45 1 But the army of Vitellius halted at the fifth milestone from Bedriacum, for the commanders did not dare to try to carry their opponents’ camp by storm on the same day; and at the same time they hoped that Otho’s troops would surrender voluntarily; but, although they had set out without their heavy equipment, and with no other purpose than to give battle, their arms and their victory served them as a rampart. The next day the wishes of Otho’s troops were clear beyond doubt; even those who had been most determined were inclined to change their views. Accordingly they sent a deputation, and the generals of Vitellius did not long hesitate to grant terms. But the deputation was detained for a time, and this action disturbed those who did not know whether they had secured terms or not; presently, however, the delegates were let go and the gates of the camp were opened. Then vanquished and victors alike burst into tears, cursing, amid their melancholy joy, the fate of civil war. In the same tents some nursed the wounds of brothers, others of relatives. Their hopes of reward were doubtful; but they knew for certainties the bereavements and sorrows that they suffered, and none of them was so free from misfortune as not to mourn some loss. The body of the legate Orfidius was discovered and burned with the usual honours, a few others were buried by their relatives, but the majority of the fallen were left lying on the ground.
46 1 Otho was waiting for a report of the battle without anxiety and with determined purpose. First there came a distressing rumour; then fugitives from the field showed clearly that the day was lost. But the troops in their zeal did not wait for the emperor to speak; they urged him to keep up his courage, for there were fresh troops left; and they declared that they were ready themselves to dare and suffer anything. Nor was this flattery: they were fired by an almost passionate desire to go into action and raise again the fortunes of their party. The soldiers who were not near him stretched out their hands to him appealingly, those near him clasped his knees. The most zealous of all was Plotius Firmus, the prefect of the praetorian guard, who constantly begged him not to fail an army which was absolutely loyal, and soldiers who had served him so well. He reminded Otho that it called for greater courage to endure adversity than to yield to it; that brave and courageous men press on even against ill fortune to attain their hopes; the timid and cowardly are quickly moved to despair by fear. During these appeals the soldiers cheered or broke into groans as Otho’s face showed signs of giving way to their appeals or grew hard. The praetorians, Otho’s personal force, were not the only ones who encouraged him. The advance detachments from Moesia declared that the troops which were on their way were just as determined, and they reported that the legions had entered Aquileia, so that no one can doubt that it would have been quite possible to renew this cruel and awful war, with uncertain results for both the victors and the vanquished.
47 1 Otho himself was opposed to the plan of continuing the war. “To expose such courageous and brave men as you to further dangers,” he said, “I reckon too great a price for my life. The greater the hope you offer me, if it were my wish to live, so much the more glorious will be my death. Fortune and I know each other well. Do not reckon up the short duration of my rule; it is all the harder to make a moderate use of a good fortune which you do not expect to enjoy long. Vitellius began civil war; it was he who initiated the armed contest between us for the imperial power; but we shall not contend more than once, for it is in my power to set a precedent for that. I would have posterity thus judge Otho. Vitellius shall enjoy his brother, his wife, and his children; I require neither vengeance nor solace. Others may hold the power longer than I; none shall give it up more bravely. Would you have me suffer so many of Rome’s young men, such noble armies, to be again cut down and lost to the state? Let me carry with me the thought of your willingness to die for me; but you must live. Now there must be no more delay; let me not interfere with your safety, or you with my determination. To talk at length about the end is cowardice. Regard as the chief proof of my resolve the fact that I complain of no man. It is for him to blame gods or men who has the wish to live.”
