Translated by Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb
Table of Contents
Book I
January March, A.D. 69
I begin my work with the time when Servius Galba was consul for the second
time with Titus Vinius for his colleague. Of the former period, the 820
years dating from the founding of the city, many authors have treated; and
while they had to record the transactions of the Roman people, they wrote
with equal eloquence and freedom. After the conflict at Actium, and when it
became essential to peace, that all power should be centered in one man,
these great intellects passed away. Then too the truthfulness of history
was impaired in many ways; at first, through men's ignorance of public
affairs, which were now wholly strange to them, then, through their passion
for flattery, or, on the other hand, their hatred of their masters. And so
between the enmity of the one and the servility of the other, neither had
any regard for posterity. But while we instinctively shrink from a writer's
adulation, we lend a ready ear to detraction and spite, because flattery
involves the shameful imputation of servility, whereas malignity wears the
false appearance of honesty. I myself knew nothing of Galba, of Otho, or of
Vitellius, either from benefits or from injuries. I would not deny that my
elevation was begun by Vespasian, augmented by Titus, and still further
advanced by Domitian; but those who profess inviolable truthfulness must
speak of all without partiality and without hatred. I have reserved as an
employment for my old age, should my life be long enough, a subject at once
more fruitful and less anxious in the reign of the Divine Nerva and the
empire of Trajan, enjoying the rare happiness of times, when we may think
what we please, and express what we think.
I am entering on the history of a period rich in disasters, frightful in
its wars, torn by civil strife, and even in peace full of horrors. Four
emperors perished by the sword. There were three civil wars; there were
more with foreign enemies; there were often wars that had both characters
at once. There was success in the East, and disaster in the West. There
were disturbances in Illyricum; Gaul wavered in its allegiance; Britain was
thoroughly subdued and immediately abandoned; the tribes of the Suevi and
the Sarmatae rose in concert against us; the Dacians had the glory of
inflicting as well as suffering defeat; the armies of Parthia were all but
set in motion by the cheat of a counterfeit Nero. Now too Italy was
prostrated by disasters either entirely novel, or that recurred only after
a long succession of ages; cities in Campania's richest plains were
swallowed up and overwhelmed; Rome was wasted by conflagrations, its oldest
temples consumed, and the Capitol itself fired by the hands of citizens.
Sacred rites were profaned; there was profligacy in the highest ranks; the
sea was crowded with exiles, and its rocks polluted with bloody deeds. In
the capital there were yet worse horrors. Nobility, wealth, the refusal or
the acceptance of office, were grounds for accusation, and virtue ensured
destruction. The rewards of the informers were no less odious than their
crimes; for while some seized on consulships and priestly offices, as their
share of the spoil, others on procuratorships, and posts of more
confidential authority, they robbed and ruined in every direction amid
universal hatred and terror. Slaves were bribed to turn against their
masters, and freedmen to betray their patrons; and those who had not an
enemy were destroyed by friends.
Yet the age was not so barren in noble qualities, as not also to exhibit
examples of virtue. Mothers accompanied the flight of their sons; wives
followed their husbands into exile; there were brave kinsmen and faithful
sons in law; there were slaves whose fidelity defied even torture; there
were illustrious men driven to the last necessity, and enduring it with
fortitude; there were closing scenes that equalled the famous deaths of
antiquity. Besides the manifold vicissitudes of human affairs, there were
prodigies in heaven and earth, the warning voices of the thunder, and other
intimations of the future, auspicious or gloomy, doubtful or not to be
mistaken. Never surely did more terrible calamities of the Roman People, or
evidence more conclusive, prove that the Gods take no thought for our
happiness, but only for our punishment.
I think it proper, however, before I commence my purposed work, to pass
under review the condition of the capital, the temper of the armies, the
attitude of the provinces, and the elements of weakness and strength which
existed throughout the whole empire, that so we may become acquainted, not
only with the vicissitudes and the issues of events, which are often
matters of chance, but also with their relations and their causes. Welcome
as the death of Nero had been in the first burst of joy, yet it had not
only roused various emotions in Rome, among the Senators, the people, or
the soldiery of the capital, it had also excited all the legions and their
generals; for now had been divulged that secret of the empire, that
emperors could be made elsewhere than at Rome. The Senators enjoyed the
first exercise of freedom with the less restraint, because the Emperor was
new to power, and absent from the capital. The leading men of the
Equestrian order sympathised most closely with the joy of the Senators. The
respectable portion of the people, which was connected with the great
families, as well as the dependants and freedmen of condemned and banished
persons, were high in hope. The degraded populace, frequenters of the arena
and the theatre, the most worthless of the slaves, and those who having
wasted their property were supported by the infamous excesses of Nero,
caught eagerly in their dejection at every rumour.
The soldiery of the capital, who were imbued with the spirit of an old
allegiance to the Caesars, and who had been led to desert Nero by intrigues
and influences from without rather than by their own feelings, were
inclined for change, when they found that the donative promised in Galba's
name was withheld, and reflected that for great services and great rewards
there was not the same room in peace as in war, and that the favour of an
emperor created by the legions must be already preoccupied. They were
further excited by the treason of Nymphidius Sabinus, their prefect, who
himself aimed at the throne. Nymphidius indeed perished in the attempt,
but, though the head of the mutiny was thus removed, there yet remained in
many of the soldiers the consciousness of guilt. There were even men who
talked in angry terms of the feebleness and avarice of Galba. The
strictness once so commended, and celebrated in the praises of the army,
was galling to troops who rebelled against the old discipline, and who had
been accustomed by fourteen years' service under Nero to love the vices of
their emperors, as much as they had once respected their virtues. To all
this was added Galba's own expression, "I choose my soldiers, I do not buy
them," noble words for the commonwealth, but fraught with peril for
himself. His other acts were not after this pattern.
Titus Vinius and Cornelius Laco, one the most worthless, the other the most
spiritless of mankind, were ruining the weak old Emperor, who had to bear
the odium of such crimes and the scorn felt for such cowardice. Galba's
progress had been slow and blood stained. Cingonius Varro, consul elect,
and Petronius Turpilianus, a man of consular rank, were put to death; the
former as an accomplice of Nymphidius, the latter as one of Nero's
generals. Both had perished without hearing or defence, like innocent men.
His entry into the capital, made after the slaughter of thousands of
unarmed soldiers, was most ill omened, and was terrible even to the
executioners. As he brought into the city his Spanish legion, while that
which Nero had levied from the fleet still remained, Rome was full of
strange troops. There were also many detachments from Germany, Britain, and
Illyria, selected by Nero, and sent on by him to the Caspian passes, for
service in the expedition which he was preparing against the Albani, but
afterwards recalled to crush the insurrection of Vindex. Here there were
vast materials for a revolution, without indeed a decided bias towards any
one man, but ready to a daring hand.
In this conjuncture it happened that tidings of the deaths of Fonteius
Capito and Clodius Macer reached the capital. Macer was executed in Africa,
where he was undoubtedly fomenting sedition, by Trebonius Garutianus the
procurator, who acted on Galba's authority; Capito fell in Germany, while
he was making similar attempts, by the hands of Cornelius Aquinus and
Fabius Valens, legates of legions, who did not wait for an order. There
were however some who believed that Capito, though foully stained with
avarice and profligacy, had yet abstained from all thought of revolution,
that this was a treacherous accusation invented by the commanders
themselves, who had urged him to take up arms, when they found themselves
unable to prevail, and that Galba had approved of the deed, either from
weakness of character, or to avoid investigation into the circumstances of
acts which could not be altered. Both executions, however, were
unfavourably regarded; indeed, when a ruler once becomes unpopular, all his
acts, be they good or bad, tell against him. The freedmen in their
excessive power were now putting up everything for sale; the slaves caught
with greedy hands at immediate gain, and, reflecting on their master's age,
hastened to be rich. The new court had the same abuses as the old, abuses
as grievous as ever, but not so readily excused. Even the age of Galba
caused ridicule and disgust among those whose associations were with the
youth of Nero, and who were accustomed, as is the fashion of the vulgar, to
value their emperors by the beauty and grace of their persons.
Such, as far as one can speak of so vast a multitude, was the state of
feeling at Rome. Among the provinces, Spain was under the government of
Cluvius Rufus, an eloquent man, who had all the accomplishments of civil
life, but who was without experience in war. Gaul, besides remembering
Vindex, was bound to Galba by the recently conceded privileges of
citizenship, and by the diminution of its future tribute. Those Gallic
states, however, which were nearest to the armies of Germany, had not been
treated with the same respect, and had even in some cases been deprived of
their territory; and these were reckoning the gains of others and their own
losses with equal indignation. The armies of Germany were at once alarmed
and angry, a most dangerous temper when allied with such strength; while
elated by their recent victory, they feared because they might seem to have
supported an unsuccessful party. They had been slow to revolt from Nero,
and Verginius had not immediately declared for Galba; it was doubtful
whether he had himself wished to be emperor, but all agreed that the empire
had been offered to him by the soldiery. Again, the execution of Capito was
a subject of indignation, even with those who could not complain of its
injustice. They had no leader, for Verginius had been withdrawn on the
pretext of his friendship with the Emperor. That he was not sent back, and
that he was even impeached, they regarded as an accusation against
themselves.
The army of Upper Germany despised their legate, Hordeonius Flaccus, who,
disabled by age and lameness, had no strength of character and no
authority; even when the soldiery were quiet, he could not control them,
much more in their fits of frenzy were they irritated by the very
feebleness of his restraint. The legions of Lower Germany had long been
without any general of consular rank, until, by the appointment of Galba,
Aulus Vitellius took the command. He was son of that Vitellius who was
censor and three times consul; this was thought sufficient recommendation.
In the army of Britain there was no angry feeling; indeed no troops behaved
more blamelessly throughout all the troubles of these civil wars, either
because they were far away and separated by the ocean from the rest of the
empire, or because continual warfare had taught them to concentrate their
hatred on the enemy. Illyricum too was quiet, though the legions drawn from
that province by Nero had, while lingering in Italy, sent deputations to
Verginius. But separated as these armies were by long distances, a thing of
all others the most favourable for keeping troops to their duty, they could
neither communicate their vices, nor combine their strength.
In the East there was as yet no movement. Syria and its four legions were
under the command of Licinius Mucianus, a man whose good and bad fortune
were equally famous. In his youth he had cultivated with many intrigues the
friendship of the great. His resources soon failed, and his position became
precarious, and as he also suspected that Claudius had taken some offence,
he withdrew into a retired part of Asia, and was as like an exile, as he
was afterwards like an emperor. He was a compound of dissipation and
energy, of arrogance and courtesy, of good and bad qualities. His
self indulgence was excessive, when he had leisure, yet whenever he had
served, he had shown great qualities. In his public capacity he might be
praised; his private life was in bad repute. Yet over subjects, friends,
and colleagues, he exercised the influence of many fascinations. He was a
man who would find it easier to transfer the imperial power to another,
than to hold it for himself. Flavius Vespasian, a general of Nero's
appointment, was carrying on the war in Judaea with three legions, and he
had no wish or feeling adverse to Galba. He had in fact sent his son Titus
to acknowledge his authority and bespeak his favour, as in its proper place
I shall relate. As for the hidden decrees of fate, the omens and the
oracles that marked out Vespasian and his sons for imperial power, we
believed in them only after his success.
