1Before his eyes passed the strength of the German army, well known to a military man: his own legions were untried in civil war, those of Vitellius victorious, and among the defeated there were more complaints than strength. 1Soldiers' loyalty was unstable amid discord, and there was danger from individuals: for what good would cohorts and cavalry squadrons do, if one man or another, by a crime of the moment, sought the reward ready for him on the other side? 1Thus Scribonianus had been killed under Claudius, thus his assassin Volaginius had been raised from the ranks to the highest posts in the army: it was easier to drive men on as a body than to guard against them one by one.
Lectitō › Tacitus › Histories, Book 2
Tacitus · Historiae II
Histories 2.79
Vespasian's fears and doubts
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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.