Note 298 — BOOK II
W. Hamilton (William Hamilton) Fyfe translation
About seven miles below Cremona. The Medicean MS. has Adua, but as the mouth of the Adua is seven miles west of Cremona and Bedriacum twenty-two miles east of Cremona, the figures given do not suit. For Tacitus says that they marched first four miles and then sixteen. Mr. Henderson proposes to solve the difficulty by reading quartum decimum for quartum in chap. 39. But his reasons are purely a priori. If the confluence was that of the Arda with the Po, Tacitus' quartum is still unsatisfactory, but the distances given in Plutarch's Life of Otho would suit the facts. He makes the first march a little over six miles. From the camp then pitched to the mouth of the Arda would be by road about sixteen miles. Thus Tacitus' first figure may be a slight underestimate and his second figure correct. The second day's march, according to Plutarch, was rather more than twelve miles, so we may suppose that the armies met about four miles short of the confluence, which was the Othonians' objective. This suits Paulinus' suggestion a few lines lower that the Vitellians need only march four miles to catch them in marching column. The whole question is fully discussed by Mr. Henderson (op. cit.) and by Mr. E.G. Hardy in the Journal of Philology, vol. xxxi, no. 61.