The Works of Tacitus
tr. by Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb
[1864-1877]
Tacitus: History Book 2 [20]
20. Caecina, who seemed to have left his cruelty and profligacy on the other
side of the Alps, advanced through Italy with his army under excellent discipline.
The towns and colonies, however, found indications of a haughty spirit in the
general’s dress, when they saw the cloak of various colours, and the trews,
a garment of foreign fashion, clothed in which he was wont to speak to their
toga-clad citizens. And they resented, as if with a sense of personal wrong,
the conduct of his wife Salonina, though it injured no one that she presented
a conspicuous figure as she rode through their towns on horseback in a purple
habit. They were acting on the instincts of human nature, which prompt men to
scrutinize with keen eyes the recent elevation of their fellows, and to demand
a temperate use of prosperity from none more rigorously than from those whom
they have seen on a level with themselves. Caecina, after crossing the Padus,
sought to tamper with the loyalty of the Othonianists at a conference in which
he held out hopes of reward, and he was himself assailed with the same arts.
After the specious but meaningless names of peace and concord had been thus
bandied to and fro, Caecina turned all his thoughts and plans on the capture
of Placentia, making a formidable show of preparation, as he knew that according
to the success of his opening operations would be the subsequent prestige of
his arms.
21. The first day, however, was spent in a furious onset rather than in the
skilful approaches of a veteran army. Exposed and reckless, the troops came
close under the walls, stupefied by excess in food and wine. In this struggle
the amphitheatre, a most beautiful building, situated outside the walls, was
burnt to the ground, possibly set on fire by the assailants, while they showered
brands, fireballs, and ignited missiles, on the besieged, possibly by the besieged
themselves, while they discharged incessant volleys in return. The populace
of the town, always inclined to be suspicious, believed that combustibles had
been purposely introduced into the building by certain persons from the neighbouring
colonies, who viewed it with envious and jealous eyes, because there was not
in Italy another building so capacious. Whatever the cause of the accident,
it was thought of but little moment as long as more terrible disasters were
apprehended; but as soon as they again felt secure, they lamented it as though
they could not have endured a heavier calamity. In the end Caecina was repulsed
with great slaughter among his troops, and the night was spent in the preparation
of siege-works. The Vitellianists constructed mantlets, hurdles, and sheds,
for undermining the walls and screening the assailants; the Othonianists busied
themselves in preparing stakes and huge masses of stone and of lead and brass,
with which to break and overwhelm the hostile ranks. The shame of failure, the
hope of renown, wrought on both armies; both were appealed to by different arguments;
on the one side they extolled the strength of the legions and of the army of
Germany; on the other, the distinctions of the soldiery of the capital and the
Praetorian cohorts; the one reviled their foes as slothful and indolent soldiers,
demoralized by the circus and the theatres; the others retorted with the names
of foreigner and barbarian. At the same time they lauded or vituperated Otho
and Vitellius, but found indeed a more fruitful source of mutual provocation
in invective than in praise.
22. Almost before dawn of day the walls were crowded with combatants, and
the plains glittered with masses of armed men. The close array of the legions,
and the skirmishing parties of auxiliaries assailed with showers of arrows and
stones the loftier parts of the walls, attacking them at close quarters where
they were undefended, or old and decayed. The Othonianists, who could take a
more deliberate and certain aim, poured down their javelins on the German cohorts
as they recklessly advanced to the attack with fierce war-cries, brandishing
their shields above their shoulders after the manner of their country, and leaving
their bodies unprotected. The soldiers of the legions, working under cover of
mantlets and hurdles, undermined the walls, threw up earth-works, and endeavoured
to burst open the gates. The Praetorians opposed them by rolling down with a
tremendous crash ponderous masses of rock, placed for the purpose. Beneath these
many of the assailants were buried, and many, as the slaughter increased with
the confusion, and the attack from the walls became fiercer, retreated wounded,
fainting, and mangled, with serious damage to the prestige of the party. Caecina,
ashamed of the assault on which he had so rashly ventured, and unwilling, ridiculed
and baffled as he was, to remain in the same position, again crossed the Padus,
and resolved on marching to Cremona. As he was going, Turullius Cerialis with
a great number of the levies from the fleet, and Julius Briganticus with a few
troopers, gave themselves up to him. Julius commanded a squadron of horse; he
was a Batavian. Turullius was a centurion of the first rank, not unfriendly
to Caecina, as he had commanded a company in Germany.
