Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.5, 1865).djvu/509

 OTHO. 501 crying out and bidding them desist, Cascina came up to inform himself of the tumult, which he quieted, and, giving a friendly greeting to Celsus, took him in his company and proceeded towards Bedriacum. Titianus, meantime, had repented of having sent the messengers; and placed those of the soldiers who were more confident upon the walls once again, bidding the others also go and support them. But when C^ecina rode • up on his horse and held out his hand, no one did or said to the contrary ; those on the walls greeted his men with salu- tations, others ojjened the gates and went out, and mingled freely with those they met ; and instead of acts of hostility, there was nothing but mutual shaking of hands and congratulations, every one taking the oaths and submitting to Vitellius. This is the account which the most of those that were present at the battle give of it, yet own that the disorder they were in, and the absence of any unity of action would not give them leave to be certain as to particulars. And when I myself travelled' afterwards over the field of battle, Mestrius Florus, a man of consular degree, one of those who had been, not willmgly, but by command, in attendance on Otho at the time, pointed out to me an ancient temple, and told me, that as he went that way after the battle, he observed a heap of bodies piled up there to such a height, that those on the top of it touched the pinnacles of the roof How it came to be so, he could neither discover himself nor learn from any other pei'son ; as indeed, he said, in civil wars it generally hap- pens that greater numbers are killed when an army is routed, quarter not being given, because captives are of no advantage to the conquerors ; but why the car- cases should be heaped up after, that manner is not easy to determine. Otho, at first, as it frequently happens, received some