At his funeral the rage and grief of the soldiers broke out into 51 another mutiny. This time there was no one to control them. They turned to Verginius and begged him with threats now to accept the principate, now to head a deputation to Caecina and Valens. However, Verginius escaped them, slipping out by the back door of his house just as they broke in at the front. Rubrius Gallus carried a petition from the Guards at Brixellum, and obtained immediate pardon. Simultaneously Flavius Sabinus surrendered to the victor the troops under his command.[329] FOOTNOTES: [273] Pavia. [274] i. 66. [275] i. 59 and 64. [276] See chap. 14. [277] It is Tacitus who has mixed the metaphors. [278] See i. 66. [279] i.e. he pretended that not all but only a few were to blame (cp. i. 84). [280] Valens had by now Legion V, I Italica, detachments from I, XV, XVI, and Taurus' Horse: Caecina had Legion XXI and detachments from IV and VII. [281] Cp. i. 53. [282] Cp. i. 66. [283] He had made his name in a Moorish war (A.D. 42), when he had penetrated as far as Mount Atlas, and increased his reputation by suppressing the rebellion of Boadicea when he was governor of Britain (A.D. 59). [284] Otho held the fleets. [285] He means that they would be, if they took his advice and retired across the Po to the south bank. [286] According to the rumours quoted in chap. 46 they were already at Aquileia, near Venice, but Suetonius, whose father was at this time a tribune in the Thirteenth, says that they heard of Otho's death before arriving at Aquileia. [287] Brescello. [288] No one knew for certain who was in command. We are told in chap. 39 that he left Titianus in nominal command, though the real authority lay with Proculus. [289] Macer's, see chap. 23. [290] See note 247. [291] i.e. of Macer's gladiators on one bank and the detachment employed by Caecina for bridge-building, &c., on the other. The main armies were Otho's at Bedriacum and Vitellius' at Cremona. [292] i.e. from the Germans who were trying to board or sink them. [293] See i. 77. [294] Plutarch, in his Life of Otho, after quoting the view of the emperor's secretary, Secundus, that Otho was over-strained and desperate, goes on to give the explanation of 'others'. This agrees exactly with the story given here. Plutarch and Tacitus are apparently quoting from the same authority, unknown to us, perhaps Cluvius Rufus. [295] e.g. the brothers Gracchus, Saturninus, and Drusus. [296] e.g. Appius Claudius and L. Opimius, of whom Plutarch says that in suppressing C. Gracchus he used his consular authority like that of a dictator. [297] At Brixellum.