1Otho, although the situation was troubled and the soldiers' feelings divided, since all the best men demanded a remedy for the present licence, while the mob and the majority, delighting in mutinies and an emperor who courted favour, were more easily driven to civil war by riots and plunder, and although he reckoned at the same time that a principate won by crime could not be kept by sudden restraint and old-fashioned sternness, yet anxious at the danger to the city and the peril of the senate, finally spoke as follows: 'It is not to kindle your affections into love for me, comrades, nor to urge your spirit to courage (for of both you have more than enough), but I have come to ask of you restraint in your bravery and a limit to your devotion towards me.
1The recent uproar began not from greed or hatred, which have driven many armies into discord, nor even from shirking or fear of danger: it was your excessive loyalty that stirred it, more keenly than wisely; 1for often, unless one uses judgement, ruinous outcomes follow honourable motives. 1We are going to war. 1Does the nature of affairs or the swiftness of opportunity allow every report to be heard openly, every plan to be discussed with everyone present? 1It is as needful for soldiers not to know some things as to know them: such is the authority of generals, such the rigour of discipline, that it is best that even centurions and tribunes are often merely given orders.
1If each man may ask why he is given orders, then, as obedience dies, command too perishes. 1Will weapons be snatched there too in the dead of night? 1Will one or two ruined and drunken men (for I could not believe that more went mad in the recent panic) stain their hands with the blood of a centurion and a tribune, and burst into their emperor's tent?'