When Otho started for Brixellum, he left his brother Titianus in 39 nominal command, though the real power lay with the prefect Proculus.  As for Celsus and Paulinus, no use was made of their experience, and their empty titles were used as a screen for other people’s blunders.  The tribunes and centurions felt themselves in an ambiguous position, seeing the better generals sacrificed and the worst in command.  The men were full of spirit, but preferred criticizing to carrying out their officers’ orders.  It was decided to advance and encamp four miles west of Bedriacum.  Though it was spring, and rivers abounded, the men were very foolishly allowed to suffer from want of water.  Here a council of war was held, for Otho kept sending dispatches urging haste, and the soldiers kept clamouring for their emperor to lead them.  Many demanded that the troops stationed across the Po[297] should be brought up.  It is not so easy to decide what was the best thing they could have done as to be sure that what they did do was the worst.  They were in marching order, not fighting trim, and their 40 objective was the confluence of the Po and the Arda,[298] sixteen miles away.  Celsus and Paulinus refused to expose their troops, fatigued by the march and under heavy kit, to the assault of an enemy who, while still fresh after covering barely four miles, would certainly attack them, either while they were in the disorder of a marching column, or when they had broken up to dig trenches.  However, Titianus and Proculus, worsted in argument, appealed to their authority:  and there arrived post-haste a Numidian orderly with a peremptory dispatch from Otho, criticizing his generals’ inaction, and ordering them to bring matters to a head.  He was sick of delay and too impatient to live on hope.

On that same day, while Caecina was busy with the bridge-building 41 operations,[299] two officers of the Guards came and demanded an interview.  He was preparing to hear and answer their proposals, when some scouts burst in with the news that the enemy were close at hand.  The officers’ conversation was thus interrupted, and it was left uncertain whether they were broaching a hostile plot or a piece of treachery, or some honest plan.  Caecina, dismissing the officers, rode back to the camp, where he found that Valens had given orders to sound for battle, and the troops were already under arms.  While the legions were balloting for the order in which they were to take the field, the cavalry rode out and charged.  Strange to say, they would have been hurtled back upon the trenches by a smaller force of Othonians, had not the Italian legion bravely stopped them by drawing their swords and forcing them to go back and resume the fight.  The Vitellian legions formed without any disorder, for though the enemy were close at hand, thick plantations hid the approaching force.  In the Othonian army the generals were nervous and the men ill-disposed towards them:  their march was hindered by carts and camp-followers, and the high road,[300] with its deep ditches on either side, was too narrow even for a peaceful march.  Some of the men formed round their standards, others went searching for their place:  on every side there was an uproar as men ran about shouting to each other:  the boldest kept pressing on to the front, while the tide of the timid ebbed to the rear.