Note 145 — Chapter VI · (continued 2)

In our traditional accounts this expedition appears as a pure sea–voyage, undertaken with (probably) 2000 ships (so the biography of Claudius; the numbers 6000 and 900, between which the tradition in Zosimus, i. 42, wavers, are probably both corrupt) and 320,000 men. It is, however, far from credible that Dexippus, to whom these statements must be traced back, can have put the latter figure in this way. On the other hand, considering the direction of the expedition, in the first instance against Tomis and Marcianopolis, it is more than probable that in it the procedure described by Zos. i. 34 was followed, and a portion marched by land; and under this supposition even a contemporary might well estimate the number of assailants at that figure. The course of the campaign, particularly the place of the decisive battle, shows that they had by no means to do merely with a fleet.