1Both the speech, framed to reprove and to soothe the soldiers' minds, and the measure of his severity (for he had ordered no more than two to be punished) were gratefully received, and those who could not be controlled were calmed for the present. 1Yet quiet had not returned to the city: there was the clash of arms and the look of war, for the soldiers, while causing no disturbance as a body, were scattered through houses in disguise, keeping a malicious watch on all whom nobility or wealth or some outstanding distinction had exposed to gossip: many also believed that Vitellian soldiers had come into the city to learn where men's sympathies lay: hence everything was full of suspicion, and even the privacy of homes was scarcely free from fear.
1But the greatest alarm was in public, where people changed their mood and expression with each piece of news that rumour had brought, so as not to seem to lose heart at doubtful news or to rejoice too little at good. 1When the senate was assembled in the senate house, the right measure in everything was hard to keep, lest silence seem defiant, or frankness suspect; 1and Otho, lately a private citizen and used to saying the same things, knew flattery well. 1So they kept turning their proposals and twisting them this way and that, calling Vitellius a public enemy and a parricide; the most far-sighted used commonplace insults, some hurled true reproaches, but only amid the shouting and where the voices were most numerous, or drowning out their own words with a din of talk.