Ever since the time of the Divine Augustus Roman Knights have ruled Egypt
as kings, and the forces by which it has to be kept in subjection. It has
been thought expedient thus to keep under home control a province so
difficult of access, so productive of corn, ever distracted, excitable, and
restless through the superstition and licentiousness of its inhabitants,
knowing nothing of laws, and unused to civil rule. Its governor was at this
time Tiberius Alexander, a native of the country. Africa and its legions,
now that Clodius Macer was dead, were disposed to be content with any
emperor, after having experienced the rule of a smaller tyrant. The two
divisions of Mauritania, Rhaetia, Noricum and Thrace and the other
provinces governed by procurators, as they were near this or that army,
were driven by the presence of such powerful neighbours into friendship or
hostility. The unarmed provinces with Italy at their head were exposed to
any kind of slavery, and were ready to become the prize of victory. Such
was the state of the Roman world, when Servius Galba, consul for the second
time, with T. Vinius for his colleague, entered upon a year, which was to
be the last of their lives, and which well nigh brought the commonwealth to
an end.
A few days after the 1st of January, there arrived from Belgica despatches
of Pompeius Propinquus, the Procurator, to this effect; that the legions of
Upper Germany had broken through the obligation of their military oath, and
were demanding another emperor, but conceded the power of choice to the
Senate and people of Rome, in the hope that a more lenient view might be
taken of their revolt. These tidings hastened the plans of Galba, who had
been long debating the subject of adoption with himself and with his
intimate friends. There was indeed no more frequent subject of conversation
during these months, at first because men had liberty and inclination to
talk of such matters, afterwards because the feebleness of Galba was
notorious. Few had any discrimination or patriotism, many had foolish hopes
for themselves, and spread interested reports, in which they named this or
that person to whom they might be related as friend or dependant. They were
also moved by hatred of T. Vinius, who grew daily more powerful, and in the
same proportion more unpopular. The very easiness of Galba's temper
stimulated the greedy cupidity which great advancement had excited in his
friends, because with one so weak and so credulous wrong might be done with
less risk and greater gain.
The real power of the Empire was divided between T. Vinius, the consul, and
Cornelius Laco, prefect of the Praetorian Guard. Icelus, a freedman of
Galba, was in equal favour; he had been presented with the rings of
knighthood, and bore the Equestrian name of Martianus. These men, being at
variance, and in smaller matters pursuing their own aims, were divided in
the affair of choosing a successor, into two opposing factions. T. Vinius
was for Marcus Otho, Laco and Icelus agreed, not indeed in supporting any
particular individual, but in striving for some one else. Galba indeed was
aware of the friendship between Vinius and Otho; the gossip of those who
allow nothing to pass in silence had named them as father in law and
son in law, for Vinius had a widowed daughter, and Otho was unmarried. I
believe that he had also at heart some care for the commonwealth, in vain,
he would think, rescued from Nero, if it was to be left with Otho. For
Otho's had been a neglected boyhood and a riotous youth, and he had made
himself agreeable to Nero by emulating his profligacy. For this reason the
Emperor had entrusted to him, as being the confidant of his amours, Poppaea
Sabina, the imperial favourite, until he could rid himself of his wife
Octavia. Soon suspecting him with regard to this same Poppaea, he sent him
out of the way to the province of Lusitania, ostensibly to be its governor.
Otho ruled the province with mildness, and, as he was the first to join
Galba's party, was not without energy, and, while the war lasted, was the
most conspicuous of the Emperor's followers, he was led to cherish more and
more passionately every day those hopes of adoption which he had
entertained from the first. Many of the soldiers favoured him, and the
court was biassed in his favour, because he resembled Nero.
When Galba heard of the mutiny in Germany, though nothing was as yet known
about Vitellius, he felt anxious as to the direction which the violence of
the legions might take, while he could not trust even the soldiery of the
capital. He therefore resorted to what he supposed to be the only remedy,
and held a council for the election of an emperor. To this he summoned,
besides Vinius and Laco, Marius Celsus, consul elect, and Ducennius
Geminus, prefect of the city. Having first said a few words about his
advanced years, he ordered Piso Licinianus to be summoned. It is uncertain
whether he acted on his own free choice, or, as believed by some, under the
influence of Laco, who through Rubellius Plautus had cultivated the
friendship of Piso. But, cunningly enough, it was as a stranger that Laco
supported him, and the high character of Piso gave weight to his advice.
Piso, who was the son of M. Crassus and Scribonia, and thus of noble
descent on both sides, was in look and manner a man of the old type.
Rightly judged, he seemed a stern man, morose to those who estimated him
less favourably. This point in his character pleased his adopted father in
proportion as it raised the anxious suspicions of others.
We are told that Galba, taking hold of Piso's hand, spoke to this effect:
"If I were a private man, and were now adopting you by the Act of the
Curiae before the Pontiffs, as our custom is, it would be a high honour to
me to introduce into my family a descendant of Cn. Pompeius and M. Crassus;
it would be a distinction to you to add to the nobility of your race the
honours of the Sulpician and Lutatian houses. As it is, I, who have been
called to the throne by the unanimous consent of gods and men, am moved by
your splendid endowments and by my own patriotism to offer to you, a man of
peace, that power, for which our ancestors fought, and which I myself
obtained by war. I am following the precedent of the Divine Augustus, who
placed on an eminence next to his own, first his nephew Marcellus, then his
son in law Agrippa, afterwards his grandsons, and finally Tiberius Nero,
his stepson. But Augustus looked for a successor in his own family, I look
for one in the state, not because I have no relatives or companions of my
campaigns, but because it was not by any private favour that I myself
received the imperial power. Let the principle of my choice be shown not
only by my connections which I have set aside for you, but by your own. You
have a brother, noble as yourself, and older, who would be well worthy of
this dignity, were you not worthier. Your age is such as to be now free
from the passions of youth, and such your life that in the past you have
nothing to excuse. Hitherto, you have only borne adversity; prosperity
tries the heart with keener temptations; for hardships may be endured,
whereas we are spoiled by success. You indeed will cling with the same
constancy to honor, freedom, friendship, the best possessions of the human
spirit, but others will seek to weaken them with their servility. You will
be fiercely assailed by adulation, by flattery, that worst poison of the
true heart, and by the selfish interests of individuals. You and I speak
together to day with perfect frankness, but others will be more ready to
address us as emperors than as men. For to urge his duty upon a prince is
indeed a hard matter; to flatter him, whatever his character, is a mere
routine gone through without any heart.
"Could the vast frame of this empire have stood and preserved its balance
without a directing spirit, I was not unworthy of inaugurating a republic.
As it is, we have been long reduced to a position, in which my age confer
no greater boon on the Roman people than a good successor, your youth no
greater than a good emperor. Under Tuberous, Chairs, and Claudius, we were,
so to speak, the inheritance of a single family. The choice which begins
with us will be a substitute for freedom. Now that the family of the Julii
and the Claudii has come to an end, adoption will discover the worthiest
successor. To be begotten and born of a princely race is a mere accident,
and is only valued as such. In adoption there is nothing that need bias the
judgment, and if you wish to make a choice, an unanimous opinion points out
the man. Let Nero be ever before your eyes, swollen with the pride of a
long line of Caesars; it was not Vindex with his unarmed province, it was
not myself with my single legion, that shook his yoke from our necks. It
was his own profligacy, his own brutality, and that, though there had been
before no precedent of an emperor condemned by his own people. We, who have
been called to power by the issues of war, and by the deliberate judgment
of others, shall incur unpopularity, however illustrious our character. Do
not however be alarmed, if, after a movement which has shaken the world,
two legions are not yet quiet. I did not myself succeed to a throne without
anxiety; and when men shall hear of your adoption I shall no longer be
thought old, and this is the only objection which is now made against me.
Nero will always be regretted by the thoroughly depraved; it is for you and
me to take care, that he be not regretted also by the good. To prolong such
advice, suits not this occasion, and all my purpose is fulfilled if I have
made a good choice in you. The most practical and the shortest method of
distinguishing between good and bad measures, is to think what you yourself
would or would not like under another emperor. It is not here, as it is
among nations despotically ruled, that there is a distinct governing
family, while all the rest are slaves. You have to reign over men who
cannot bear either absolute slavery or absolute freedom." This, with more
to the same effect, was said by Galba; he spoke to Piso as if he were
creating an emperor; the others addressed him as if he were an emperor
already.
It is said of Piso that he betrayed no discomposure or excessive joy,
either to the gaze to which he was immediately subjected, or afterwards
when all eyes were turned upon him. His language to the Emperor, his
father, was reverential; his language about himself was modest. He shewed
no change in look or manner; he seemed like one who had the power rather
than the wish to rule. It was next discussed whether the adoption should be
publicly pronounced in front of the Rostra, in the Senate, or in the camp.
It was thought best to go to the camp. This would be a compliment to the
soldiery, and their favour, base as it was to purchase it by bribery or
intrigue, was not to be despised if it could be obtained by honourable
means. Meanwhile the expectant people had surrounded the palace, impatient
to learn the great secret, and those who sought to stifle the ill concealed
rumour did but spread it the more.
The 10th of January was a gloomy, stormy day, unusually disturbed by
thunder, lightning, and all bad omens from heaven. Though this had from
ancient time been made a reason for dissolving an assembly, it did not
deter Galba from proceeding to the camp; either because he despised such
things as being mere matters of chance, or because the decrees of fate,
though they be foreshewn, are not escaped. Addressing a crowded assembly of
the soldiers he announced, with imperial brevity, that he adopted Piso,
following the precedent of the Divine Augustus, and the military custom by
which a soldier chooses his comrade. Fearing that to conceal the mutiny
would be to make them think it greater than it really was, he spontaneously
declared that the 4th and 18th legions, led by a few factious persons, had
been insubordinate, but had not gone beyond certain words and cries, and
that they would soon return to their duty. To this speech he added no word
of flattery, no hint of a bribe. Yet the tribunes, the centurions, and such
of the soldiers as stood near, made an encouraging response. A gloomy
silence prevailed among the rest, who seemed to think that they had lost by
war that right to a donative which they had made good even in peace. It is
certain that their feelings might have been conciliated by the very
smallest liberality on the part of the parsimonious old man. He was ruined
by his old fashioned inflexibility, and by an excessive sternness which we
are no longer able to endure.
Then followed Galba's speech in the Senate, which was as plain and brief as
his speech to the soldiery. Piso delivered a graceful oration and was
supported by the feeling of the Senate. Many who wished him well, spoke
with enthusiasm; those who had opposed him, in moderate terms; the majority
met him with an officious homage, having aims of their own and no thought
for the state. Piso neither said nor did anything else in public in the
following four days which intervened between his adoption and his death. As
tidings of the mutiny in Germany were arriving with daily increasing
frequency, while the country was ready to receive and to credit all
intelligence that had an unfavourable character, the Senate came to a
resolution to send deputies to the German armies. It was privately
discussed whether Piso should go with them to give them a more imposing
appearance; they, it was said, would bring with them the authority of the
Senate, he the majesty of the Caesar. It was thought expedient to send with
them Cornelius Laco, prefect of the Praetorian Guard, but he thwarted the
design. In nominating, excusing, and changing the deputies, the Senate
having entrusted the selection to Galba, the Emperor shewed a disgraceful
want of firmness, yielding to individuals, who made interest to stay or to
go, as their fears or their hopes prompted.
Next came the question of money. On a general inquiry it seemed the fairest
course to demand restitution from those who had caused the public poverty.
Nero had squandered in presents two thousand two hundred million sesterces.