48 1 After Otho had spoken thus, he addressed all courteously as befitted the age or rank of the individual, and urged them to go quickly and not to incite the victor’s wrath by remaining. The young men he persuaded by his authority, the older by his appeals; his face was calm, his words showed no fear; but he checked the unseasonable tears of his friends. He gave orders that boats and carriages should be furnished those who were leaving. Every document or letter which was marked by loyalty towards him or by abuse of Vitellius he destroyed. He distributed money, but sparingly and not as if he were about to die. Then he took pains to console his nephew, Salvius Cocceianus, who was very young, frightened, and sad, praising his dutiful affection, but reproving his fear. He asked him if he thought Vitellius would prove so cruel as not to grant him even such a return as this for saving the whole house. “By my quick end,” said he, “I can earn the clemency of the victor. For it is not in the extremity of despair, but while my army is still demanding battle that I have saved the state this last misfortune. I have won enough fame for myself, enough high rank for my descendants. After the Julii, the Claudii, and the Servii, I have been the first to confer the imperial rank on a new family. Therefore face life with a brave heart; never forget or too constantly remember that Otho was your uncle.”
49 1 After this he sent all away and rested for a time. As he was already pondering in his heart the last cares of life, he was interrupted by a sudden uproar and received word that the soldiers in their dismay had become mutinous and were out of control. In fact they were threatening with death all who wished to depart; they were most violent against Verginius, whom they had shut up in his house and were now besieging. Otho reproved the ringleaders and then returned to his quarters, where he gave himself up to interviews with those who were departing, until all had left unharmed. As evening approached he slaked his thirst with a draught of cold water. Then two daggers were brought him; he tried the points of both and placed one beneath his head. After learning that his friends had gone, he passed a quiet night, and indeed, as is affirmed, he even slept somewhat. At dawn he fell on the steel. At the sound of his dying groans his freedmen and slaves entered, and with them Plotius Firmus, the prefect of the praetorian guard; they found but a single wound. His funeral was hurriedly accomplished. He had earnestly begged that this be done, that his head might not be cut off to be an object of insult. Praetorians bore his body to the pyre, praising him amid their tears and kissing his wound and his hands. Some soldiers slew themselves near his pyre, not because of any fault or from fear, but prompted by a desire to imitate his glorious example and moved by affection for their emperor. Afterwards many of every rank chose this form of death at Bedriacum, Placentia, and in other camps as well. The tomb erected for Otho was modest and therefore likely to endure. So he ended his life in the thirty-seventh year of his age.
50 1 Otho was born in the municipal town of Ferentum;• his father had held the consulship, his grandfather had been praetor. His mother’s family was not the equal of his father’s, but still it was respectable. His boyhood and youth were such as we have already described. By two bold deeds, the one most outrageous, the other glorious, he gained with posterity as much fame as evil reputation. While I must hold it inconsistent with the dignity of the work I have undertaken to collect fabulous tales and to delight my readers with fictitious stories, I cannot, however, dare to deny the truth of common tradition. On the day of the battle at Bedriacum, according to the account given by the people of that district, a bird of unusual appearance settled in a much-frequented grove near Regium Lepidum, neither the concourse of people nor the other birds which flew about it frightened it or drove it away, until Otho had committed suicide; then it disappeared from view. And they add that when people reckoned up the time, they found that the beginning and end of this marvel coincided with Otho’s death.
51 1 At his funeral the soldiers’ grief and sorrow caused the mutiny to break out afresh, a
nd there was none to check it. The soldiers turned to Verginius and threateningly besought him, now to accept the imperial office, again to act as their envoy to Caecina and Valens. Verginius slipped away by stealth through the rear of his house and so escaped them when they burst in the doors. Rubrius Gallus brought the appeals of the cohorts who had been quartered at Brixellum. They were at once forgiven, and the troops that Flavius Sabinus had commanded made known through him their adhesion to the victor.
52 1 Although fighting had now ceased at every point, a large part of the senate, which had set out from Rome with Otho and then been left at Mutina, encountered extreme danger. News of the defeat was brought to Mutina; but the soldiers treated the report with scorn, believing it false, and since they thought the senate hostile to Otho, they began to watch the senators’ conversation and to put an unfavourable interpretation on their looks and bearing. Finally, resorting to abuse and insults, they looked for an excuse to start a massacre, while in addition the senators were weighed down by the further fear that, now the party of Vitellius was dominant, they might be held to have been slow in accepting the victory. Thus they assembled, frightened and distressed by a double anxiety; none was ready with any plan of his own, but each felt the safer in sharing his guilt with many. The local senate of Mutina added to the distress of the terrified company by offering them arms and made, and with an untimely compliment addressed them as “Conscript Fathers.”
