1As he wavered in these fears, both other legates and friends sought to strengthen him, and so did Mucianus, who, after many secret conversations, now spoke to his face as follows: 'All who undertake plans for great affairs ought to judge whether what is being begun is useful to the state, glorious for themselves, and easy to accomplish, or at least not difficult; 1at the same time the man who gives the advice must himself be considered, whether he adds his own danger to his advice, and, if fortune favours the undertaking, on whom the highest glory is conferred. 1I call you, Vespasian, to empire, something as salutary for the state as it is magnificent for you, and, next to the gods, placed in your own hands.
1And do not fear the appearance of a flatterer: to be chosen after Vitellius would be closer to an insult than to praise. 1We are not rising up against the most acute mind of the deified Augustus, nor against the most cautious old age of Tiberius, nor even against the house of Gaius or Claudius or Nero, founded on a long rule; 1you gave way even to Galba's ancestral images: to remain inactive any longer and leave the state to be defiled and ruined would seem sloth and cowardice, even if servitude were as safe for you as it is dishonourable. 1The time has now gone by and passed when you could seem not to have desired it: you must take refuge in empire.
1Have you forgotten the murder of Corbulo? 1He was more distinguished in origin than we are, I admit, but Nero too surpassed Vitellius in nobility of birth. 1Whoever is feared is illustrious enough in the eyes of the man who fears him. 1And that an emperor can be made by an army, Vitellius is himself his own proof, raised up with no years of service, no military reputation, by hatred of Galba. 1Even Otho, defeated not by a general's skill or an army's might but by his own over-hasty despair, he has made into a great emperor, already missed, while all the while he scatters the legions, disarms the cohorts, and supplies new seeds for war every day.
1Whatever ardour and fierceness his soldiers had is being worn away by taverns and carousals and imitation of their emperor: you have from Judaea and Syria and Egypt nine legions intact, exhausted by no battle, not corrupted by discord, but soldiers hardened by practice and victors in a foreign war: the strength of fleets, cavalry squadrons and cohorts, and the most loyal kings, and your experience beyond all others.'