It was ordered that each recipient should be sued, but should be permitted
to retain a tenth part of the bounty. They had however barely a tenth part
left, having wasted the property of others in the same extravagances in
which they had squandered their own, till the most rapacious and profligate
among them had neither capital nor land remaining, nothing in fact but the
appliances of their vices. Thirty Roman Knights were appointed to conduct
the process of recovery, a novel office, and made burdensome by the number
and intriguing practices of those with whom it had to deal. Everywhere were
sales and brokers, and Rome was in an uproar with auctions. Yet great was
the joy to think that the men whom Nero had enriched would be as poor as
those whom he had robbed. About this time were cashiered two tribunes of
the Praetorian Guard, Antonius Taurus and Antonius Naso, an officer of the
City cohorts, Aemilius Pacensis, and one of the watch, Julius Fronto. This
led to no amendment with the rest, but only started the apprehension, that
a crafty and timid policy was getting rid of individuals, while all were
suspected.
Otho, meanwhile, who had nothing to hope while the State was tranquil, and
whose whole plans depended on revolution, was being roused to action by a
combination of many motives, by a luxury that would have embarrassed even
an emperor, by a poverty that a subject could hardly endure, by his rage
against Galba, by his envy of Piso. He even pretended to fear to make
himself keener in desire. "I was, said he, "too formidable to Nero, and I
must not look for another Lusitania, another honourable exile. Rulers
always suspect and hate the man who has been named for the succession. This
has injured me with the aged Emperor, and will injure me yet more with a
young man whose temper, naturally savage, has been rendered ferocious by
prolonged exile. How easy to put Otho to death! I must therefore do and
dare now while Galba's authority is still unsettled, and before that of
Piso is consolidated. Periods of transition suit great attempts, and delay
is useless where inaction is more hurtful than temerity. Death, which
nature ordains for all alike, yet admits of the distinction of being either
forgotten, or remembered with honour by posterity; and, if the same lot
awaits the innocent and the guilty, the man of spirit will at least deserve
his fate."
The soul of Otho was not effeminate like his person. His confidential
freedmen and slaves, who enjoyed a license unknown in private families,
brought the debaucheries of Nero's court, its intrigues, its easy
marriages, and the other indulgences of despotic power, before a mind
passionately fond of such things, dwelt upon them as his if he dared to
seize them, and reproached the inaction that would leave them to others.
The astrologers also urged him to action, predicting from their observation
of the heavens revolutions, and a year of glory for Otho. This is a class
of men, whom the powerful cannot trust, and who deceive the aspiring, a
class which will always be proscribed in this country, and yet always
retained. Many of these men were attached to the secret councils of Poppaea
and were the vilest tools in the employ of the imperial household. One of
them, Ptolemaeus, had attended Otho in Spain, and had there foretold that
his patron would survive Nero. Gaining credit by the result, and arguing
from his own conjectures and from the common talk of those who compared
Galba's age with Otho's youth, he had persuaded the latter that he would be
called to the throne. Otho however received the prediction as the words of
wisdom and the intimation of destiny, with that inclination so natural to
the human mind readily to believe in the mysterious.
Nor did Ptolemaeus fail to play his part; he now even prompted to crime, to
which from such wishes it is easy to pass. Whether indeed these thoughts of
crime were suddenly conceived, is doubtful. Otho had long been courting the
affections of the soldiery, either in the hope of succeeding to the throne,
or in preparation for some desperate act. On the march, on parade, and in
their quarters, he would address all the oldest soldiers by name, and in
allusion to the progresses of Nero would call them his messmates. Some he
would recognise, he would inquire after others, and would help them with
his money and interest. He would often intersperse his conversation with
complaints and insinuations against Galba and anything else that might
excite the vulgar mind. Laborious marches, a scanty commissariat, and the
rigour of military discipline, were especially distasteful, when men,
accustomed to sail to the lakes of Campania and the cities of Greece, had
painfully to struggle under the weight of their arms over the Pyrenees, the
Alps, and vast distances of road.
The minds of the soldiery were already on fire, when Maevius Pudens, a near
relative of Tigellinus, added, so to speak, fuel to the flames. In his
endeavour to win over all who were particularly weak in character, or who
wanted money and were ready to plunge into revolution, he gradually went so
far as to distribute, whenever Galba dined with Otho, one hundred sesterces
to each soldier of the cohort on duty, under pretext of treating them.
This, which we may almost call a public bounty, Otho followed up by
presents more privately bestowed on individuals; nay he bribed with such
spirit, that, finding there was a dispute between Cocceius Proculus, a
soldier of the bodyguard, and one of his neighbours, about some part of
their boundaries, he purchased with his own money the neighbour's entire
estate, and made a present of it to the soldier. He took advantage of the
lazy indifference of the Prefect, who overlooked alike notorious facts and
secret practices.
He then entrusted the conduct of his meditated treason to Onomastus, one of
his freedmen, who brought over to his views Barbius Proculus, officer of
the watchword to the bodyguard, and Veturius, a deputy centurion in the
same force. Having assured himself by various conversations with these men
that they were cunning and bold, he loaded them with presents and promises,
and furnished them with money with which to tempt the cupidity of others.
Thus two soldiers from the ranks undertook to transfer the Empire of Rome,
and actually transferred it. Only a few were admitted to be accomplices in
the plot, but they worked by various devices on the wavering minds of the
remainder; on the more distinguished soldiers, by hinting that the favours
of Nymphidius had subjected them to suspicion; on the vulgar herd, by the
anger and despair with which the repeated postponement of the donative had
inspired them. Some were fired by their recollections of Nero and their
longing regrets for their old license. All felt a common alarm at the idea
of having to serve elsewhere.
The contagion spread to the legions and the auxiliary troops, already
excited by the news of the wavering loyalty of the army of Germany. So ripe
were the disaffected for mutiny and so close the secrecy preserved by the
loyal, that they would actually have seized Otho on the 14th of January, as
he was returning from dinner, had they not been deterred by the risks of
darkness, the inconvenient dispersion of the troops over the whole city,
and the difficulty of concerted action among a half intoxicated crowd. It
was no care for the state, which they deliberately meditated polluting with
the blood of their Emperor; it was a fear lest in the darkness of night any
one who presented himself to the soldiers of the Pannonian or German army
might be fixed on instead of Otho, whom few of them knew. Many symptoms of
the approaching outburst were repressed by those who were in the secret.
Some hints, which had reached Galba's ears, were turned into ridicule by
Laco the prefect, who knew nothing of the temper of the soldiery, and who,
inimical to all measures, however excellent, which he did not originate,
obstinately thwarted men wiser than himself.
On the 15th of January, as Galba was sacrificing in front of the temple of
Apollo, the Haruspex Umbricius announced to him that the entrails had a
sinister aspect, that treachery threatened him, that he had an enemy at
home. Otho heard, for he had taken his place close by, and interpreted it
by contraries in a favourable sense, as promising success to his designs.
Not long after his freedman Onomastus informed him that the architect and
the contractors were waiting for him. It had been arranged thus to indicate
that the soldiers were assembling, and that the preparations of the
conspiracy were complete. To those who inquired the reason of his
departure, Otho pretended that he was purchasing certain farm buildings,
which from their age he suspected to be unsound, and which had therefore to
be first surveyed. Leaning on his freedman's arm, he proceeded through the
palace of Tiberius to the Velabrum, and thence to the golden milestone near
the temple of Saturn. There three and twenty soldiers of the body guard
saluted him as Emperor, and, while he trembled at their scanty number, put
him hastily into a chair, drew their swords, and hurried him onwards. About
as many more soldiers joined them on their way, some because they were in
the plot, many from mere surprise; some shouted and brandished their
swords, others proceeded in silence, intending to let the issue determine
their sentiments.
Julius Martialis was the tribune on guard in the camp. Appalled by the
enormity and suddenness of the crime, or perhaps fearing that the troops
were very extensively corrupted and that it would be destruction to oppose
them, he made many suspect him of complicity. The rest of the tribunes and
centurions preferred immediate safety to danger and duty. Such was the
temper of men's minds, that, while there were few to venture on so
atrocious a treason, many wished it done, and all were ready to acquiesce.
Meanwhile the unconscious Galba, busy with his sacrifice, was importuning
the gods of an empire that was now another's. A rumour reached him, that
some senator unknown was being hurried into the camp; before long it was
affirmed that this senator was Otho. At the same time came messengers from
all parts of the city, where they had chanced to meet the procession, some
exaggerating the danger, some, who could not even then forget to flatter,
representing it as less than the reality. On deliberation it was determined
to sound the feeling of the cohort on guard in the palace, but not through
Galba in person, whose authority was to be kept unimpaired to meet greater
emergencies. They were accordingly collected before the steps of the
palace, and Piso addressed them as follows: "Comrades, this is the sixth
day since I became a Caesar by adoption, not knowing what was to happen,
whether this title was to be desired, or dreaded. It rests with you to
determine what will be the result to my family and to the state. It is not
that I dread on my own account the gloomier issue; for I have known
adversity, and I am learning at this very moment that prosperity is fully
as dangerous. It is the lot of my father, of the Senate, of the Empire
itself, that I deplore, if we have either to fall this day, or to do what
is equally abhorrent to the good, to put others to death. In the late
troubles we had this consolation, a capital unstained by bloodshed, and
power transferred without strife. It was thought that by my adoption
provision was made against the possibility of war, even after Galba's
death. "I will lay no claim to nobleness, or moderation, for indeed, to
count up virtues in comparing oneself with Otho is needless. The vices, of
which alone he boasts, overthrew the Empire, even when he was but the
Emperor's friend. Shall he earn that Empire now by his manner and his gait,
or by those womanish adornments? They are deceived, on whom luxury imposes
by its false show of liberality; he will know how to squander, he will not
know how to give. Already he is thinking of debaucheries, of revels, of
tribes of mistresses. These things he holds to be the prizes of princely
power, things, in which the wanton enjoyment will be for him alone, the
shame and the disgrace for all. Never yet has any one exercised for good
ends the power obtained by crime. The unanimous will of mankind gave to
Galba the title of Caesar, and you consented when he gave it to me. Were
the Senate, the Country, the People, but empty names, yet, comrades, it is
your interest that the most worthless of men should not create an Emperor.
We have occasionally heard of legions mutinying against their generals, but
your loyalty, your character, stand unimpeached up to this time. Even with
Nero, it was he that deserted you, not you that deserted him. Shall less
than thirty runaways and deserters whom no one would allow to choose a
tribune or centurion for themselves, assign the Empire at their pleasure?
Do you tolerate the precedent? Do you by your inaction make the crime your
own? This lawless spirit will pass into the provinces, and though we shall
suffer from this treason, you will suffer from the wars that will follow.
Again, no more is offered you for murdering your Prince, than you will have
if you shun such guilt. We shall give you a donative for your loyalty, as
surely as others can give it for your treason."
