1But Vespasian was surveying the war and the arms, and the forces stationed far and near. 1His own soldiers were so ready for him that, when he led the oath and prayed for every blessing for Vitellius, they heard him in silence; 1Mucianus' mind was not hostile to Vespasian and was more inclined towards Titus; 1the prefect of Egypt, Tiberius Alexander, had joined in his plans; 1the Third Legion, because it had passed from Syria into Moesia, he counted as his own; 1the remaining legions of Illyricum were expected to follow; 1for every army had been inflamed by the arrogance of the soldiers coming from Vitellius, since, fierce in appearance and rough in speech, they mocked the others as their inferiors.
1But in so great a mass of war there is generally hesitation; 1and Vespasian, at one moment raised up in hope, at other times reflected on the dangers: what would that day be on which he entrusted to war his sixty years of life and his two young sons? 1In private ambitions, he thought, one could advance by degrees and, as one wished, take more or less from fortune: for those who desired empire there was no middle course between the summit and the abyss.