53 1 There was a remarkable quarrel when Licinius Caecina attacked Marcellus Eprius for making ambiguous proposals. Yet the other senators did not disclose their opinions; but the name of Marcellus was hateful and exposed to odium, because men remembered that he had been an informer; it consequently roused in Caecina, who was a new man, recently enrolled in the senate, a desire to win fame by making enemies of the great. The two were separated, however, by the moderate and wiser senators. They all returned to Bononia to take counsel together again there; and they also hoped for fuller news in the meantime. At Bononia they posted men on the different roads to question every newcomer. One of Otho’s freedmen who was asked why he had left, replied that he had Otho’s last commands. He also said that Otho was still alive when he left, but that his sole anxiety was for posterity and that he had rejected all the allurements of life. This answer filled the senators with admiration and made them ashamed to question further; and then the hearts of all inclined toward Vitellius.
54 1 His brother Lucius Vitellius was now sharing their councils and was already offering himself as an object of their flattery, when suddenly Coenus, one of Nero’s freedmen, by a bold falsehood succeeded in terrifying them all. He declared that by the arrival of the Fourteenth legion and by its union with the forces from Brixellum, the victors had been crushed and the fortune of the two parties reversed. He had invented this tale to secure by such good news a renewed validity for Otho’s passports which were being disregarded. Now Coenus hurried to Rome, where a few days later, at the orders of Vitellius, he paid the penalty due; the senators, however, were in still greater danger, for Otho’s soldiers believed that the story was the truth. Their alarm was increased also by the fact that their departure from Mutina and their abandonment of Otho’s cause had the appearance of a formal and public act. They no longer met together, but each took thought for his own safety until letters from Fabius Valens did away with their fears. Moreover the laudable character of Otho’s death made the news of it spread all the quicker.
55 1 Yet at Rome there was no disorder. The festival of Ceres was celebrated in the usual manner. When it was announced in the theatre on good authority that Otho was no more and that Flavius Sabinus, the city prefect, had administered to all the soldiers in the city the oath of allegiance to Vitellius, the audience greeted the name of Vitellius with applause. The people, bearing laurel and flowers, carried busts of Galba from temple to temple, and piled garlands high in the form of a burial mound by the Lacus Curtius, which the dying Galba had stained with his blood. The senate at once voted for Vitellius all the honours that had been devised during the long reigns of other emperors; besides they passed votes of praise and gratitude to the troops from Germany and dispatched a delegation to deliver this expression of their joy. Letters from Fabius Valens to the consuls were read, written in quite moderate style; but greater satisfaction was felt at Caecina’s modesty in not writing at all.
56 1 But the distress of Italy was now heavier and more terrible than that inflicted by war. The troops of Vitellius, scattering among the municipalities and colonies, indulged in every kind of robbery, theft, violence and debauchery. Their greed and venality knew no distinction between right and wrong; they respected nothing, whether sacred or profane. There were cases too where, under the disguise of soldiers, men murdered their personal enemies; and the soldiers in their turn, being acquainted with the country, marked out the best-stocked farms and the richest owners for booty or destruction, in case any resistance was made. The generals were subject to their troops and did not dare to forbid them. Caecina was less avaricious, but more eager for popularity; Valens, notorious for his greed and sordid gains, was more inclined to overlook the crimes of others. Italy, whose wealth had long before been exhausted, now found all these troops, foot and horse, all this violence, loss, and suffering, an intolerable burden.
57 1 In the meantime, Vitellius, quite ignorant of his success, was bringing with him all the remaining forces from Germany, as if he had to face a war whose issue was undecided. He had left only a few veterans in the winter quarters and was now hurrying forward levies in the Gallic provinces to fill up the empty ranks of the legions that were left behind. The duty of guarding the Rhine he assigned to Hordeonius Flaccus. He supplemented his own forces with eight thousand men picked from the army in Britain. After he had advanced a few days, he heard of the success at Bedriacum and learned that at Otho’s death the war had collapsed; then he assembled his troops and spoke in the highest praise of his brave army. When his soldiers demanded that he give his freedman Asiaticus the rank of knight, he checked this shameful adulation; but later, prompted by his fickle nature, in the privacy of a dinner he granted that which he had refused in public, and honoured with the golden ring this Asiaticus, a servile, shameful creature, who owed his popularity to his wicked arts.