The soldiers of the body guard dispersed, but the rest of the cohort, who
shewed no disrespect to the speaker, displayed their standards, acting, as
often happens in a disturbance, on mere impulse and without any settled
plan, rather than, as was afterwards believed, with treachery and an
intention to deceive. Celsus Marius was sent to the picked troops from the
army of Illyricum, then encamped in the Portico of Vipsanius. Instructions
were also given to Amulius Serenus and Quintius Sabinus, centurions of the
first rank, to bring up the German soldiers from the Hall of Liberty. No
confidence was placed in the legion levied from the fleet, which had been
enraged by the massacre of their comrades, whom Galba had slaughtered
immediately on his entry into the capital. Meanwhile Cetrius Severus,
Subrius Dexter, and Pompeius Longinus, all three military tribunes,
proceeded to the Praetorian camp, in the hope that a sedition, which was
but just commencing, and not yet fully matured, might be swayed by better
counsels. Two of these tribunes, Subrius and Cetrius, the soldiers assailed
with menaces; Longinus they seized and disarmed; it was not his rank as an
officer, but his friendship with Galba, that bound him to that Prince, and
roused a stronger suspicion in the mutineers. The legion levied from the
fleet joined the Praetorians without any hesitation. The Illyrian
detachments drove Celsus away with a shower of javelins. The German
veterans wavered long. Their frames were still enfeebled by sickness, and
their minds were favourably disposed towards Galba, who, finding them
exhausted by their long return voyage from Alexandria, whither they had
been sent on by Nero, had supplied their wants with a most unsparing
attention.
The whole populace and the slaves with them were now crowding the palace,
clamouring with discordant shouts for the death of Otho and the destruction
of the conspirators, just as if they were demanding some spectacle in the
circus or amphitheatre. They had not indeed any discrimination or
sincerity, for on that same day they would raise with equal zeal a wholly
different cry. It was their traditional custom to flatter any ruler with
reckless applause and meaningless zeal. Meanwhile two suggestions were
keeping Galba in doubt. T. Vinius thought that he should remain within the
palace, array the slaves against the foe, secure the approaches, and not go
out to the enraged soldiers. "You should," he said, "give the disaffected
time to repent, the loyal time to unite. Crimes gain by hasty action,
better counsels by delay. At all events, you will still have the same
facilities of going out, if need be, whereas, your retreat, should you
repent of having gone, will be in the power of another."
The rest were for speedy action, "before," they said, "the yet feeble
treason of this handful of men can gather strength. Otho himself will be
alarmed, Otho, who stole away to be introduced to a few strangers, but who
now, thanks to the hesitation and inaction in which we waste our time, is
learning how to play the Prince. We must not wait till, having arranged
matters in the camp, he bursts into the Forum, and under Galba's very eyes
makes his way to the Capitol, while our noble Emperor with his brave
friends barricades the doors of his palace. We are to stand a siege
forsooth, and truly we shall have an admirable resource in the slaves, if
the unanimous feeling of this vast multitude, and that which can do so
much, the first burst of indignation, be suffered to subside. Moreover that
cannot be safe which is not honourable. If we must fall, let us go to meet
the danger. This will bring more odium upon Otho, and will be more becoming
to ourselves." Vinius opposing this advice, Laco assailed him with threats,
encouraged by Icelus, who persisted in his private animosities to the
public ruin.
Without further delay Galba sided with these more plausible advisers. Piso
was sent on into the camp, as being a young man of noble name, whose
popularity was of recent date, and who was a bitter enemy to T. Vinius,
that is, either he was so in reality, or these angry partisans would have
it so, and belief in hatred is but too ready. Piso had hardly gone forth
when there came a rumour, at first vague and wanting confirmation, that
Otho had been slain in the camp; soon, as happens with these great
fictions, men asserted that they had been present, and had seen the deed;
and, between the delight of some and the indifference of others, the report
was easily believed. Many thought the rumour had been invented and
circulated by the Othonianists, who were now mingling with the crowd, and
who disseminated these false tidings of success to draw Galba out of the
palace.
Upon this not only did the people and the ignorant rabble break out into
applause and vehement expressions of zeal, but many of the Knights and
Senators, losing their caution as they laid aside their fear, burst open
the doors of the palace, rushed in, and displayed themselves to Galba,
complaining that their revenge had been snatched from them. The most arrant
coward, the man, who, as the event proved, would dare nothing in the moment
of danger, was the most voluble and fierce of speech. No one knew anything,
yet all were confident in assertion, till at length Galba in the dearth of
all true intelligence, and overborne by the universal delusion, assumed his
cuirass, and as, from age and bodily weakness, he could not stand up
against the crowd that was still rushing in, he was elevated on a chair. He
was met in the palace by Julius Atticus, a soldier of the body guard, who,
displaying a bloody sword, cried "I have slain Otho." "Comrade," replied
Galba, "who gave the order?" So singularly resolute was his spirit in
curbing the license of the soldiery; threats did not dismay him, nor
flatteries seduce.
There was now no doubt about the feeling of all the troops in the camp. So
great was their zeal, that, not content with surrounding Otho with their
persons in close array, they elevated him to the pedestal, on which a short
time before had stood the gilt statue of Galba, and there, amid the
standards, encircled him with their colours. Neither tribunes nor
centurions could approach. The common soldiers even insisted that all the
officers should be watched. Everything was in an uproar with their
tumultuous cries and their appeals to each other, which were not, like
those of a popular assembly or a mob, the discordant expressions of an idle
flattery; on the contrary, as soon as they caught sight of any of the
soldiers who were flocking in, they seized him, gave him the military
embrace, placed him close to Otho, dictated to him the oath of allegiance,
commending sometimes the Emperor to his soldiers, sometimes the soldiers to
their Emperor. Otho did not fail to play his part; he stretched out his
arms, and bowed to the crowd, and kissed his hands, and altogether acted
the slave, to make himself the master. It was when the whole legion from
the fleet had taken the oath to him, that feeling confidence in his
strength, and thinking that the men, on whose individual feeling he had
been working, should be roused by a general appeal, he stood before the
rampart of the camp, and spoke as follows:
"Comrades, I cannot say in what character I have presented myself to you; I
refuse to call myself a subject, now that you have named me Prince, or
Prince, while another reigns. Your title also will be equally uncertain, so
long as it shall be a question, whether it is the Emperor of the Roman
people, or a public enemy, whom you have in your camp. Mark you, how in one
breath they cry for my punishment and for your execution. So evident it is,
that we can neither perish, nor be saved, except together. Perhaps, with
his usual clemency, Galba has already promised that we should die, like the
man, who, though no one demanded it, massacred so many thousands of
perfectly guiltless soldiers. A shudder comes over my soul, whenever I call
to mind that ghastly entry, Galba's solitary victory, when, before the eyes
of the capital he gave orders to decimate the prisoners, the suppliants,
whom he had admitted to surrender. These were the auspices with which he
entered the city. What is the glory that he has brought to the throne? None
but that he has murdered Obultronius Sabinus and Cornelius Marcellus in
Spain, Betuus Chilo in Gaul, Fonteius Capito in Germany, Clodius Macer in
Africa, Cingonius on the high road, Turpilianus in the city, Nymphidius in
the camp. What province, what camp in the world, but is stained with blood
and foul with crime, or, as he expresses it himself, purified and
chastened? For what others call crimes he calls reforms, and, by similar
misnomers, he speaks of strictness instead of barbarity, of economy instead
of avarice, while the cruelties and affronts inflicted upon you he calls
discipline. Seven months only have passed since Nero fell, and already
Icelus has seized more than the Polycleti, the Vatinii, and the Elii
amassed. Vinius would not have gone so far with his rapacity and
lawlessness had he been Emperor himself; as it is, he has lorded it over us
as if we had been his own subjects, has held us as cheap as if we had been
another's. That one house would furnish the donative, which is never given
you, but with which you are daily upbraided.
"Again, that we might have nothing to hope even from his successor, Galba
fetches out of exile the man in whose ill humour and avarice he considers
that he has found the best resemblance to himself. You witnessed, comrades,
how by a remarkable storm even the Gods discountenanced that ill starred
adoption; and the feeling of the Senate, of the people of Rome, is the
same. It is to your valour that they look, in you these better counsels
find all their support, without you, noble as they may be, they are
powerless. It is not to war or to danger that I invite you; the swords of
all Roman soldiers are with us. At this moment Galba has but one half armed
cohort, which is detaining, not defending him. Let it once behold you, let
it receive my signal, and the only strife will be, who shall oblige me
most. There is no room for delay in a business which can only be approved
when it is done." He then ordered the armoury to be opened. The soldiers
immediately seized the arms without regard to rule or military order, no
distinction being observed between Praetorians and legionaries, both of
whom again indiscriminately assumed the shields and helmets of the
auxiliary troops. No tribune or centurion encouraged them, every man acted
on his own impulse and guidance, and the vilest found their chief
incitement in the dejection of the good.
Meanwhile, appalled by the roar of the increasing sedition and by the
shouts which reached the city, Piso had overtaken Galba, who in the
interval had quitted the palace, and was approaching the Forum. Already
Marius Celsus had brought back discouraging tidings. And now some advised
that the Emperor should return to the palace, others that he should make
for the Capitol, many again that he should occupy the Rostra, though most
did but oppose the opinions of others, while, as ever happens in these
ill starred counsels, plans for which the opportunity had slipped away
seemed the best. It is said that Laco, without Galba's knowledge, meditated
the death of Vinius, either hoping by this execution to appease the fury of
the soldiers, or believing him to be an accomplice of Otho, or, it may be,
out of mere hatred. The time and the place however made him hesitate; he
knew that a massacre once begun is not easily checked. His plan too was
disconcerted by a succession of alarming tidings, and the desertion of
immediate adherents. So languid was now the zeal of those who had at first
been eager to display their fidelity and courage.
Galba was hurried to and fro with every movement of the surging crowd; the
halls and temples all around were thronged with spectators of this mournful
sight. Not a voice was heard from the people or even from the rabble.
Everywhere were terror stricken countenances, and ears turned to catch
every sound. It was a scene neither of agitation nor of repose, but there
reigned the silence of profound alarm and profound indignation. Otho
however was told that they were arming the mob. He ordered his men to hurry
on at full speed, and to anticipate the danger. Then did Roman soldiers
rush forward like men who had to drive a Vologeses or Pacorus from the
ancestral throne of the Arsacidae, not as though they were hastening to
murder their aged and defenceless Emperor. In all the terror of their arms,
and at the full speed of their horses, they burst into the Forum, thrusting
aside the crowd and trampling on the Senate. Neither the sight of the
Capitol, nor the sanctity of the overhanging temples, nor the thought of
rulers past or future, could deter them from committing a crime, which any
one succeeding to power must avenge.
When this armed array was seen to approach, the standard bearer of the
cohort that escorted Galba (he is said to have been one Atilius Vergilio)
tore off and dashed upon the ground Galba's effigy. At this signal the
feeling of all the troops declared itself plainly for Otho. The Forum was
deserted by the flying populace. Weapons were pointed against all who
hesitated. Near the lake of Curtius, Galba was thrown out of his litter and
fell to the ground, through the alarm of his bearers. His last words have
been variously reported according as men hated or admired him. Some have
said that he asked in a tone of entreaty what wrong he had done, and begged
a few days for the payment of the donative. The more general account is,
that he voluntarily offered his neck to the murderers, and bade them haste
and strike, if it seemed to be for the good of the Commonwealth. To those
who slew him mattered not what he said. About the actual murderer nothing
is clearly known. Some have recorded the name of Terentius, an enrolled
pensioner, others that of Lecanius; but it is the current report that one
Camurius, a soldier of the 15th legion, completely severed his throat by
treading his sword down upon it. The rest of the soldiers foully mutilated
his arms and legs, for his breast was protected, and in their savage
ferocity inflicted many wounds even on the headless trunk.
They next fell on T. Vinius; and in his case also it is not known whether
the fear of instant death choked his utterance, or whether he cried out
that Otho had not given orders to slay him. Either he invented this in his
terror, or he thus confessed his share in the conspiracy. His life and
character incline us rather to believe that he was an accomplice in the
crime which he certainly caused. He fell in front of the temple of the
Divine Julius, and at the first blow, which struck him on the back of the
knee; immediately afterwards Julius Carus, a legionary, ran him through the
body.
