1The eagerness of the soldiers did not escape the generals, but they decided to wait while others fought. 1In a civil war, they reflected, victors and vanquished never unite in solid loyalty, and it did not matter whether fortune made Vitellius or Otho the survivor. 1In success even outstanding generals grow insolent: through the discord, cowardice and luxury of their soldiers, and through their own vices, the one would perish by war, the other by victory. 1So they put off taking up arms until the right moment, Vespasian and Mucianus having joined counsels recently, the others long before; 1all the best men were spurred on by love of the state, many by the sweetness of plunder, others by the uncertain state of their affairs at home: so good and bad alike, for different reasons but with equal zeal, all desired war.
Lectitō › Tacitus › Histories, Book 2
Tacitus · Historiae II
Histories 2.8
The eastern generals bide their time
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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.