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Tacitus · Historiae II

Histories 2.19

Spurinna's troops force his hand

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1Spurinna (for he held Placentia) was sure that Caecina had not yet come, and was resolved, if he drew near, to keep his soldiers within the fortifications and not to expose three praetorian cohorts, a thousand detached legionaries and a few cavalry to a veteran army: but the soldiers, unruly and ignorant of war, seized the standards and banners, rushed out and pointed their weapons at their general when he tried to hold them back, scorning centurions and tribunes; indeed they kept shouting that Otho was being betrayed and Caecina had been sent for. 1Spurinna becomes the companion of other men's rashness, at first under compulsion, then pretending to be willing, so that his counsels might carry more authority if the mutiny calmed down.

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Tacitus, Historiae II. Latin text: C. D. Fisher, Cornelii Taciti Historiarum Libri (Oxford, 1911), public domain; digital text from the Perseus Digital Library, CC BY-SA. Word analysis: drafted by our own tagger (trained on the hand-checked texts on this site), with every doubtful word checked by hand. English translation and section titles: written for this app, each checked against the Latin by a second reader.