A noble example of manhood was on that day witnessed by our age in
Sempronius Densus. He was a centurion in a cohort of the Praetorian Guard,
and had been appointed by Galba to escort Piso. Rushing, dagger in hand, to
meet the armed men, and upbraiding them with their crime, he drew the
attention of the murderers on himself by his exclamations and gestures, and
thus gave Piso, wounded as he was, an opportunity of escape. Piso made his
way to the temple of Vesta, where he was admitted by the compassion of one
of the public slaves, who concealed him in his chamber. There, not indeed
through the sanctity of the place or its worship, but through the obscurity
of his hiding place, he obtained a respite from instant destruction, till
there came, by Otho's direction and specially eager to slay him, Sulpicius
Florus, of the British auxiliary infantry, to whom Galba had lately given
the citizenship, and Statius Murcus, one of the body guard. Piso was
dragged out by these men and slaughtered in the entrance of the temple.
There was, we are told, no death of which Otho heard with greater joy, no
head which he surveyed with so insatiable a gaze. Perhaps it was, that his
mind was then for the first time relieved from all anxiety, and so had
leisure to rejoice; perhaps there was with Galba something to recall
departed majesty, with Vinius some thought of old friendship, which
troubled with mournful images even that ruthless heart; Piso's death, as
that of an enemy and a rival, he felt to be a right and lawful subject of
rejoicing. The heads were fixed upon poles and carried about among the
standards of the cohorts, close to the eagle of the legion, while those who
had struck the blow, those who had been present, those who whether truly or
falsely boasted of the act, as of some great and memorable achievement,
vied in displaying their bloodstained hands. Vitellius afterwards found
more than 120 memorials from persons who claimed a reward for some notable
service on that day. All these persons he ordered to be sought out and
slain, not to honour Galba, but to comply with the traditional policy of
rulers, who thus provide protection for the present and vengeance for the
future.
One would have thought it a different Senate, a different people. All
rushed to the camp, outran those who were close to them, and struggled with
those who were before, inveighed against Galba, praised the wisdom of the
soldiers, covered the hand of Otho with kisses; the more insincere their
demonstrations, the more they multiplied them. Nor did Otho repulse the
advances of individuals, while he checked the greed and ferocity of the
soldiers by word and look. They demanded that Marius Celsus, consul elect,
Galba's faithful friend to the very last moment, should be led to
execution, loathing his energy and integrity as if they were vices. It was
evident that they were seeking to begin massacre and plunder, and the
proscription of all the most virtuous citizens, and Otho had not yet
sufficient authority to prevent crime, though he could command it. He
feigned anger, and ordered him to be loaded with chains, declaring that he
was to suffer more signal punishment, and thus he rescued him from
immediate destruction.
Every thing was then ordered according to the will of the soldiery. The
Praetorians chose their own prefects. One was Plotius Firmus, who had once
been in the ranks, had afterwards commanded the watch, and who, while Galba
was yet alive, had embraced the cause of Otho. With him was associated
Licinius Proculus, Otho's intimate friend, and consequently suspected of
having encouraged his schemes. Flavius Sabinus they appointed prefect of
the city, thus adopting Nero's choice, in whose reign he had held the same
office, though many in choosing him had an eye to his brother Vespasian. A
demand was then made, that the fees for furloughs usually paid to the
centurions should be abolished. These the common soldiers paid as a kind of
annual tribute. A fourth part of every company might be scattered on
furlough, or even loiter about the camp, provided that they paid the fees
to the centurions. No one cared about the amount of the tax, or the way in
which it was raised. It was by robbery, plunder, or the most servile
occupations that the soldiers' holiday was purchased. The man with the
fullest purse was worn out with toil and cruel usage till he bought his
furlough. His means exhausted by this outlay, and his energies utterly
relaxed by idleness, the once rich and vigorous soldier returned to his
company a poor and spiritless man. One after another was ruined by the same
poverty and license, and rushed into mutiny and dissension, and finally
into civil war. Otho, however, not to alienate the affections of the
centurions by an act of bounty to the ranks, promised that his own purse
should pay these annual sums. It was undoubtedly a salutary reform, and was
afterwards under good emperors established as a permanent rule of the
service. Laco, prefect of the city, who had been ostensibly banished to an
island, was assassinated by an enrolled pensioner, sent on by Otho to do
the deed. Martianus Icelus, being but a freedman, was publicly executed.
A day spent in crime found its last horror in the rejoicings that concluded
it. The Praetor of the city summoned the Senate; the rest of the
Magistrates vied with each other in their flatteries. The Senators hastily
assembled and conferred by decree upon Otho the tribunitial office, the
name of Augustus, and every imperial honour. All strove to extinguish the
remembrance of those taunts and invectives, which had been thrown out at
random, and which no one supposed were rankling in his heart. Whether he
had forgotten, or only postponed his resentment, the shortness of his reign
left undecided. The Forum yet streamed with blood, when he was borne in a
litter over heaps of dead to the Capitol, and thence to the palace. He
suffered the bodies to be given up for burial, and to be burnt. For Piso,
the last rites were performed by his wife Verania and his brother
Scribonianus; for Vinius, by his daughter Crispina, their heads having been
discovered and purchased from the murderers, who had reserved them for
sale.
Piso, who was then completing his thirty first year, had enjoyed more fame
than good fortune. His brothers, Magnus and Crassus, had been put to death
by Claudius and Nero respectively. He was himself for many years an exile,
for four days a Caesar, and Galba's hurried adoption of him only gave him
this privilege over his elder brother, that he perished first. Vinius had
lived to the age of fifty seven, with many changes of character. His father
was of a praetorian family, his maternal grandfather was one of the
proscribed. He had disgraced himself in his first campaign when he served
under the legate Calvisius Sabinus. That officer's wife, urged by a
perverse curiosity to view the camp, entered it by night in the disguise of
a soldier, and after extending the insulting frolic to the watches and the
general arrangements of the army, actually dared to commit the act of
adultery in the head quarters. Vinius was charged with having participated
in her guilt, and by order of Caius was loaded with irons. The altered
times soon restored him to liberty. He then enjoyed an uninterrupted
succession of honours, first filling the praetorship, and then commanding a
legion with general satisfaction, but he subsequently incurred the
degrading imputation of having pilfered a gold cup at the table of
Claudius, who the next day directed that he alone should be served on
earthenware. Yet as proconsul of Gallia Narbonensis he administered the
government with strict integrity. When forced by his friendship with Galba
to a dangerous elevation, he shewed himself bold, crafty, and enterprising;
and whether he applied his powers to vice or virtue, was always equally
energetic. His will was made void by his vast wealth; that of Piso owed its
validity to his poverty.
The body of Galba lay for a long time neglected, and subjected, through the
license which the darkness permitted, to a thousand indignities, till
Argius his steward, who had been one of his slaves, gave it a humble burial
in his master's private gardens. His head, which the sutlers and
camp followers had fixed on a pole and mangled, was found only the next day
in front of the tomb of Patrobius, a freedman of Nero's, whom Galba had
executed. It was put with the body, which had by that time been reduced to
ashes. Such was the end of Servius Galba, who in his seventy three years
had lived prosperously through the reigns of five Emperors, and had been
more fortunate under the rule of others than he was in his own. His family
could boast an ancient nobility, his wealth was great. His character was of
an average kind, rather free from vices, than distinguished by virtues. He
was not regardless of fame, nor yet vainly fond of it. Other men's money he
did not covet, with his own he was parsimonious, with that of the State
avaricious. To his freedmen and friends he shewed a forbearance, which,
when he had fallen into worthy hands, could not be blamed; when, however,
these persons were worthless, he was even culpably blind. The nobility of
his birth and the perils of the times made what was really indolence pass
for wisdom. While in the vigour of life, he enjoyed a high military
reputation in Germany; as proconsul he ruled Africa with moderation, and
when advanced in years shewed the same integrity in Eastern Spain. He
seemed greater than a subject while he was yet in a subject's rank, and by
common consent would have been pronounced equal to empire, had he never
been emperor.
The alarm of the capital, which trembled to see the atrocity of these
recent crimes, and to think of the old character of Otho, was heightened
into terror by the fresh news about Vitellius, news which had been
suppressed before the murder of Galba, in order to make it appear that only
the army of Upper Germany had revolted. That two men, who for
shamelessness, indolence, and profligacy, were the most worthless of
mortals, had been selected, it would seem, by some fatality to ruin the
Empire, became the open complaint, not only of the Senate and the Knights,
who had some stake and interest in the country, but even of the common
people. It was no longer to the late horrors of a dreadful peace, but to
the recollections of the civil wars, that men recurred, speaking of how the
capital had been taken by Roman armies, how Italy had been wasted and the
provinces spoiled, of Pharsalia, Philippi, Perusia, and Mutina, and all the
familiar names of great public disasters. "The world," they said, "was
well nigh turned upside down when the struggle for empire was between
worthy competitors, yet the Empire continued to exist after the victories
of Caius Julius and Caesar Augustus; the Republic would have continued to
exist under Pompey and Brutus. And is it for Otho or for Vitellius that we
are now to repair to the temples? Prayers for either would be impious, vows
for either a blasphemy, when from their conflict you can only learn that
the conqueror must be the worse of the two." Some were speculating on
Vespasian and the armies of the East. Vespasian was indeed preferable to
either, yet they shuddered at the idea of another war, of other massacres.
Even about Vespasian there were doubtful rumours, and he, unlike any of his
predecessors, was changed for the better by power.
I will now describe the origin and occasion of the revolt of Vitellius.
After the destruction of Julius Vindex and his whole force, the army,
flushed with the delights of plunder and glory, as men might well be who
had been fortunate enough to triumph without toil or danger in a most
lucrative war, began to hanker after compaigns and battles, and to prefer
prize money to pay. They had long endured a service which the character of
the country and of the climate and the rigours of military discipline
rendered at once unprofitable and severe. But that discipline, inexorable
as it is in times of peace, is relaxed by civil strife, when on both sides
are found the agents of corruption, and treachery goes unpunished. They had
men, arms and horses, more than enough for all purposes of utility and
show, but before the war they had been acquainted only with the companies
and squadrons of their own force, as the various armies were separated from
each other by the limits of their respective provinces. But the legions,
having been concentrated to act against Vindex, and having thus learnt to
measure their own strength against the strength of Gaul, were now on the
lookout for another war and for new conflicts. They called their
neighbours, not "allies" as of old, but "the enemy" and "the vanquished."
Nor did that part of Gaul which borders on the Rhine fail to espouse the
same cause, and to the bitterest hostility in inflaming the army against
the Galbianists, that being the name, which in their contempt for Vindex
they had given to the party. The rage first excited against the Sequani and
Aedui extended to other states in proportion to their wealth, and they
revelled in imagination on the storm of cities, the plunder of estates, the
sack of dwelling houses. But, besides the rapacity and arrogance which are
the special faults of superior strength, they were exasperated by the
bravadoes of the Gallic people, who in a spirit of insult to the army
boasted of how they had been relieved by Galba from a fourth part of their
tribute, and had received grants from the State. There was also a report,
ingeniously spread and recklessly believed, to the effect that the legions
were being decimated, and all the most energetic centurions dismissed. From
all quarters arrived the most alarming tidings. The reports from the
capital were unfavourable, while the disaffection of the colony of
Lugdunum, which obstinately adhered to Nero, gave rise to a multitude of
rumours. But it was in the army itself, in its hatreds, its fears, and even
in the security with which a review of its own strength inspired it, that
there was the most abundant material for the exercise of imagination and
credulity.
