by Gwyn Morgan
This case was presented by Suetonius Paulinus. Plutarch credits him with three arguments, but of these the second (that the Othonians were outnumbered) is simply wrong.3 And since the first and third appear also in Tacitus’ account, he is probably a better guide to what the general said. His Paulinus delivered a full-dress speech, “a comprehensive review of the entire military situation,” in which he expatiated—under four headings—on the disadvantages from which the Vitellians were suffering and the advantages that would accrue to Otho from delay. The first, identical with the first of Plutarch’s arguments, was that the Vitellians had brought up all the troops they could, whereas Otho had many more men on the way. So to give battle now was to play into the enemy’s hands. Second, Paulinus asserted that the Vitellians had devastated the areas through which they had marched, and so were suffering from lack of supplies, whereas Otho had ample provisions, was backed by the senate and people, and occupied a strong defensive position (this is Plutarch’s third argument, made more immediate and more graphic). Third, he contended that if the battle was delayed “into the summer,” the Germans in the Vitellian force would be disabled by the heat, whereas Otho’s troops were used to the climate. Finally, in what may be a fourth argument or an indication of Paulinus’ awareness that he had failed to persuade important members of his audience, he suggested that Otho wait at least the few days needed for the main body of XIV Gemina Martia Victrix to come up. Tacitus appends the information that Paulinus’ opinion was shared by Marius Celsus and Annius Gallus. (The latter had been disabled by a fall from his horse a few days before and sent a letter.) Then he states flatly that Otho “inclined to fight to the finish,” and that Titianus and Proculus, “rushing things as a result of their own inexperience,” endorsed his decision, and foreclosed discussion with an abundance of flattery.
It would be easy to conclude that the others present, most of them civilians, were supposed to heed the advice Paulinus dispensed so liberally. And since Plutarch and Suetonius were convinced that the decision to fight at once was Otho’s crucial mistake, it has been argued that Tacitus shared their view. This is far from certain. We can make little of his describing Titianus and Proculus as “the men responsible for the worse plan.” This is a relative judgment, and nowhere does he hint that delay would have assured victory, the impression created by the other two writers. Similarly, there is no merit in the theory that because Tacitus gives only Paulinus a speech, the general has to be echoing his opinion. This is as implausible as the idea that Tacitus endorsed the views he gave Galba when he adopted Piso. Finally, Tacitus prefaces this speech with the remark that Paulinus offered his review of the situation, because he “thought it appropriate to his reputation, since nobody at that time was considered to be smarter in military matters than he.” This could be praise, but it is more probably criticism of a mixture of vanity and long-windedness. Although Tacitus was convinced of Paulinus’ loyalty, he had reason to doubt the man’s competence. Prior to Ad Castores, which he had bungled, Paulinus had fought only against tribesmen, in Mauretania and Britain, and the methods he had used to suppress Boudicca’s rebellion had cost the Romans heavy losses.4
That Tacitus entertained such doubts emerges as soon as we examine the substance of the speech. Tacitus undoubtedly gave Paulinus the best arguments he could make, but they are not convincing. It may be that of the seven legions Otho had summoned from the Balkans, XIII Gemina alone had arrived in full force (the vanguard before Ad Castores, the rest after). As far as we can tell, the only other units to have come up were the van of XIV Gemina Martia Victrix, and two cavalry squadrons.5 But against this we must set the facts, first, that even when Paulinus had mustered every Othonian soldier for Ad Castores, he had mismanaged the engagement; and second, that despite Plutarch’s claims to the contrary, the two sides were more or less evenly matched at the time of the meeting. Otho need not have been alone in concluding that to let Paulinus go on accumulating troops would endanger rather than improve the prospects for the decisive victory the general yearned to win without running any risks.
