1Caecina, having left Vitellius' embrace with great honour, sent part of the cavalry ahead to seize Cremona. 1Soon the detachments of the First, Fourth, Fifteenth and Sixteenth legions followed, then the Fifth and the Twenty-second; 1at the rear of the column marched the Twenty-first Rapax and the First Italica, with the detachments of the three British legions and picked auxiliaries. 1When Caecina had set out, Fabius Valens wrote to the army which he had himself commanded, telling it to wait for him on the march: so, he said, he had agreed with Caecina. 1Caecina, being on the spot and therefore the stronger, pretended that this plan had been changed, so that the oncoming war might be met with their whole mass.
1So the legions were ordered to hasten to Cremona, and part of them to make for Hostilia: he himself turned aside to Ravenna on the pretext of addressing the fleet; 1soon at Patavium a secret meeting was sought for arranging the betrayal. 1For Lucilius Bassus, after commanding a cavalry squadron, had been put in charge of both the Ravenna and the Misenum fleets by Vitellius, and because he had not at once obtained the prefecture of the praetorian guard, he was avenging his unjust resentment with shameful treachery. 1Nor can it be known whether he drew Caecina along with him, or whether, as happens among bad men, that they are also alike, the same depravity drove them both.