Just before December 1 in the preceding year, Aulus Vitellius had visited
Lower Germany, and had carefully inspected the winter quarters of the
legions. Many had their rank restored to them, sentences of degradation
were cancelled, and marks of disgrace partially removed. In most cases he
did but court popularity, in some he exercised a sound discretion, making a
salutary change from the meanness and rapacity which Fonteius Capito had
shown in bestowing and withdrawing promotion. But he seemed a greater
personage than a simple consular legate, and all his acts were invested
with an unusual importance. Though sterner judges pronounced Vitellius to
be a man of low tastes, those who were partial to him attributed to
geniality and good nature the immoderate and indiscriminate prodigality,
with which he gave away what was his own, and squandered what did not
belong to him. Besides this, men themselves eager for power were ready to
represent his very vices as virtues. As there were in both armies many of
obedient and quiet habits, so there were many who were as unprincipled as
they were energetic; but distinguished above all for boundless ambition and
singular daring were the legates of the legions, Fabius Valens and Alienus
Caecina. One of these men, Valens, had taken offence against Galba, under
the notion that he had not shewn proper gratitude for his services in
discovering to him the hesitation of Verginius and crushing the plans of
Capito. He now began to urge Vitellius to action. He enlarged on the zeal
of the soldiery. "You have," he said, "everywhere a great reputation; you
will find nothing to stop you in Hordeonius Flaccus; Britain will be with
you; the German auxiliaries will follow your standard. All the provinces
waver in their allegiance. The Empire is held on the precarious tenure of
an aged life, and must shortly pass into other hands. You have only to open
your arms, and to meet the advances of fortune. It was well for Verginius
to hesitate, the scion of a mere Equestrian family, and son of a father
unknown to fame: he would have been unequal to empire, had he accepted it,
and yet been safe though he refused it. But from the honours of a father
who was thrice consul, was censor and colleague of Caesar, Vitellius has
long since derived an imperial rank, while he has lost the security that
belongs to a subject."
These arguments roused the indolent temper of the man, yet roused him
rather to wish than to hope for the throne. Meanwhile however in Upper
Germany Caecina, young and handsome, of commanding stature, and of
boundless ambition, had attracted the favour of the soldiery by his skilful
oratory and his dignified mien. This man had, when quaestor in Baetica,
attached himself with zeal to the party of Galba, who had appointed him,
young as he was, to the command of a legion, but, it being afterwards
discovered that he had embezzled the public money, Galba directed that he
should be prosecuted for peculation. Caecina, grievously offended,
determined to throw everything into confusion, and under the disasters of
his country to conceal his private dishonour. There were not wanting in the
army itself the elements of civil strife. The whole of it had taken part in
the war against Vindex; it had not passed over to Galba till Nero fell;
even then in this transference of its allegiance it had been anticipated by
the armies of Lower Germany. Besides this, the Treveri, the Lingones, and
the other states which Galba had most seriously injured by his severe
edicts and by the confiscation of their territory, were particularly close
to the winter quarters of the legions. Thence arose seditious conferences,
a soldiery demoralized by intercourse with the inhabitants of the country,
and tendencies in favour of Verginius, which could easily be to the profit
of any other person.
The Lingones, following an old custom, had sent presents to the legions,
right hands clasped together, an emblem of friendship. Their envoys, who
had assumed a studied appearance of misery and distress, passed through the
headquarters and the men's tents, and complaining, now of their own wrongs,
now of the rewards bestowed on the neighbouring states, and, when they
found the soldiers' ears open to their words, of the perils and insults to
which the army itself was exposed, inflamed the passions of the troops. The
legions were on the verge of mutiny, when Hordeonius Flaccus ordered the
envoys to depart, and to make their departure more secret, directed them to
leave the camp by night. Hence arose a frightful rumour, many asserting
that the envoys had been killed, and that, unless the soldiers provided
their own safety, the next thing would be, that the most energetic of their
number, and those who had complained of their present condition, would be
slaughtered under cover of night, when the rest of the army would know
nothing of their fate. The legions then bound themselves by a secret
agreement. Into this the auxiliary troops were admitted. At first objects
of suspicion, from the idea that their infantry and cavalry were being
concentrated in preparation for an attack on the legions, these troops soon
became especially zealous in the scheme. The bad find it easier to agree
for purposes of war than to live in harmony during peace.
Yet it was to Galba that the legions of Lower Germany took the oath of
fidelity annually administered on the first of January. It was done,
however, after long delay, and then only by a few voices from the foremost
ranks, while the rest preserved an absolute silence, every one waiting for
some bold demonstration from his neighbour, in obedience to that innate
tendency of men, which makes them quick to follow where they are slow to
lead. And even in the various legions there was a difference of feeling.
The soldiers of the 1st and of the 5th were so mutinous, that some of them
threw stones at the images of Galba. The 15th and 16th legions ventured on
nothing beyond uproar and threatening expressions. They were on the watch
for something that might lead to an outbreak. In the Upper army, however,
the 4th and 13th legions, which were stationed in the same winter quarters,
proceeded on this same first of January to break in pieces the images of
Galba, the 4th legion being foremost, the 18th shewing some reluctance, but
soon joining with the rest. Not however to seem to throw off all their
reverence for the Empire, they sought to dignify their oath with the now
obsolete names of the Senate and people of Rome. Not a single legate or
tribune exerted himself for Galba; some, as is usual in a tumult, were even
conspicuously active in mutiny, though no one delivered anything like a
formal harangue or spoke from a tribunal. Indeed there was as yet no one to
be obliged by such services.
Hordeonius Flaccus, the consular legate, was present and witnessed this
outrage, but he dared neither check the furious mutineers, nor keep the
wavering to their duty, nor encourage the well affected. Indolent and
timid, he was reserved from guilt only by his sloth. Four Centurions of the
18th legion, Nonius Receptus, Donatius Valens, Romilius Marcellus,
Calpurnius Repentinus, striving to protect the images of Galba, were swept
away by a rush of the soldiers and put in irons. After this no one retained
any sense of duty, any recollection of his late allegiance, but, as usually
happens in mutinies, the side of the majority became the side of all. In
the course of the night of the 1st of January, the standard bearer of the
4th legion, coming to the Colonia Agrippinensis, announced to Vitellius,
who was then at dinner, the news that the 4th and 18th legions had thrown
down the images of Galba, and had sworn allegiance to the Senate and people
of Rome. Such a form of oath appeared meaningless. It was determined to
seize the doubtful fortune of the hour, and to offer an Emperor to their
choice. Vitellius sent envoys to the legions and their legates, who were to
say that the army of Upper Germany had revolted from Galba, that it was
consequently necessary for them, either to make war on the revolters, or,
if they preferred peace and harmony, to create an Emperor, and who were to
suggest, that it would be less perilous to accept than to look for a chief.
The nearest winter quarters were those of the first legion, and Fabius
Valens was the most energetic of the legates. This officer in the course of
the following day entered the Colonia Agrippinensis with the cavalry of the
legion and of the auxiliaries, and together with them saluted Vitellius as
Emperor. All the legions belonging to the same province followed his
example with prodigious zeal, and the army of Upper Germany abandoned the
specious names the Senate and people of Rome, and on the 3rd of January
declared for Vitellius. One could be sure that during those previous two
days it had not really been the army of the State. The inhabitants of
Colonia Agrippinensis, the Treveri, and the Lingones, shewed as much zeal
as the army, making offers of personal service, of horses, of arms and of
money, according as each felt himself able to assist the cause by his own
exertions, by his wealth, or by his talents. Nor was this done only by the
leading men in the colonies or the camps, who had abundant means at hand,
and might indulge great expectations in the event of victory, but whole
companies down to the very ranks offered instead of money their rations,
their belts, and the bosses, which, richly decorated with silver, adorned
their arms; so strong were the promptings from without, their own
enthusiasm, and even the suggestions of avarice.
Vitellius, after bestowing high commendation on the zeal of the soldiers,
proceeded to distribute among Roman Knights the offices of the Imperial
court usually held by freedmen. He paid the furlough fees to the centurions
out of the Imperial treasury. While in most instances he acquiesced in the
fury of the soldiers, who clamoured for numerous executions, in some few he
eluded it under the pretence of imprisoning the accused. Pompeius
Propinquus, procurator of Belgica, was immediately put to death. Julius
Burdo, prefect of the German fleet, he contrived to withdraw from the scene
of danger. The resentment of the army had been inflamed against this
officer by the belief, that it was he who had invented the charges and
planned the treachery which had destroyed Capito. The memory of Capito was
held in high favour, and with that enraged soldiery it was possible to
slaughter in open day, but to pardon only by stealth. He was kept in
prison, and only set at liberty after the victory of Vitellius, when the
resentment of the soldiery had subsided. Meanwhile, by way of a victim, the
centurion Crispinus was given up to them; this man had actually imbued his
hands in the blood of Capito. Consequently he was to those who cried for
vengeance a more notorious criminal, and to him who punished a cheaper
sacrifice.
Julius Civilis, a man of commanding influence among the Batavi, was next
rescued from like circumstances of peril, lest that high spirited nation
should be alienated by his execution. There were indeed in the territory of
the Lingones eight Batavian cohorts, which formed the auxiliary force of
the 14th legion, but which had, among the many dissensions of the time,
withdrawn from it; a body of troops which, to whatever side they might
incline, would, whether as allies or enemies, throw a vast weight into the
scale. Vitellius ordered the centurions Nonnius, Donatius, Romilius, and
Calpurnius, of whom I have before spoken, to be executed. They had been
convicted of the crime of fidelity, among rebels the worst of crimes. New
adherents soon declared themselves in Valerius Asiaticus, legate of the
Province of Belgica, whom Vitellius soon after made his son in law, and
Junius Blaesus, governor of Gallia Lugdunensis, who brought with him the
Italian Legion and the Taurine Horse, which was stationed at Lugdunum. The
armies of Rhaetia made no delay in at once joining Vitellius, and even in
Britain there was no hesitation.
Of that province Trebellius Maximus was governor, a man whose sordid
avarice made him an object of contempt and hatred to the army. His
unpopularity was heightened by the efforts of Roscius Caelius, the legate
of the 20th legion, who had long been on bad terms with him, and who now
seized the opportunity of a civil war to break out into greater violence.
Trebellius charged him with mutinous designs, and with disturbing the
regularity of military discipline; Caelius retorted on Trebellius the
accusation of having plundered and impoverished the legions. Meanwhile all
obedience in the army was destroyed by these disgraceful quarrels between
its commanders, and the feud rose to such a height that Trebellius was
insulted even by the auxiliaries, and finding himself altogether isolated,
as the infantry and cavalry sided with Caelius, he fled for safety to
Vitellius. Yet the province still enjoyed tranquility, though its consular
governor had been driven from it. It was now ruled by the legates of the
legions, who were equal as to lawful authority, though the audacity of
Caelius made him the more powerful.
After the army of Britain had joined him, Vitellius, who had now a
prodigious force and vast resources, determined that there should be two
generals and two lines of march for the contemplated war. Fabius Valens was
ordered to win over, if possible, or, if they refused his overtures, to
ravage the provinces of Gaul and to invade Italy by way of the Cottian
Alps; Caecina to take the nearer route, and to march down from the Penine
range. To Valens were entrusted the picked troops of the army of Lower
Germany with the eagle of the 5th legion and the auxiliary infantry and
cavalry, to the number of 40,000 armed men; Caecina commanded 30,000 from
Upper Germany, the strength of his force being one legion, the 21st. Both
had also some German auxiliaries, and from this source Vitellius, who was
to follow with his whole military strength, completed his own forces.