Next, there is no evidence that the Vitellians had ravaged any territory they had seized. Caecina had kept his men on a tight leash, and Valens had not had time to go plundering since he arrived. We have independent evidence that the Transpadana produced no large surplus of grain, but it would have taken much longer than Paulinus pretended for the Vitellians to starve, and the longer they waited, the closer the harvest came. (It fell in June and July or, in other words, in summer.) Even if we ignore the resulting contradiction between Paulinus’ second argument and his third, there is an unspoken and wholly disingenuous transition here. It is by picturing the Vitellian columns as barbarian hordes that Paulinus can claim out of the blue that the Germans were “the most formidable type of soldier in the enemy army.” So his third argument is also unpersuasive. We cannot legitimately narrow the timespan Paulinus had in mind to a week or so when he urged waiting “into the summer.” Roman summer began in mid-May, a month after the meeting. Moreover, German tribesmen were not the core of the enemy force. So even if the argument from climate was not absurd (it is one Tacitus employs frequently), it ignored the possibility that Caecina and Valens would find ways to acclimate their men. Paulinus’ final suggestion, that Otho wait at least a few days until the bulk of XIV Gemina Martia Victrix arrived, was suspect too. It demonstrated the general’s ongoing lack of confidence in the other Othonian units and the combat experience they had gained in spite of his efforts. It also suggested that his primary concern was to create a comfort zone for himself: XIV Gemina had been the one full legion he had commanded when he at last crushed Boudicca’s revolt in Britain.
If Paulinus’ was the better plan, in short, it was not much better. Small wonder that Otho “inclined to fight to the finish.” The decision to offer battle, however, raised another question, whether or not Otho should be present. In republican times this issue would never have come up: generals then had almost invariably led from the front. Under the principate it was seldom possible for an emperor to do so, and it was inadvisable for Otho to break this pattern, when an Othonian victory that cost Otho his life would be worthless. The point was not that his principal adversary was safe and sound miles away in Germany. Had Vitellius lost Caecina and Valens, he would almost certainly have been forced to throw in his hand anyway. The important fact was that Otho had not designated a successor, and perhaps had had neither the time nor the inclination to consider the matter during the three short months of his reign.
Tacitus alone reports this second part of the debate.
Once the decision to fight had been taken, they discussed whether it would be better for Otho to take part in the battle or to be kept out of it. As Paulinus and Celsus no longer offered any opposition, for fear of seeming eager to put the emperor in harm’s way, the two men responsible for the worse plan [Titianus and Proculus] prevailed: Otho would withdraw to Brixellum and there, free from the uncertainties of battle, he could retain overall control of the situation and of the empire too. This was the first day to damage the Othonian cause. For not only did a powerful force of praetorian cohorts, speculatores and cavalry leave with the emperor. The spirit of those who remained at Bedriacum was also broken: they were suspicious of their generals, and since the troops had faith only in Otho, while he for his part put his trust only in the troops, he had left the commanders’ responsibilities undefined.
Recognizing that the two armies were about equal in numbers at this stage, Tacitus rightly emphasizes that Otho’s first critical error was to take a large force back to Brixellum. Presumably the emperor was under the impression that the troops who remained would fight with the same determination they had shown at Ad Castores, and that even if they were outnumbered by the Vitellians, they would show the élan to compensate for this (an argument Plutarch attributes to Titianus). But he may have had no choice. There was nothing to fear from the senators gathered at Brixellum, even though they included Vitellius’ brother L
ucius. No more did Otho need a large corps d’élite to impress the reinforcements from the Balkan provinces. But Brixellum lay only some 15 miles behind the front. So perhaps Otho himself or those who insisted on accompanying him, “the most enthusiastic of his supporters,” imagined that he needed a sizable guard because Brixellum lay within reach of a small but daring Vitellian raiding party.
If we leave aside for the moment Tacitus’ statement that Otho’s departure “broke” the spirit of the troops who remained at Bedriacum (its importance lies in the damage it does to Plutarch’s assessment of the situation), he makes two problematic remarks here. First, he comments that “the troops were suspicious of their generals.” That the men still distrusted Paulinus, Celsus, and Gallus is unsurprising: the plan these three supported in the council of war must have became common knowledge as soon as the meeting ended, and it reopened the question of the generals’ commitment to Otho’s cause. But if we take Tacitus’ words literally, the troops were no more impressed with Titianus and Proculus. One possibility is that they recognized their lack of experience. Another is that they saw them as poor substitutes for Otho. But there is a third possibility, if we take into account Tacitus’ other problematic remark, that Otho “left the commanders’ responsibilities undefined.” This is misleading, perhaps even wrong. In his narrative of the battle’s aftermath Tacitus pairs Paulinus with Licinius Proculus and Celsus with Titianus. If it is legitimate to see this as the result of the emperor’s attempt to combine expertise and enthusiasm, by pairing his two fit senatorial generals with his two strongest supporters beforehand, the troops may have feared that Paulinus and Celsus would be able to influence Proculus and Titianus too much.
