mournful train of soldiers without
their aims, their eyes riveted to the ground, followed them. The
conquerors gathered round them, and first heaped reproaches upon them,
and threatened violence to their persons; but afterward, when they saw
the passiveness with which they received the insults, and that the
vanquished, abandoning all their former pride, submitted to every
indignity, the thought occurred that these very men lately conquered
at Bedriacum, and used their victory with moderation. But when Caecina
came forth, decorated with his robes, and preceded by his lictors, who
opened a way for him through the crowd, the indignation of the victors
burst into a flame. They reproached him for his pride, his cruelty,
and even for his treachery: so detested is villainy. Antonius opposed
the fury of his men, and sent him under escort to Vespasian.

Meanwhile, the common people of Cremona, in the midst of so many
soldiers, were subjected to grievous oppressions, and were in danger
of being all put to the sword, if the rage of the soldiery had not
been assuaged by the entreaties of their leaders. Antonius called them
to an assembly, when he spoke of the conquerors in lofty terms, and of
the vanquished with humanity; of Cremona he said nothing either way.
But the army, adding to their love of plunder an inveterate aversion
to the people, were bent on the extirpation of the inhabitants. In
the war against Otho they were deemed the abettors of Vitellius; and
afterward, when the thirteenth legion was left among them to build an
amphitheater, with the usual insolence of the lower orders in towns,
they had assailed them with offensive ribaldry. The spectacle of
gladiators exhibited there by Caecina inflamed the animosity against
the people. Their city, too, was now for the second time the seat of
war; and, in the heat of the last engagement, the Vitellians were
thence supplied with refreshments; and some of their women, led into
the field of battle by their zeal for the cause, were slain. The
period, too, of the fair had given to a colony otherwise affluent an
imposing appearance of accumulated wealth. Antonius, by his fame and
brilliant success, eclipsed all the other commanders: the attention of
all was fixt on him alone. He hastened to the baths to wash off the
blood; and on observing that the water was not hot enough, he said
that they would soon grow hotter. The expression was caught up: a
casual word among slaves had the eff