1'You did that, it is true, for my sake: but in running about and darkness and the confusion of everything, an opening may be given even against me. 1If Vitellius and his henchmen were given their choice, what temper, what minds would they pray for in us, what else would they wish for but mutiny and discord? 1That soldier should not obey centurion, nor centurion tribune, so that, infantry and cavalry thrown together, we should rush to our ruin. 1It is by obeying, comrades, rather than by questioning the commands of generals, that military affairs hold together, and that army is bravest in the moment of crisis which is quietest before the crisis.
1Yours be the arms and the courage: leave to me the planning and the direction of your valour. 1The fault was that of a few, the punishment will fall on two: the rest of you, blot out the memory of that most shameful night. 1And may no army anywhere hear such cries against the senate again. 1To call the head of the empire and the glory of all the provinces to punishment: by Hercules, not even those Germans whom Vitellius at this very moment is stirring up against us would dare it. 1Would any sons of Italy, any truly Roman youth, demand for blood and slaughter that order by whose splendour and glory we outshine the squalor and obscurity of the Vitellian party?
1Vitellius has seized some nations, he has some semblance of an army, but the senate is with us: so it comes about that here stands the state, there the enemies of the state. 1What? 1Do you believe that this most beautiful city stands by its houses and buildings and heaps of stone? 1Those dumb and lifeless things may perish and be rebuilt without distinction: the permanence of our affairs, the peace of the nations, and my safety along with yours are secured by the preservation of the senate. 1This body, founded under auspices by the father and founder of our city, and unbroken and immortal from the kings to the emperors, let us hand on to our descendants just as we received it from our ancestors; 1for as senators come from you, so emperors come from senators.'