1In those days Cornelius Dolabella was banished to the colony of Aquinum, under a custody neither strict nor concealed, not for any crime, but marked out by his ancient name and his kinship with Galba. 1Otho orders many of the magistrates and a large part of the ex-consuls to make ready to go with him, not as partners or helpers in the war, but in the guise of a retinue; among them was Lucius Vitellius too, treated in the same way as the rest, neither as an emperor's brother nor as an enemy's. 1So the city's anxieties were stirred; 1no rank was free from fear or danger. 1The leading senators, weak with age and made idle by the long peace, a nobility sluggish and forgetful of wars, knights ignorant of military service: the more they strove to conceal and hide their fear, the more plainly afraid they were.
1Nor, on the other hand, was there any lack of those who in foolish vanity bought showy arms, fine horses, and some even luxurious banquet furnishings and incitements to lust, as if they were equipment for war. 1The wise cared for quiet and for the state; 1all the most frivolous, heedless of the future, were swollen with empty hope; 1many, whose credit had been ruined, were anxious in peace, but eager when affairs were in turmoil and safest amid uncertainty.