CHAPTER VII.
'HISTORY.'
VITELLIUS.
The legions in Syria and Egypt had taken the oath to Galba and Otho without a murmur, but when required for the third time within a few weeks to transfer their allegiance to an enemy of both those Cæsars, they hesitated for a while and then obeyed with an ill grace. Between the armies of the northern and eastern provinces there had long been jealousies and rivalry, and the choice of Vitellius by the German, excited angry feelings in the Syrian camps. They were not less numerous, they were better disciplined and disposed, they had been very recently winning new laurels in the north of Palestine; why should they not put forward their claim to appoint a Cæsar as well as the lazy and over-paid prætorians, or the mutinous legions of the Rhine? In one very important respect, indeed, they were better situated than either the body-guards or the Rhenish divisions. Neither Otho nor Vitellius could be termed a happy choice, unless to be a notorious profligate or an unsurpassed glutton were a recommendation for empire. They, at least at Antioch and in Galilee, had two leaders of