Whatever the case, it is time to ask why Otho was so determined to offer battle immediately. On this Tacitus says almost nothing except that the emperor “inclined to fight to the finish.” Since this was the orthodox course, and since it is entirely consistent with Tacitus’ portrait of a tough-minded emperor, there is no reason to expect more. But Plutarch was so fascinated by this that brevity was the last thing on his mind. Because he needed an explanation that accorded with his vision of a helpless emperor, he provided three different views aired by “various writers.” Plutarch himself favored the idea that Otho succumbed to pressure from the praetorians. Now that they had experienced the discomforts of military service, they were eager to end the war and to return to the pleasures of duty in Rome, confident that even though outnumbered, they could overwhelm the enemy. As his second possibility Plutarch declared that the emperor “seems” to have been unable to bear uncertainty or, “as a result of his inexperience and his effeminacy,” to face up to evaluating the dangers that beset him. So, choosing to put his trust in luck, he shut his eyes “like somebody leaping off a cliff. This at any rate was what Secundus used to say, the rhetorician who was Otho’s secretary.” Against this Plutarch balanced a third possibility, developed at greater length. “Others,” he claimed, held that the two armies were strongly inclined to confer, to jettison Otho and Vitellius, and either to pick the best of their commanders as emperor or else to leave the choice to the senate. This created the suspicion that Celsus championed delay, so as to allow for a peaceful settlement, and Otho decided to hurry on the battle to preclude this outcome.6
As regards the first interpretation, there is nothing against the idea that the praetorians wanted to fight because they were keen to get back to Rome. But this is a red herring. The point at issue was not why the praetorians were eager to give battle immediately, only that they were eager to do so, and this was something of which any commander would have taken account. All this tells us, therefore, is that Plutarch used the praetorians’ high morale to generate a theory “proving” that Otho was at the mercy of his troops.
Secundus’ claims, on the other hand, have been embraced enthusiastically by those who accept Plutarch’s portrait of Otho—actually, it is the only one of the three they can adopt. Undeterred by Plutarch’s lack of enthusiasm for Secundus’ theory (he says only that it “seems” to have been the case), they have tried to reinforce their argument by claiming, first, that Secundus must be Julius Secundus, a senator and a speaker in Tacitus’ Dialogue on Oratory, as if this guaranteed the veracity of the tale; and second, that comments later in Tacitus’ narrative confirm its truth. On the eve of the battle, when everything had supposedly been settled, Tacitus reports that the emperor lost his temper with his generals, and describes Otho as “impatient of delay and unable to bear the suspense.” This is no evidence that the emperor had lost his nerve, only that he was exasperated. Having ordered his generals to get on with it, he could reasonably fire off letters two days running in which he told Titianus and Proculus to stop dragging their feet. As for Secundus, the name is so common that the man is much more likely to have been a slave or freedman than a senator, and it is entirely possible that, after drafting these letters, he turned a molehill into a mountain, to build up his own status as a source of information.7
This leaves us with the story that Otho insisted on fighting immediately because he feared that the two opposing armies wanted to confer, to dump both claimants to the throne, and either to pick the best of their commanders as emperor or to leave the choice to the senate. This idea undoubtedly goes back to the common source, since Tacitus devotes considerable space to it too. But he sets it after the meeting and he rejects it as nonsense—rightly. There was no reason to fear fraternization between the opposing armies. In civil wars such behavior is the norm, not the exception. What Tacitus recognized, as Plutarch did not, was that the Othonian troops would never have dreamt of jettisoning their emperor before the council of war. Only the decisions taken at the meeting had the potential to generate the kind of discontent presupposed by such a scenario. First, there had to be Otho’s decision to withdraw to Brixellum, which “broke their spirit.” And on this there had to follow the bungling and procrastination of his generals, which revived the men’s suspicions that their cause was being betrayed.
