ts he showed
persistency in endeavor and activity together with speed against his foes,
he made it plain to the barbarians that his friendship was better worth
gaining than his enmity. So when he arrived at the New city, which a
garrison of Romans placed there by Priscus was occupying, and found them
attempting mutiny, he took care, both by word and by deed, to bring them
to a better temper, and he made the city the foremost of Armenia.]

[* * _Bridging_.--By the Romans the streams and rivers are bridged
with the greatest ease, since the soldiers are always practicing at it,
and it is carried on like any other warlike exercise on the Ister and the
Rhine and the Euphrates. The manner of doing it (which I think not
everybody knows) is as follows. The boats, by means of which the river is
bridged, are flat. They are anchored up stream a little above the spot
where the bridge is to be constructed. When the signal is given, they
first let one ship drift down stream close to the bank that they are
holding. When it has come opposite the spot to be bridged, they throw into
the water a basket filled with stones and fastened with a cord, which
serves as an anchor. Made fast in this way the ship is joined to the bank
by planks and bridgework, which the vessel carries in large quantities,
and immediately a floor is laid to the farther edge. Then they release
another ship at a little distance from this one and another one after that
until they run the bridge to the opposite bank. The boat which is near the
hostile side carries also towers upon it and a gate and archers and
catapults.

As many weapons were hurled at the men engaged in bridging, Cassius
ordered weapons and catapults to be discharged. And when the front rank of
the barbarians fell, the rest gave way.]

[Sidenote: A.D. 172 (a.u. 925)] [Sidenote:--3--] Cassius, however, was
bidden by Marcus to have the superintendence of all Asia. The emperor
himself fought for a long time, in fact almost his whole life, one might
say, with the barbarians in the Ister region, the Iazyges and the
Marcomani, first one and then the other, and he used Pannonia as his
starting point.

The Langobardi and the Obii [Footnote: Or perhaps _Osi_.] to the
number of six thousand crossed the Ister, but the cavalry under Vindex
[Footnote: _M. Macrinius Avitus Catonius Vindex_.] marched out and
the infantry commanded by Candidus got the start of them, so that an utter
rout of the barbarians was inst