1And with their centre broken through, the Othonians fled in every direction, making for Bedriacum. 1That was an immense distance, and the roads were blocked with heaps of bodies, so that the slaughter was all the greater; 1for in civil wars captives are not turned into booty. 1Suetonius Paulinus and Licinius Proculus avoided the camp by different routes. 1Vedius Aquila, legate of the Thirteenth legion, was brought by thoughtless panic into the path of the soldiers' anger. 1Entering the rampart while it was still full day, he was surrounded by the uproar of mutinous men and runaways; 1they did not hold back from abuse or from violence; 1they reviled him as a deserter and traitor, though he had committed no offence of his own, but, as is the way of the mob, each man was charging others with his own disgrace.
1Titianus and Celsus were helped by the night, by which time sentries had been posted and the soldiers restrained, whom Annius Gallus had persuaded by advice, entreaties and authority not to add to the disaster of a lost battle by raging with slaughter among themselves: whether the war had come to an end or they preferred to take up arms again, the one relief for the defeated lay in unity. 1The rest were broken in spirit, but the praetorian soldiers growled that they had been beaten not by valour but by treachery: not even for the Vitellians had the victory been bloodless, since their cavalry had been routed and a legion's eagle seized; 1there still remained, with Otho himself, the troops that had been across the Po; the Moesian legions were coming; a great part of the army had stayed behind at Bedriacum: these at least had not yet been beaten and, if it came to that, would die more honourably in the battle line.
1With such thoughts, now savage, now fearful, in their utter desperation they were spurred more often to anger than to dread.