1Vitellius was troubled by the spirit of the defeated legions, which was by no means broken. 1Scattered through Italy and mingled with the victors, they were talking like enemies, the men of the Fourteenth being especially defiant; they denied that they had been beaten: for at the battle of Bedriacum only the detachments had been routed, and the main strength of the legion had not been present. 1It was decided to send them back to Britain, from which Nero had summoned them, and meanwhile to have the Batavian cohorts encamp with them, because of the old quarrel between them and the men of the Fourteenth. 1Nor was there peace for long amid such hatred among armed men: at Augusta Taurinorum, while a Batavian was pursuing a certain workman as a cheat and a legionary was defending him as his host, their fellow soldiers gathered round each man and passed from abuse to bloodshed.
1And a fierce battle would have blazed up, had not two praetorian cohorts taken the side of the men of the Fourteenth and given them confidence and the Batavians fear: these Vitellius ordered to be attached to his own column as loyal, while the legion was to be led across the Graian Alps and to go by a detour that would avoid Vienna; 1for the people of Vienna too were feared. 1On the night on which the legion was setting out, fires were left burning here and there and part of the Taurine colony was burnt down, a loss which, like most of the evils of war, was blotted out by the greater disasters of other cities.
1After the men of the Fourteenth had come down from the Alps, all the most mutinous began to carry the standards towards Vienna: they were checked by the agreement of the better men, and the legion was carried across to Britain.