23. Spurinna, on discovering the enemy’s route, informed Annius Gallus by
letter of the successful defence of Placentia, of what had happened, and of
what Caecina intended to do. Gallus was then bringing up the first legion to
the relief of Placentia; he hardly dared trust so few cohorts, fearing that
they could not sustain a prolonged siege or the formidable attack of the German
army. On hearing that Caecina had been repulsed, and was making his way to Cremona,
though the legion could hardly be restrained, and in its eagerness for action,
even went to the length of open mutiny, he halted at Bedriacum. This is a village
situated between Verona and Cremona, and has now acquired an ill-omened celebrity
by two great days of disaster to Rome. About the same time Martius Macer fought
a successful battle not far from Cremona. Martius, who was a man of energy,
conveyed his gladiators in boats across the Padus, and suddenly threw them upon
the opposite bank. The Vitellianist auxiliaries on the spot were routed; those
who made a stand were cut to pieces, the rest directing their flight to Cremona.
But the impetuosity of the victors was checked; for it was feared that the enemy
might be strengthened by reinforcements, and change the fortune of the day.
This policy excited the suspicions of the Othonianists, who put a sinister construction
on all the acts of their generals. Vying with each other in an insolence of
language proportioned to their cowardice of heart, they assailed with various
accusations Annius Gallus, Suetonius Paullinus, and Marius Celsus. The murderers
of Galba were the most ardent promoters of mutiny and discord. Frenzied with
fear and guilt, they sought to plunge everything into confusion, resorting,
now to openly seditious language, now to secret letters to Otho; and he, ever
ready to believe the meanest of men and suspicious of the good, irresolute in
prosperity, but rising higher under reverses, was in perpetual alarm. The end
of it was that he sent for his brother Titianus, and intrusted him with the
direction of the campaign.
24. Meanwhile, brilliant successes were gained under the command of Celsus
and Paullinus. Caecina was greatly annoyed by the fruitlessness of all his undertakings,
and by the waning reputation of his army. He had been repulsed from Placentia;
his auxiliaries had been recently cut up, and even when the skirmishers had
met in a series of actions, frequent indeed, but not worth relating, he had
been worsted; and now that Valens was coming up, fearful that all the distinctions
of the campaign would centre in that general, he made a hasty attempt to retrieve
his credit, but with more impetuosity than prudence. Twelve miles from Cremona
(at a place called the Castors) he posted some of the bravest of his auxiliaries,
concealed in the woods that there overhang the road. The cavalry were ordered
to move forward, and, after provoking a battle, voluntarily to retreat, and
draw on the enemy in hasty pursuit, till the ambuscade could make a simultaneous
attack. The scheme was betrayed to the Othonianist generals, and Paullinus assumed
the command of the infantry, Celsus of the cavalry. The veterans of the 13th
legion, four cohorts of auxiliaries, and 500 cavalry, were drawn up on the left
side of the road; the raised causeway was occupied by three Praetorian cohorts,
ranged in deep columns; on the right front stood the first legion with two cohorts
of auxiliaries and 500 cavalry. Besides these, a thousand cavalry, belonging
to the Praetorian guard and to the auxiliaries, were brought up to complete
a victory or to retrieve a repulse.
25. Before the hostile lines engaged, the Vitellianists began to retreat,
but Celsus, aware of the stratagem, kept his men back. The Vitellianists rashly
left their position, and seeing Celsus gradually give way, followed too far
in pursuit, and themselves fell into an ambuscade. The auxiliaries assailed
them on either flank, the legions were opposed to them in front, and the cavalry,
by a sudden movement, had surrounded their rear. Suetonius Paullinus did not
at once give the infantry the signal to engage. He was a man naturally tardy
in action, and one who preferred a cautious and scientific plan of operations
to any success which was the result of accident. He ordered the trenches to
be filled up, the plain to be cleared, and the line to be extended, holding
that it would be time enough to begin his victory when he had provided against
being vanquished. This delay gave the Vitellianists time to retreat into some
vineyards, which were obstructed by the interlacing layers of the vines, and
close to which was a small wood. From this place they again ventured to emerge,
slaughtering the foremost of the Praetorian cavalry. King Epiphanes was wounded,
while he was zealously cheering on the troops for Otho.