58 1 During these days word arrived that both Mauretanias had come over to the side of Vitellius after the imperial governor Albinus had been killed. Lucceius Albinus, who had been appointed governor of Mauretania Caesariensis by Nero, had been charged by Galba with the administration of the province of Tingitana as well, and had forces at his command which were not to be despised. Nineteen cohorts of infantry, five squadrons of cavalry were at his disposal as well as a great number of Mauri, forming a band which robbery and brigandage had trained for war. After the assassination of Galba, Albinus had favoured Otho, and not satisfied with Africa, began preparations to threaten Spain, which is separated from Africa by only a narrow strait. This action frightened Cluvius Rufus, and he ordered the Tenth legion to advance towards the coast as if he planned to transport it across; and he dispatched centurions ahead to win the Mauri to the cause of Vitellius. This was not hard, for the army from Germany enjoyed a great reputation in the provinces; besides, gossip spread the report that Albinus, despising the name of imperial governor, was adopting the insignia of royalty and the name of Juba.
59 1 The sentiments of the Mauretanians were changed, and this reversal of feeling led to the assassination of the prefect of the cavalry, Asinius Pollio, one of the most devoted friends of Albinus, and of the commanders of the cohorts, Festus and Scipio. Albinus, who was trying to reach Mauretania Caesariensis by sea from Tingitana, was killed as he disembarked; his wife offered herself to the assassins and was slain with him. Vitellius made no investigation of all these acts; however important matters were, he dismissed them after a brief hearing; he was quite unequal to serious business.
His army he ordered to advance by land; but he himself sailed down the Arar, distinguish
ed by no imperial show, but rather by the same poverty that he had displayed of old; until finally Junius Blaesus, governor of Gallia Lugudunensis — a man of illustrious family, whose wealth matched his liberal spirit, — surrounded him with all the service that an emperor should have and gave him generous escort, earning dislike by that very act, although the emperor concealed his hatred under servile flattery. At Lugudunum the generals of both sides, the victors and the defeated, awaited him. Vitellius spoke in praise of Valens and Caecina in public assembly and placed them on either side of his own curule chair. Then he ordered the entire army to parade before his infant son, whom he brought out and, wrapping him in a general’s cloak, held in his arms; he called him Germanicus, and surrounded him with all the attributes of imperial rank. These excessive honours in prosperity presently became a solace in misfortune.
60 1 Then the centurions who had been most active in supporting Otho were put to death, an action which more than anything else turned the forces in Illyricum against Vitellius; at the same time the contagion spread to the rest of the legions, who were jealous of the forces from Germany, and they began to think of war. Suetonius Paulinus and Licinius Proculus were kept in anxiety and distress by a long delay, until at last, when admitted to audience, they resorted to a defence which necessity rather than honour dictated: they actually charged themselves with treachery towards Otho, declaring that their own bad faith was responsible for the long march before the battle, for the exhaustion of his forces, for the baggage train becoming involved with the marching troops and the resulting confusion, and finally for many things which were due to mere chance. Vitellius believed in their treachery and acquitted them of the crime of loyalty towards Otho. Salvius Titianus, Otho’s brother, was in no danger, being forgiven because of his duty towards his brother and his own incapacity. Marius Celsus did not lose his consulship. But gossip, which was widely believed, gave rise to the charge made later in the senate against Caecilius Simplex to the effect that he had wished to purchase the consulship, even at the cost of the life of Celsus. Vitellius opposed this rumour and later gave Simplex a consulship which cost neither crime nor money. Trachalus was protected against his accusers by Galeria, the wife of Vitellius.
Complete Works of Tacitus (Delphi Classics) (Delphi Ancient Classics Book 24) Page 25