What was it that was so sad?

There went on his way a pitiable column of women: the lider's wife a refugee, carrying her tiny little son in her lap and surrounded by friends' lamenting spouses, who were being dragged off with her. And the groans and brest-beating turned even the soldiers' and faces in their direction. They emerged from their billets: what was that weeping sound? what was it that was so sad? Illustrious ladies, with neither a single centurion nor soldier for protection, no sign of her being the commander's wife or of her normal escort! And they were proceeding to the Treviri, to people of alien loyalty! Hence arose shame and pity and the memory of her father Agrippa and of Augustus her grandfather; her father-in-law Drusus, and the woman herself, with her distinguished fertility and conspicuous modesty; already there was an infant begotten in the camp and brought up in the legions' billet, whom in soldierly designation they called "Caligula", because he was often dressed with that covering on his feet to win the affection of the crowd. Yet nothing influenced them so much as their resentment of the Treviri. They begged, they blocked the way: she must come back, she must stay - some of them converging on Agrippina, the majority going back to Germanicus.

Tacitus, The Annals, A. J. Woodman (trad.) Hackett, 2004