generals, [50] to valor. Their kings have not an absolute or unlimited
power; [51] and their generals command less through the force of
authority, than of example. If they are daring, adventurous, and
conspicuous in action, they procure obedience from the admiration they
inspire. None, however, but the priests [52] are permitted to judge
offenders, to inflict bonds or stripes; so that chastisement appears not
as an act of military discipline, but as the instigation of the god whom
they suppose present with warriors. They also carry with them to battle
certain images and standards taken from the sacred groves. [53] It is a
principal incentive to their courage, that their squadrons and battalions
are not formed by men fortuitously collected, but by the assemblage of
families and clans. Their pledges also are near at hand; they have within
hearing the yells of their women, and the cries of their children. These,
too, are the most revered witnesses of each man's conduct, these his most
liberal applauders. To their mothers and their wives they bring their
wounds for relief, nor do these dread to count or to search out the
gashes. The women also administer food and encouragement to those who are
fighting.

8. Tradition relates, that armies beginning to give way have been rallied
by the females, through the earnestness of their supplications, the
interposition of their bodies, [54] and the pictures they have drawn of
impending slavery, [55] a calamity which these people bear with more
impatience for their women than themselves; so that those states who have
been obliged to give among their hostages the daughters of noble families,
are the most effectually bound to fidelity. [56] They even suppose
somewhat of sanctity and prescience to be inherent in the female sex; and
therefore neither despise their counsels, [57] nor disregard their
responses. [58] We have beheld, in the reign of Vespasian, Veleda, [59]
long reverenced by many as a deity. Aurima, moreover, and several others,