What happened was all due to the impulse of the soldiers:  there was no set speech, no formal assembly of the troops.  They were still 80 discussing the time and the place, and trying to decide the hardest point of all, who should speak first, and while their minds were still busy with hopes and fears, reasons and chances, Vespasian happened to come out of his quarters.  A few of the soldiers, forming up in the usual way to salute their general, saluted him as emperor.  The others promptly rushed up calling him Caesar and Augustus, and heaping on him all the imperial titles.  Their fears at once gave way to confidence.  Vespasian himself, unchanged by the change of fortune, showed no sign of vanity or arrogance.  As soon as he had recovered from the dazzling shock of his sudden elevation, he addressed them in simple soldier fashion, and received a shower of congratulations from every quarter.  Mucianus, who had been waiting for this, administered the oath of allegiance to his eager troops, and then entered the theatre at Antioch, where the Greeks ordinarily hold their debates.  There, as the fawning crowd came flocking in, he addressed them in their own tongue.  For he could speak elegant Greek, and had the art of making the most of all he said or did.  What most served to inflame the excitement of the province and of the army, was his statement that Vitellius had determined to transfer the German legions to peaceful service in the rich province of Syria, and to send the Syrian legions to endure the toil and rigours of a winter in Germany.  The provincials were accustomed to the soldiers’ company and liked to have them quartered there, and many were bound to them by ties of intimacy and kinship, while the soldiers in their long term of service had come to know and love their old camp like a home.

Before the 15th of July the whole of Syria had sworn allegiance. 81 The party also gained the support of Sohaemus,[404] with all the resources of his kingdom and a considerable force, and of Antiochus,[404] the richest of the subject princes, who owed his importance to his ancestral treasures.  Before long Agrippa, too, received a secret summons from his friends at home, and leaving Rome[405] without the knowledge of Vitellius, sailed as fast as he could to join Vespasian.  His sister Berenice[406] showed equal enthusiasm for the cause.  She was then in the flower of her youth and beauty, and her munificent gifts to Vespasian quite won the old man’s heart.  Indeed, every province on the seaboard as far as Asia and Achaia, and inland to Pontus and Armenia swore allegiance to Vespasian, but their governors were without troops, for as yet no legions had been assigned to Cappadocia.[407]

A meeting was held at Berytus[408] to discuss the general situation.  To this came Mucianus with all his officers and the most distinguished of his centurions and soldiers, besides the elite of the Jewish army in full uniform.  All these cavalry and infantry, and the pageant of the subject princes, vying with each other in splendour, gave the meeting an air of imperial grandeur.