These are not the reasons Tacitus gave for rejecting this interpretation. Like Plutarch, he roundly declared the troops too corrupt to have contemplated adopting an honorable course of action. But in his analysis of the situation he argued too—at some length—that Paulinus had more sense than to imagine that the troops would consider another candidate for the throne. Just as he had defended Paulinus’ trustworthiness at Ad Castores, so now he insisted that Otho’s generals, competent or not, were too honorable to contemplate betraying their emperor. It was a point worth making again. When, in due course, Paulinus and Proculus were brought before Vitellius, they claimed in their own defense that they had done their utmost to sabotage the Othonian war effort.
There is one last question to ask. If Otho was so hellbent on fighting at once, why did he call this council of war? Neither Tacitus nor Plutarch raises the issue, but nor do moderns. Yet Roman military commanders were as convinced as their counterparts in more recent centuries that a council of war should not be allowed to become a debate. When Caesar summoned such meetings, indeed, it was only to inform his officers what they were going to do. So there is something to be said for the idea that Otho called this council because he had made up his mind to give battle at once, and wanted to discover only if his generals were on board and, if they were not, to exert the pressure that would bring them into line. This fits Tacitus’ flat statement that the emperor “inclined to fight to the finish.” It gives us another possible reason for the historian’s not crediting Titianus and Proculus with explicit arguments for fighting straightaway. It provides another explanation for Otho’s pairing his generals, as he apparently did afterwards. And since Paulinus and Celsus may have continued to slow the progress Titianus and Proculus made, it helps account for Otho’s writing the two angry letters he fired off in the last two days before the battle. Loyal as his senatorial generals might have been, nothing could persuade them to carry out their orders with enthusiasm.
How Valens occupied his time w
hile the Othonians deliberated we are not told. Caecina, however, ordered his men to build a pontoon bridge across the Po, more or less opposite the position occupied by Macer and his gladiators. Tacitus, our main source, does not say where the Vitellians found the boats, probably because the answer was obvious. Since bridges over the river were few and far between, the local inhabitants must have relied heavily on waterborne transport, from rowing boats to barges. But Tacitus does provide a detailed description of the bridge’s construction. The ships were aligned with their prows pointing upstream, and were fastened together at bow and stern with heavy beams that carried the roadbed. They were anchored too, but the hawsers had enough play in them for the line not to break if the level of the river rose suddenly, as it could in spring. And at the far end of the bridge, out in the river, Caecina positioned an artillery tower, to bombard the gladiators on the far bank and to repel any counterattacks they launched.
Tacitus’ explicit statement that this was a feint failed to convince Henderson or Wellesley, and the latter maintained steadfastly that only a genuine attempt to cross the river would have justified the lengthy description Tacitus provides. But pontoon bridges were in the news when Tacitus was composing the Histories. Trajan built them to cross the Danube in both his Dacian Wars, and a scene near the base of his Column depicts two being put to use at the start of the first war in 101. Again, a technical description of an engineering feat required great literary artistry, and authors from Caesar onward could not resist the temptation to insert at least one such set piece into their narrative. Finally, as Caecina saw, only a realistic feint would have the desired effect on the Othonians and, in the meantime, keep his own men occupied with the kind of busywork Roman generals rarely hesitated to inflict on their troops.
Whatever the Othonians imagined the purpose of the bridge to be, they began their counterattacks immediately. First, says Tacitus, they built a tower of their own on the southern bank of the Po, and tried to destroy the bridge with fusillades of rocks and firebrands. When that failed, says Plutarch (supplying an episode Tacitus omits), they launched fire ships against it from the south bank. These ignited prematurely because of a sudden change in the wind, and the crews had to jump overboard and swim for their lives, to the amusement of the watching Vitellians. So, finally (here Tacitus resumes the tale), Macer and his gladiators decided to seize an island out in the middle of the river upstream from the bridge, and to launch attacks from there. But Caecina’s German auxiliaries swam to the island faster than the Othonians could row to it. By the time Macer and his gladiators tried to land, therefore, they were exposed to an intense and accurate shower of missiles. Their confusion was increased by the rocking of the boats as they tried to return fire, and by the rising number of casualties they were taking. And then the Vitellian auxiliaries jumped into the water, climbed aboard the boats, and cut down the Othonians at close quarters. Gladiators lacking the skills and the stomach for such warfare, Macer and the survivors fled, amid the jeers of the Vitellian troops who had lined up once again to watch the struggle.