OTHO
which must be seized at once or lost forever, allow such a mode of proceeding? It is as fitting that the soldier should be ignorant of some things, as that he should know others. The authority of generals, and the strictness of discipline, are such, that even the tribunes and the centurions must often receive their orders without a reason assigned. If every subaltern may discuss the reasons of his orders, discipline is at an end, and the authority of the commander falls to the ground. And shall the soldier, even at such a juncture, seize his arms in the dead of the night? Shall one or two drunken men (in last night's frenzy I do not believe there were more) imbrue their hands in the blood of a centurion and a tribune, and rush into the pavilion of their general?
You, my fellow soldiers, have transgressed thus in your zeal for me. But amid that general hurry and confusion, and in the gloom of midnight darkness, an opportunity might have been given for an attack on me. Give Vitellius and his satellites the power of choosing, and what greater curse could they invoke? What calamity could they call down upon us, so much to be dreaded, as a turbulent and factious spirit, and all the evils of discord and sedition?—that the soldier should refuse to obey his centurion; the centurion his tribune; and that hence the cavalry and the foot soldiers, without order or distinction, should rush into destruction? It is implicit obedience rather than wrangling about orders,
249
