The next day Rome was like a captured city.  The houses were all shut, the streets almost deserted, and everybody looked depressed.  The soldiers, too, hung their heads, though they were more sulky than sorry for what they had done.  Their prefects, Licinius Proculus and Plotius Firmus, harangued them by companies, the one mildly, the other harshly, for they were men of different natures.  They concluded by announcing that the men were to receive five thousand sesterces[180] apiece.  After that Otho ventured to enter the camp.  The tribunes and centurions each flinging away the insignia of his rank,[181] crowded round him begging for a safe discharge.  Stung by the disgrace of this, the troops soon quieted down, and even went the length of demanding that the ringleaders should be punished.  In the general disturbance Otho’s position was difficult.  The soldiers were by no means 83 unanimous.  The better sort wanted him to put a stop to the prevalent insubordination, but the great bulk of them liked faction-fighting and emperors who had to court their favour, and with the prospect of rioting and plunder were ready enough for civil war.  He realized, also, that one who wins a throne by violence cannot keep it by suddenly trying to enforce the rigid discipline of earlier days.  However, the danger of the crisis both for the city and the senate seriously alarmed him, so he finally delivered himself as follows:—­

’Fellow soldiers, I have not come to fan the fire of your affection for me, or to instil courage into your hearts:  in both those qualities you are more than rich.  No, I have come to ask you to moderate your courage and to set some bounds to your affection.  These recent disturbances did not originate in those passions of greed or violence, which so often cause dissension in an army; nor was it that you feared some danger and tried to shirk it.  The sole cause was your excessive loyalty, which you displayed with more ardour than judgement.  For with the best of motives, indiscretion often lands men in disaster.  We are preparing for war.  Do you imagine that we could publish all our dispatches, and discuss our plans in the presence of the whole army, when we have to devise a systematic campaign and keep up with the rapid changes of the situation?  There are things a soldier ought to know, but there is much of which he must be ignorant.  It is necessary for the maintenance of strict discipline and of the general’s authority that even his tribunes and centurions should often obey blindly.  If every one is going to inquire into his motives, discipline is done for, and his authority falls to the ground.  Suppose in actual warfare you are called to arms at dead of night:  shall a few drunken blackguards—­for I cannot believe that many lost their heads in the recent panic—­go and stain their hands with their officers’ blood, and then break into the general’s tent?