1On the night that followed the first of January, the eagle-bearer of the Fourth Legion brings word to Vitellius, as he dined in the Colony of Agrippina, that the Fourth and Twenty-second legions had thrown down Galba's images and sworn allegiance to the senate and the Roman people. 1That oath seemed empty: they decided to seize fortune while it wavered and offer an emperor. 1Men were sent by Vitellius to the legions and their legates to announce that the upper army had revolted from Galba: so either they must make war on the rebels or, if harmony and peace were preferred, they must make an emperor: and there was less danger in accepting an emperor than in looking for one.
Lectitō › Tacitus › Histories, Book 1
Tacitus · Historiae I
Histories 1.58
Vitellius seizes his chance
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Tacitus, Historiae I. Latin text: C. D. Fisher, Cornelii Taciti Historiarum Libri (Oxford, 1911), public domain; digital text from the Perseus Digital Library, CC BY-SA. Word analysis: drafted by our own tagger (trained on the hand-checked texts on this site), with every doubtful word checked by hand. English translation and section titles: written for this app, each checked against the Latin by a second reader.