26. Then the Othonianist infantry charged. The enemy’s line was completely
crushed, and the reinforcements who were coming up to their aid were also put
to flight. Caecina indeed had not brought up his cohorts in a body, but one
by one; as this was done during the battle, it increased the general confusion,
because the troops who were thus divided, not being strong at any one point,
were borne away by the panic of the fugitives. Besides this, a mutiny broke
out in the camp because the whole army was not led into action. Julius Gratus,
prefect of the camp, was put in irons, on a suspicion of a treacherous understanding
with his brother who was serving with Otho’s army, at the very time that the
Othonianists had done the same thing and on the same grounds to that brother
Julius Fronto, a tribune. In fact such was the panic everywhere, among the fugitives
and among the troops coming up, in the lines and in front of the entrenchments,
that it was very commonly said on both sides, that Caecina and his whole army
might have been destroyed, had not Suetonius Paullinus given the signal of recall.
Paullinus alleged that he feared the effects of so much additional toil and
so long a march, apprehending that the Vitellianists might issue fresh from
their camp, and attack his wearied troops, who, once thrown into confusion,
would have no reserves to fall back upon. A few approved the general’s policy,
but it was unfavourably canvassed by the army at large.
27. The effect of this disaster on the Vitellianists was not so much to drive
them to fear as to draw them to obedience. Nor was this the case only among
the troops of Caecina, who indeed laid all the blame upon his soldiers, more
ready, as he said, for mutiny than for battle. The forces also of Fabius Valens,
who had now reached Ticinum, laid aside their contempt for the enemy, and anxious
to retrieve their credit began to yield a more respectful and uniform obedience
to their general. A serious mutiny, however, had raged among them, of which,
as it was not convenient to interrupt the orderly narrative of Caecina’s operations,
I shall take up the history at an earlier period. I have already described how
the Batavian cohorts who separated from the 14th legion during the Neronian
war, hearing on their way to Britain of the rising of Vitellius, joined Fabius
Valens in the country of the Lingones. They behaved themselves insolently, boasting,
as they visited the quarters of the several legions, that they had mastered
the men of the 14th, that they had taken Italy from Nero, that the whole destiny
of the war lay in their hands. Such language was insulting to the soldiers,
and offensive to the general. The discipline of the army was relaxed by the
brawls and quarrels which ensued. At last Valens began to suspect that insolence
would end in actual treachery.
28. When, therefore, intelligence reached him that the cavalry of the Treveri
and the Tungrian infantry had been defeated by Otho’s fleet, and that Gallia
Narbonensis was blockaded, anxious at once to protect a friendly population,
and, like a skilful soldier, to separate cohorts so turbulent and, while they
remained united, so inconveniently strong, he directed a detachment of the Batavians
to proceed to the relief of the province. This having been heard and become
generally known, the allies were discontented and the legions murmured. “We
are being deprived,” they said, “of the help of our bravest men. Those veteran
troops victorious in so many campaigns, now that the enemy is in sight, are
withdrawn, so to speak, from the very field of battle. If indeed a province
be of more importance than the capital and the safety of the Empire, let us
all follow them thither, but if the reality, the support, the mainstay of success,
centre in Italy, you must not tear, as it were, from a body its very strongest
limbs.”
29. In the midst of these fierce exclamations, Valens, sending his lictors
into the crowd, attempted to quell the mutiny. On this they attacked the general
himself, hurled stones at him, and, when he fled, pursued him. Crying out that
he was concealing the spoil of Gaul, the gold of the men of Vienna, the hire
of their own toils, they ransacked his baggage, and probed with javelins and
lances the walls of the general’s tent and the very ground beneath. Valens,
disguised in the garb of a slave, found concealment with a subaltern officer
of cavalry. After this, Alfenius Varus, prefect of the camp, seeing that the
mutiny was gradually subsiding, promoted the reaction by the following device.
He forbade the centurions to visit the sentinels, and discontinued the trumpet
calls by which the troops are summoned to their usual military duties. Thereupon
all stood paralysed, and gazed at each other in amazement, panic-stricken by
the very fact that there was no one to direct them. By their silence, by their
submission, finally by their tears and entreaties, they craved forgiveness.
But when Valens, thus unexpectedly preserved, came forward in sad plight, shedding
tears, they were moved to joy, to pity, even to affection. Their revulsion to
delight was just that of a mob, always extreme in either emotion. They greeted
him with praises and congratulations, and surrounding him with the eagles and
standards, carried him to the tribunal. With a politic prudence he refrained
from demanding capital punishment in any case; yet, fearing that he might lay
himself more open to suspicion by concealment of his feelings, he censured a
few persons, well aware that in civil wars the soldiers have more license than
the generals.
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