Plate 8: Women and Children Obvserve Civilis Battling the Romans by Antonio Tempesta & Otto van Veen 1611

"...he ordered his own mother and his sisters, likewise the wives and little children of all his men, to take their stand behind his troops to encourage them to victory or to shame them if defeated. When the enemy's line re-echoed with the men's singing and the women's cries, the shout with which the legions and cohorts answered was far from equal. Our left had already been exposed by the desertion of the Batavian horse, which at once turned against us. Yet the legionary troops kept their arms and maintained their ranks in spite of the alarming situation. The auxiliary forces made up of the Ubii and Treveri fled disgracefully and wandered in disorder over the country. The Germans made them the object of their attack, and so the legions meanwhile were able to escape to the camp called Vetera."

-Tacitus, The Histories: Book 4, Chapter 18

Plate 8: Women and Children Obvserve Civilis Battling the Romans 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.

Copy detail.

Source:

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/401437

https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/nl/collectie/RP-P-OB-77.950

https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/nl/collectie/RP-P-OB-77.974 


Quote:

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