At imperator, optimus eorum quae agebat iudex et utilia speciosis praeferens quodque semper eum facientem vidi in omnibus bellis, quae probanda essent, non quae utique probarentur sequens, paucis diebus exercitum, qui venerat, ad refovendas ex itinere eius vires moratus, cum eum maiorem, quam ut temperari posset, neque habilem gubernaculo cerneret, dimittere statuit;  prosecutusque longo et perquam laborioso itinere, cuius difficultas narrari vix potest, ut neque universos quisquam auderet adgredi et partem digredientium, suorum quisque metu finium, universi temptare non possent, remisit eo, unde venerant, et ipse asperrimae hiemis initio regressus Sisciam legatos, inter quos ipsi fuimus, partitis praefecit hibernis.
But the general, who was the best judge of the course he pursued, preferring efficiency to show, and, as we have so often seen him doing in all his wars, following the course which deserved approval rather than that which was currently approved, after keeping the army which had newly arrived for only a few days in order to allow it to recover from the march, decided to send it away, since he saw that it was too large to be managed and was not well adapted to effective control. And so he sent it back whence it came, escorting it with his own army a long and exceedingly laborious march, whose difficulty can hardly be described. His purpose in this was, on the one hand, that no one might dare to attack his united forces, and, on the other, to prevent the united forces of the enemy from falling upon the departing division, through the apprehension of each nation for its own territory. Then returning himself to Siscia, at the beginning of a very hard winter, he placed his lieutenants, of whom I was one, in charge of the divisions of his winter quarters.
final_alignments\Velleius_Paterculus_Compendium.json