I will now describe the origin and occasion of the revolt of Vitellius. After the destruction of Julius Vindex and his whole force, the army, flushed with the delights of plunder and glory, as men might well be who had been fortunate enough to triumph without toil or danger in a most lucrative war, began to hanker after campaigns and battles, and to prefer prize money to pay. They had long endured a service which the character of the country and of the climate and the rigours of military discipline rendered at once unprofitable and severe. But that discipline, inexorable as it is in times of peace, is relaxed by civil strife, when on both sides are found the agents of corruption, and treachery goes unpunished. They had men, arms and horses, more than enough for all purposes of utility and show, but before the war they had been acquainted only with the companies and squadrons of their own force as the various armies were separated from each other by the limits of their respective provinces. But the legions, having been concentrated to act against Vindex, and having thus learnt to measure their own strength against the strength of Gaul, were now on the look out for another war and for new conflicts. They called their neighbours, not "allies" as of old, but "the enemy" and "the vanquished." Nor did that part of Gaul which borders on the Rhine fail to espouse the same cause, and to shew the bitterest hostility in inflaming the army against the Galbianists, that being the name, which in their contempt for Vindex they had given to the party. The rage first excited against the Sequani and Ædui extended to other states in proportion to their wealth, and they revelled in imagination on the storm of cities, the plunder of estates, the sack of dwelling-houses. But, besides the rapacity and arrogance which are the special faults of superior strength, they were exasperated by the bravadoes of the Gallic people, who in a spirit of insult to the army boasted of how they had been relieved by Galba from a fourth part of their tribute, and had received grants from the State. There was also a report, ingeniously spread and recklessly believed, to the effect that the legions were being decimated, and all the most energetic centurions dismissed. From all quarters arrived the most alarming tidings. The reports from the capital were unfavourable, while the disaffection of the colony of Lugdunum, which obstinately adhered to Nero, gave rise to a multitude of rumours. But it was in the army itself, in its hatreds, its fears, and even in the security with which a review of its own strength inspired it, that there was the most abundant material for the exercise of imagination and credulity.
Complete Works of Tacitus. Tacitus. Alfred John Church. William Jackson Brodribb. Sara Bryant. edited for Perseus. New York. : Random House, Inc. Random House, Inc. 1873. reprinted 1942.
