1Caecina, after lingering a few days among the Helvetii until he could learn Vitellius' decision, and at the same time preparing the crossing of the Alps, receives glad news from Italy that the Silian cavalry, stationed around the Po, had come over to Vitellius' oath. 1The Silian troopers had had Vitellius as their proconsul in Africa; 1later they had been summoned by Nero to be sent ahead into Egypt, recalled because of the war with Vindex, and were then still in Italy; at the instigation of their decurions, who knew nothing of Otho, were bound to Vitellius, and kept extolling the strength of the approaching legions and the fame of the German army, they went over to his side and, as a kind of gift to the new emperor, brought with them the strongest towns of the region beyond the Po, Mediolanum and Novaria, Eporedia and Vercellae.
1Caecina learned this from the men themselves. 1And because the widest part of Italy could not be defended by the garrison of a single cavalry regiment, he sent ahead the cohorts of Gauls, Lusitanians and Britons and detachments of Germans with the Petrian cavalry, and himself hesitated a little over whether to turn by the Raetian ridges into Noricum against Petronius Urbicus, the procurator, who, having called out auxiliaries and broken the bridges over the rivers, was thought to be loyal to Otho. 1But for fear of losing the cohorts and cavalry already sent ahead, and reckoning at the same time that there was more glory in holding Italy and that, wherever the contest was fought, the Norici would fall with the other prizes of victory, he led the troops under the standards and the heavy column of the legions across by the Pennine route while the Alps were still in the grip of winter.