en consul and his grandfather praetor. His mother's
family was inferior, but not without distinction.[325] His boyhood and
youth were such as we have seen. By his two great acts,[326] one most
criminal and the other heroic, he earned in equal measure the praise
and the reprobation of posterity. It would certainly be beneath the
dignity of my task to collect fabulous rumours for the amusement of my
readers, but there are certain popular traditions which I cannot
venture to contradict. On the day of the battle of Bedriacum,
according to the account of the local peasants, a strange bird
appeared in a much-frequented grove near Regium Lepidum.[327] There it
sat, unterrified and unmoved, either by the crowds of people or by the
birds which fluttered round it, until the moment at which Otho killed
himself. Then it vanished. A calculation of the time showed that the
prodigy's appearance and disappearance coincided with the beginning of
the battle[328] and Otho's death.

At his funeral the rage and grief of the soldiers broke out into 51
another mutiny. This time there was no one to control them. They
turned to Verginius and begged him with threats now to accept the
principate, now to head a deputation to Caecina and Valens. However,
Verginius escaped them, slipping out by the back door of his house
just as they broke in at the front. Rubrius Gallus carried a petition
from the Guards at Brixellum, and obtained immediate pardon.
Simultaneously Flavius Sabinus surrendered to the victor the troops
under his command.[329]

FOOTNOTES:

[273] Pavia.

[274] i. 66.

[275] i. 59 and 64.

[276] See chap. 14.

[277] It is Tacitus who has mixed the metaphors.

[278] See i. 66.

[279] i.e. he pretended that not all but only a few were to
blame (cp. i. 84).

[280] Valens had by now Legion V, I Italica, detachments from
I, XV, XVI, and Taurus' Horse: Caecina had Legion XXI and
detachments from IV and VII.

[281] Cp. i. 53.

[282] Cp. i. 66.

[283] He had made his name in a Moorish war (A.D. 42), when he
had penetrated as far as Mount Atlas, and increased his
reputation by suppressing the rebellion of Boadicea when he
was governor of Britain (A.D. 59).

[284] Otho held the fleets.

[285] He means that they would be, if they took his advice and
retired across the Po to the south bank.

[286