Wonderful was the contrast between the army and the Emperor. The army was
all eagerness; they cried out war, while Gaul yet wavered, and Spain
hesitated. "The winter," they said, "the delays of a cowardly inaction must
not stop us. We must invade Italy, we must seize the capital; in civil
strife, where action is more needed than deliberation, nothing is safer
than haste." Vitellius, on the contrary, was sunk in sloth, and anticipated
the enjoyment of supreme power in indolent luxury and prodigal festivities.
By midday he was half intoxicated, and heavy with food; yet the ardour and
vigour of the soldiers themselves discharged all the duties of a general as
well as if the Emperor had been present to stimulate the energetic by hope
and the indolent by fear. Ready to march and eager for action, they loudly
demanded the signal for starting; the title of Germanicus was at once
bestowed on Vitellius, that of Caesar he refused to accept, even after his
victory. It was observed as a happy omen for Fabius Valens and the forces
which he was conducting to the campaign, that on the very day on which they
set out an eagle moved with a gentle flight before the army as it advanced,
as if to guide it on its way. And for a long distance so loudly did the
soldiers shout in their joy, so calm and unterrified was the bird, that it
was taken as no doubtful omen of great and successful achievements.
The territory of the Treveri they entered with all the security naturally
felt among allies. But at Divodurum, a town of the Mediomatrici, though
they had been received with the most courteous hospitality, a sudden panic
mastered them. In a moment they took up arms to massacre an innocent
people, not for the sake of plunder, or fired by the lust of spoil, but in
a wild frenzy arising from causes so vague that it was very difficult to
apply a remedy. Soothed at length by the entreaties of their general, they
refrained from utterly destroying the town; yet as many as four thousand
human beings were slaughtered. Such an alarm was spread through Gaul, that
as the army advanced, whole states, headed by their magistrates and with
prayers on their lips, came forth to meet it, while the women and children
lay prostrate along the roads, and all else that might appease an enemy's
fury was offered, though war there was none, to secure the boon of peace.
Valens received the tidings of the murder of Galba and the accession of
Otho while he was in the country of the Leuci. The feelings of the soldiers
were not seriously affected either with joy or alarm; they were intent on
war. Gaul however ceased to hesitate: Otho and Vitellius it hated equally,
Vitellius it also feared. The next territory was that of the Lingones who
were loyal to Vitellius. The troops were kindly received, and they vied
with each other in good behaviour. This happy state of things, however, was
of short duration owing to the violence of the auxiliary infantry, which
had detached itself, as before related, from the 14th legion, and had been
incorporated by Valens with his army. First came angry words, then a brawl
between the Batavi and the legionaries, which as the partialities of the
soldiers espoused one or another of the parties was almost kindled into a
battle, and would have been so, had not Valens by punishing a few, reminded
Batavi of the authority which they had now forgotten. Against the Aedui a
pretext for war was sought in vain. That people, when ordered to furnish
arms and money, voluntarily added a supply of provisions. What the Aedui
did from fear, the people of Lugdunum did with delight. Yet the Italian
legion and the Taurine Horse were withdrawn. It was resolved that the 18th
cohort should be left there, as it was their usual winter quarters. Manlius
Valens, legate of the Italian legion, though he had served the party well,
was held in no honour by Vitellius. Fabius Valens had defamed him by secret
charges of which he knew nothing, publicly praising him all the while, that
he might the less suspect the treachery.
The old feud between Lugdunum and Vienna had been kindled afresh by the
late war. They had inflicted many losses on each other so continuously and
so savagely that they could not have been fighting only for Nero or Galba.
Galba had made his displeasure the occasion for diverting into the Imperial
treasury the revenues of Lugdunum, while he had treated Vienna with marked
respect. Thence came rivalry and dislike, and the two states, separated
only by a river, were linked together by perpetual feud. Accordingly the
people of Lugdunum began to work on the passions of individual soldiers,
and to goad them into destroying Vienna, by reminding them, how that people
had besieged their colony, had abetted the attempts of Vindex, and had
recently raised legions for Galba. After parading these pretexts for
quarrel, they pointed out how vast would be the plunder. From secret
encouragement they passed to open entreaty. "Go," they said, "to avenge us
and utterly destroy this home of Gallic rebellion. There all are foreigners
and enemies; we are a Roman colony, a part of the Roman army, sharers in
your successes and reverses. Fortune may declare against us. Do not abandon
us to an angry foe."
By these and many similar arguments they so wrought upon the troops, that
even the legates and the leaders of the party did not think it possible to
check their fury; but the people of Vienna, aware of their danger, assumed
the veils and chaplets of suppliants, and, as the army approached, clasped
the weapons, knees and feet of the soldiers, and so turned them from their
purpose. Valens also made each soldier a present of 300 sesterces. After
that the antiquity and rank of the colony prevailed, and the intercession
of Valens, who charged them to respect the life and welfare of the
inhabitants, received a favourable hearing. They were however publicly
mulcted of their arms, and furnished the soldiers with all kinds of
supplies from their private means. Report, however, has uniformly asserted,
that Valens himself was bought with a vast sum. Poor for many years and
suddenly growing rich, he could but ill conceal the change in his fortunes,
indulging without moderation the appetites which a protracted poverty had
inflamed, and, after a youth of indigence, becoming prodigal in old age.
The army then proceeded by slow marches through the territory of the
Allobroges and Vocontii, the very length of each day's march and the
changes of encampment being made a matter of traffic by the general, who
concluded disgraceful bargains to the injury of the holders of land and the
magistrates of the different states, and used such menaces, that at Lucus,
a municipal town of the Vocontii, he was on the point of setting fire to
the place, when a present of money soothed his rage. When money was not
forthcoming he was bought off by sacrifices to his lust. Thus he made his
way to the Alps.
Caecina revelled more freely in plunder and bloodshed. His restless spirit
had been provoked by the Helvetii, a Gallic race famous once for its
warlike population, afterwards for the associations of its name. Of the
murder of Galba they knew nothing, and they rejected the authority of
Vitellius. The war originated in the rapacity and impatience of the 21st
legion, who had seized some money sent to pay the garrison of a fortress,
which the Helvetii had long held with their own troops and at their own
expense. The Helvetii in their indignation intercepted some letters written
in the name of the army of Germany, which were on their way to the legions
of Pannonia, and detained the centurion and some of his soldiers in
custody. Caecina, eager for war, hastened to punish every delinquency, as
it occurred, before the offender could repent. Suddenly moving his camp he
ravaged a place, which during a long period of peace had grown up into
something like a town, and which was much resorted to as an agreeable
watering place. Despatches were sent to the Rhaetian auxiliaries,
instructing them to attack the Helvetii in the rear while the legion was
engaging them in front.
Bold before the danger came and timid in the moment of peril, the Helvetii,
though at the commencement of the movement they had chosen Claudius Severus
for their leader, knew not how to use their arms, to keep their ranks, or
to act in concert. A pitched battle with veteran troops would be
destruction, a siege would be perilous with fortifications old and ruinous.
On the one side was Caecina at the head of a powerful army, on the other
were the auxiliary infantry and cavalry of Rhaetia and the youth of that
province, inured to arms and exercised in habits of warfare. All around
were slaughter and devastation. Wandering to and fro between the two
armies, the Helvetii threw aside their arms, and with a large proportion of
wounded and stragglers fled for refuge to Mount Vocetius. They were
immediately dislodged by the attack of some Thracian infantry. Closely
pursued by the Germans and Rhaetians they were cut down in their forests
and even in their hiding places. Thousands were put to the sword, thousands
more were sold into slavery. Every place having been completely destroyed,
the army was marching in regular order on Aventicum, the capital town, when
a deputation was sent to surrender the city. This surrender was accepted.
Julius Alpinus, one of the principal men, was executed by Caecina, as
having been the promoter of the war. All the rest he left to the mercy or
severity of Vitellius.
It is hard to say whether the envoys from Helvetia found the Emperor or his
army less merciful. "Exterminate the race," was the cry of the soldiers as
they brandished their weapons, or shook their fists in the faces of the
envoys. Even Vitellius himself did not refrain from threatening words and
gestures, till at length Claudius Cossus, one of the Helvetian envoys, a
man of well known eloquence, but who then concealed the art of the orator
under an assumption of alarm, and was therefore more effective, soothed the
rage of the soldiers, who, like all multitudes, were liable to sudden
impulses, and were now as inclined to pity as they had been extravagant in
fury. Bursting into tears and praying with increasing earnestness for a
milder sentence, they procured pardon and protection for the state.
Caecina while halting for a few days in the Helvetian territory, till he
could learn the decision of Vitellius, and at the same time making
preparations for the passage of the Alps, received from Italy the good
news, that Silius' Horse, which was quartered in the neighbourhood of
Padus, had sworn allegiance to Vitellius. They had served under him when he
was Proconsul in Africa, from which place Nero had soon afterwards brought
them, intending to send them on before himself into Egypt, but had recalled
them in consequence of the rebellion of Vindex. They were still in Italy,
and now, at the instigation of their decurions, who knew nothing of Otho,
but were bound to Vitellius, and who magnified the strength of the
advancing legions and the fame of the German army, they joined the
Vitellianists, and by way of a present to their new Prince they secured for
him the strongest towns of the country north of the Padus, Mediolanum,
Novaria, Eporedia, and Vercellae. This Caecina had learnt from themselves.
Aware that the widest part of Italy could not be held by such a force as a
single squadron of cavalry, he sent on in advance the auxiliary infantry
from Gaul, Lusitania, and Rhaetia, with the veteran troops from Germany,
and Petra's Horse, while he made a brief halt to consider whether he should
pass over the Rhaetian range into Noricum, to attack Petronius, the
procurator, who had collected some auxiliaries, and broken down the bridges
over the rivers, and was thought to be faithful to Otho. Fearing however
that he might lose the infantry and cavalry which he had sent on in
advance, and at the same time reflecting that more honour was to be gained
by holding possession of Italy, and that, wherever the decisive conflict
might take place, Noricum would be included among the other prizes of
victory, he marched the reserves and the heavy infantry through the Penine
passes while the Alps were still covered with the snows of winter.
Meanwhile Otho, to the surprise of all, was not sinking down into luxury
and sloth. He deferred his pleasures, concealed his profligacy, and moulded
his whole life to suit the dignity of empire. Men dreaded all the more
virtues so false, and vices so certain to return. Marius Celsus, consul
elect, whom he had rescued from the fury of the soldiers by pretending to
imprison him, he now ordered to be summoned to the Capitol. He sought to
acquire a reputation for clemency by sparing a distinguished man opposed to
his own party. Celsus pleaded guilty to the charge of faithful adherence to
Galba, and even made a merit of such an example of fidelity. Otho did not
treat him as a man to be pardoned, and, unwilling to blend with the grace
of reconciliation the memory of past hostility, at once admitted him to his
intimate friendship, and soon afterwards appointed him to be one of his
generals. By some fatality, as it seemed, Celsus maintained also to Otho a
fidelity as irreproachable as it was unfortunate. The escape of Celsus
gratified the leading men in the State, was generally praised by the
people, and did not displease even the soldiers, who could not but admire
the virtue which provoked their anger.
