Tacitus' Mons Graupius (synopsis)

29. In the beginning of the summer (84CE?) Agricola suffered a domestic blow: he lost the son born a year before. He took the loss neither with bravado, like most strongmen, nor yet with the lamentations and mournings of a woman. Among other things, he turned for comfort to the war. Accordingly, he sent forward the fleet to make descents on various places, and to spread a general and vague panic; and then, with his army in light marching order, and strengthened by the best of the British soldiers – men tried through long years of peace -he advanced to Mount Graupius, of which the enemy was already in occupation.

For the Britons, in no way broken by the issue of the previous battle, and seeing before them vengeance or slavery, and learning at last that a common danger must be repelled by union, had brought into the field, by means of envoys and treaties, the flower of all their tribes. Already more than thirty thousand armed men were on view, and still the stream flowed in of all who were in their prime and of those whose age was still fresh and green, famous warriors wearing their several decorations….

35. (Agricola) drew up his inspired and straining lines so that the detachments of auxiliary infantry, which amounted to eight thousand men, made a strong centre, while the three thousand cavalry were spread-out on the wings; the Roman legionaries themselves were posted in front of the palisade, to be a great matter for pride in the event of victory, if the battle were fought without the expenditure of Roman blood, and a reinforcement if the others were repelled, the British line, in order to be at once impressive and alarming, was drawn up on higher ground, in such a way that the front rank was on the level, while the rest, on a gentle slope, seemed. to be towering higher and higher; the war-chariots, noisily manoeuvring, filled the intervening plain. Then, because the enemy's numbers were superior, Agricola, fearing to be assailed simultaneously in front and on the flanks, opened out his ranks, although his line was bound to become there by too long proportionately, and most of his staff warned him to call up the legions; but he was more sanguine than they and deaf to all prophecies of ill; he sent away his horse and took up his position on foot in front of the auxiliaries.

36. The battle began with fighting at long range; the Britons, with their long swords and short shields, showed determination and skill in evading or brushing aside the Roman missiles, while on their own side they launched dense volleys spears until Agricola ordered four battalions of Batavi and two of Tungril to bring things to the sword's point and to hand-to-hand fighting; a manoeuvre familiar to them from long service and embarrassing to the enemy, whose shields were small and swords too long; for the British swords, without points, did not admit of locked lines and fighting at close quarters. Accordingly, when the Batavi began to exchange blows hand to hand, to strike with the bosses of their shields, to stab in the face, and, after cutting down the enemy on the level, to push their line uphill, the other battalions, exerting themselves to emulate their charge, proceeded to slaughter the nearest enemies; in their haste to snatch victory they left many behind them only half killed, or even unhurt. Meanwhile, the squadrons of cavalry (for the charioteers had fled) took a hand in the infantry battle. And here, though they caused momentary panic, they found themselves brought to a standstill by the close ranks of the enemy and the unevenness of the ground; and it began to look very little like a cavalry action as our troops, who had enough difficulty in holding their ground, were pushed forward by the weight of the horses; repeatedly also straggling chariots, the horses terror-stricken and driver-less, at the casual prompting of panic made oblique or frontal charges.

37. Meanwhile, such of the Britons as had occupied the hill-tops, still unreached by the fighting and with leisure to deride the small numbers of our men, had begun, little by little, to descend and to surround the flanks of the conquering army; they might have succeeded had not Agricola, in fear of this very contingency, thrown across their path four squadrons of cavalry which he had held back for emergencies; the enemy were routed and dislodged with a fury proportionate to the confidence of their advance. Thus the British strategy was turned against themselves, for the squadrons passed over by the general’s order from the front of the battle and attacked, the enemy’s line from behind; after this, wherever the open ground permitted, began a grand and gory drama of pursuit, wounds, capture, and then - as other fugitives crossed the path - of butchery for the captive; the enemy either fled now in armed hordes before smaller numbers, or, in some cases, according to the differences of temperament, voluntarily charged even unarmed, and made an offering of their lives. Everywhere were weapons, corpses, lopped limbs, and blood upon the ground; but sometimes even in the defeated was found the courage of resentment. For as they approached the forest they rallied and knowing their ground began to surround the foremost and the most reckless among their pursuers. Had not Agricola been everywhere and ordered his strong, light-armed cohorts to scour the woods, like cordon, and where the woods were thicker, dismounted cavalry, where thinner, mounted cavalry to-do the same, undue confidence might have provoked a serious reverse.

Be that as it may, when they saw the pursuit again taken up by an array of unbroken ranks, they broke, and no longer in companies as before, nor with thought for one another, but, scattering and avoiding one another, made for distant fastnesses, Night and satiety ended the pursuit. The enemy's slain amounted to ten thousand men; on our side fell three hundred and sixty, among them Aulus Atticus, the commander of a cohort, whom youthful ardour and a spirited horse carried into the enemy’s lines.

38. Night was jubilant with triumph and plunder for the victors: the Britons, scattering amid the mingled lamentations of men and women, began to drag away their wounded, to summon the unhurt, to abandon their homes, and even, in their resentment, to set fire to them with their own hands. They selected hiding-places and as quickly renounced them: they took some counsel together, and then acted separately: sometimes they broke down at the spectacle of their loved ones, more often it excited them; it was credibly reported that some of them laid violent hands upon wives and children, as it were in pity. The morrow revealed more widely the features of the victory: everywhere was dismal silence, lonely hills, houses smoking to heaven. His scouts met no one: he sent them in all directions, only to find that the traces of the fugitives pointed nowhere in particular, and that the enemy were no-where uniting; accordingly, since the war could not be extended at the end of summer, he led his troops down to the territory of the Boresti. From them he took hostages, and gave orders to the commander of his fleet to circumnavigate Britain; he gave him forces for the purpose, and panic already had heralded the voyage. He himself marched slowly in order that the very leisureliness of his passage might strike terror into the hearts of these new tribes, until he lodged his infantry and cavalry in their winter quarters. Simultaneously the fleet, favoured by weather and prestige gained the harbour of Trucculum, whence it had returned intact after coasting along the adjacent shore of Britain.