a cohort of the Tungri transferred its standards to Civilis, and the Roman soldiers, demoralized by this sudden betrayal, were cut down by allies and foes alike. There was the same treachery also on the part of the fleet: some of the rowers, being Batavians, by pretending a lack of skill interfered with the sailors and combatants; presently they began to row in the opposite direction and bring the sterns to the bank on which the enemy stood; finally, they killed such of the helmsmen and centurions as did not take their view, until the entire fleet of twenty-four vessels either went over to the enemy or was captured. "

-Tacitus, The Histories: Book 4, Chapter 15-16

Plate 6: Romans Defeated Near the Rhine by Antonio Tempesta & Otto van Veen 1611, from The War of the Romans Against the Batavians (Romanorvm et Batavorvm societas). 6 7/16 × 8 1/8 in. (16.4 × 20.7 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/401435

https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/nl/collectie/RP-P-OB-77.948


Quote:

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