Then followed as great a burst of joy, though from a less worthy cause,
when the destruction of Tigellinus was achieved. Sophonius Tigellinus, a
man of obscure birth, steeped in infamy from his boyhood, and shamelessly
profligate in his old age, finding vice to be his quickest road to such
offices as the command of the watch and of the Praetorian Guard, and to
other distinctions due to merit, went on to practise cruelty, rapacity, and
all the crimes of maturer years. He perverted Nero to every kind of
atrocity; he even ventured on some acts without the Emperor's knowledge,
and ended by deserting and betraying him. Hence there was no criminal,
whose doom was from opposite motives more importunately demanded, as well
by those who hated Nero, as by those who regretted him. During the reign of
Galba Tigellinus had been screened by the influence of Vinius, who alleged
that he had saved his daughter. And doubtless he had preserved her life,
not indeed out of mercy, when he had murdered so many, but to secure for
himself a refuge for the future. For all the greatest villains, distrusting
the present, and dreading change, look for private friendship to shelter
them from public detestation, caring not to be free from guilt, but only to
ensure their turn in impunity. This enraged the people more than ever, the
recent unpopularity of Vinius being superadded to their old hatred against
Tigellinus. They rushed from every part of the city into the palace and
forum, and bursting into the circus and theatre, where the mob enjoy a
special license, broke out into seditious clamours. At length Tigellinus,
having received at the springs of Sinuessa a message that his last hour was
come, amid the embraces and caresses of his mistresses and other unseemly
delays, cut his throat with a razor, and aggravated the disgrace of an
infamous life by a tardy and ignominious death.
About the same time a demand was made for the execution of Galvia
Crispinilla. Various artifices on the part of the Emperor, who incurred
much obloquy by his duplicity, rescued her from the danger. She had
instructed Nero in profligacy, had passed over into Africa, that she might
urge Macer into rebellion, and had openly attempted to bring a famine upon
Rome. Yet she afterwards gained universal popularity on the strength of her
alliance with a man of consular rank, and lived unharmed through the reigns
of Galba, Otho, and Vitellius. Soon she became powerful as a rich and
childless woman, circumstances which have as great weight in good as in
evil times.
Meanwhile frequent letters, disfigured by unmanly flatteries, were
addressed by Otho to Vitellius, with offers of wealth and favour and any
retreat he might select for a life of prodigal indulgence. Vitellius made
similar overtures. Their tone was at first pacific; and both exhibited a
foolish and undignified hypocrisy. Then they seemed to quarrel, charging
each other with debaucheries and the grossest crimes, and both spoke truth.
Otho, having recalled the envoys whom Galba had sent, dispatched others,
nominally from the Senate, to both the armies of Germany, to the Italian
legion, and to the troops quartered at Lugdunum. The envoys remained with
Vitellius too readily to let it be supposed that they were detained. Some
Praetorians, whom Otho had attached to the embassy, ostensibly as a mark of
distinction, were sent back before they could mix with the legions. Letters
were also addressed by Fabius Valens in the name of the German army to the
Praetorian and city cohorts, extolling the strength of his party, and
offering terms of peace. Valens even reproached them with having
transferred the Imperial power to Otho, though it had so long before been
entrusted to Vitellius.
Thus they were assailed by promises as well as by threats, were told that
they were not strong enough for war, but would lose nothing by peace. Yet
all this did not shake the loyalty of the Praetorians. Nevertheless secret
emissaries were dispatched by Otho to Germany, and by Vitellius to Rome.
Both failed in their object. Those of Vitellius escaped without injury,
unnoticed in the vast multitude, knowing none, and themselves unknown.
Those of Otho were betrayed by their strange faces in a place where all
knew each other. Vitellius wrote to Titianus, Otho's brother, threatening
him and his son with death, unless the lives of his mother and his children
were spared. Both families remained uninjured. This in Otho's reign was
perhaps due to fear; Vitellius was victorious, and gained all the credit of
mercy.
The first encouraging tidings came to Otho from Illyricum. He heard that
the legions of Dalmatia, Pannonia, and Moesia had sworn allegiance to him.
Similar intelligence was received from Spain, and Cluvius Rufus was
commended in an edict. Immediately afterwards it became known that Spain
had gone over to Vitellius. Even Aquitania, bound though it was by the oath
of allegiance to Otho which Julius Cordus had administered, did not long
remain firm. Nowhere was there any loyalty or affection; men changed from
one side to the other under the pressure of fear or necessity. It was this
influence of fear that drew over to Vitellius the province of Gallia
Narbonensis, which turned readily to the side that was at once the nearer
and the stronger. The distant provinces, and all the armies beyond the sea,
still adhered to Otho, not from any attachment to his party, but because
there was vast weight in the name of the capital and the prestige of the
Senate, and also because the claims which they had first heard had
prepossessed their minds. The army of Judaea under Vespasian, and the
legions of Syria under Mucianus, swore allegiance to Otho. Egypt and the
Eastern provinces were also governed in his name. Africa displayed the same
obedience, Carthage taking the lead. In that city Crescens, one of Nero's
freedmen (for in evil times even this class makes itself a power in the
State), without waiting for the sanction of the proconsul, Vipstanus
Apronianus, had given an entertainment to the populace by way of rejoicings
for the new reign, and the people, with extravagant zeal, hastened to make
the usual demonstrations of joy. The example of Carthage was followed the
other cities of Africa.
As the armies and provinces were thus divided, Vitellius, in order to
secure the sovereign power, was compelled to fight. Otho continued to
discharge his imperial duties as though it were a time of profound peace.
Sometimes he consulted the dignity of the Commonwealth, but often in hasty
acts, dictated by the expediency of the moment, he disregarded its honour.
He was himself to be consul with his brother Titianus till the 1st of
March; the two following months he assigned to Verginius as a compliment to
the army of Germany. With Verginius was to be associated Pompeius Vopiscus,
avowedly on the ground of their being old friends, though many regarded the
appointment as meant to do honour to the people of Vienna. The other
consulships still remained as Nero or Galba had arranged them. Caelius
Sabinus and his brother Flavius were to be consuls till the 1st of July;
Arrius Antoninus and Marius Celsus from that time to the 1st of September.
Even Vitellius, after his victory, did not interfere with these
appointments. On aged citizens, who had already held high office, Otho
bestowed, as a crowning dignity, pontificates and augurships, while he
consoled the young nobles, who had lately returned from exile, by reviving
the sacerdotal offices, held by their fathers and ancestors. Cadius Rufus,
Pedius Blaesus, Saevinius Pomptinius, who in the reigns of Claudius and
Nero had been convicted under indictments for extortion, were restored to
their rank as Senators. Those who wished to pardon them resolved by a
change of names to make, what had really been rapacity, seem to have been
treason, a charge then so odious that it made even good laws a dead letter.
By similar bounty Otho sought to win the affections of the cities and
provinces. He bestowed on the colonies of Hispalis and Emerita some
additional families, on the entire people of the Lingones the privileges of
Roman citizenship; to the province of Baetica he joined the states of
Mauritania, and granted to Cappadocia and Africa new rights, more for
display than for permanent utility. In the midst of these measures, which
may find an excuse in the urgency of the crisis and the anxieties which
pressed upon him, he still did not forget his old amours, and by a decree
of the Senate restored the statues of Poppaea. It is even believed that he
thought of celebrating the memory of Nero in the hope of winning the
populace, and persons were found to exhibit statues of that Prince. There
were days on which the people and the soldiers greeted him with shouts of
Nero Otho, as if they were heaping on him new distinction and honour. Otho
himself wavered in suspense, afraid to forbid or ashamed to acknowledge the
title.
Men's minds were so intent on the civil war, that foreign affairs were
disregarded. This emboldened the Roxolani, a Sarmatian tribe, who had
destroyed two cohorts in the previous winter, to invade Moesia with great
hopes of success. They had 9000 cavalry, flushed with victory and intent on
plunder rather than on fighting. They were dispersed and off their guard,
when the third legion together with some auxiliaries attacked them. The
Romans had everything ready for battle, the Sarmatians were scattered, and
in their eagerness for plunder had encumbered themselves with heavy
baggage, while the superior speed of their horses was lost on the slippery
roads. Thus they were cut down as if their hands were tied. It is wonderful
how entirely the courage of this people is, so to speak, external to
themselves. No troops could shew so little spirit when fighting on foot;
when they charge in squadrons, hardly any line can stand against them. But
as on this occasion the day was damp and the ice thawed, what with the
continual slipping of their horses, and the weight of their coats of mail,
they could make no use of their pikes or their swords, which being of an
excessive length they wield with both hands. These coats are worn as
defensive armour by the princes and most distinguished persons of the
tribe. They are formed of plates of iron or very tough hides, and though
they are absolutely impenetrable to blows, yet they make it difficult for
such as have been overthrown by the charge of the enemy to regain their
feet. Besides, the Sarmatians were perpetually sinking in the deep and soft
snow. The Roman soldier, moving easily in his cuirass, continued to harass
them with javelins and lances, and whenever the occasion required, closed
with them with his short sword, and stabbed the defenceless enemy; for it
is not their custom to defend themselves with a shield. A few who survived
the battle concealed themselves in the marshes. There they perished from
the inclemency of the season and the severity of their wounds. When this
success was known, Marcus Aponius, governor of Moesia, was rewarded with a
triumphal statue, while Fulvius Aurelius, Julianus Titius, and Numisius
Lupus, the legates of the legions, received the ensigns of consular rank.
Otho was delighted, and claimed the glory for himself, as if it were he
that commanded success in war, and that had aggrandised the State by his
generals and his armies.
Meanwhile, from a trifling cause, whence nothing was apprehended, there
arose a tumult, which had nearly proved fatal to the capital. Otho had
ordered the 7th cohort to be brought up to Rome from Ostia, and the charge
of arming it was entrusted to Varius Crispinus, one of the tribunes of the
Praetorian Guard. This officer, thinking that he could carry out the order
more at his leisure, when the camp was quiet, opened the armoury, and
ordered the wagons of the cohort to be laden at night fall. The time
provoked suspicion, the motive challenged accusation, the elaborate attempt
at quiet ended in a disturbance, and the sight of arms among a drunken
crowd excited the desire to use them. The soldiers murmured, and charged
the tribunes and centurions with treachery, alleging that the households of
the Senators were being armed to destroy Otho; many acted in ignorance and
were stupefied by wine, the worst among them were seeking an opportunity
for plunder, the mass was as usual ready for any new movement, and the
military obedience of the better disposed was neutralised by the darkness.
The tribune, who sought to check the movement, and the strictest
disciplinarians among the centurions, were cut down. The soldiers seized
their arms, bared their swords, and, mounted on their horses, made for the
city and the palace.
Otho was giving a crowded entertainment to the most distinguished men and
women of Rome. In their alarm they doubted whether this was a casual
outbreak of the soldiers, or an act of treachery in the Emperor, and
whether to remain and be arrested was a more perilous alternative than to
disperse and fly. At one time making a show of courage, at another betrayed
by their terror, they still watched the countenance of Otho. And, as it
happened, so ready were all to suspect, Otho felt as much alarm as he
inspired. Terrified no less by the Senate's critical position than by his
own, he had forthwith despatched the prefects of the Praetorian Guard to
allay the fury of the soldiery, and he now ordered all to leave the banquet
without delay. Then on all sides officers of state cast aside the insignia
of office, and shunned the retinues of their friends and domestics; aged
men and women wandered in the darkness of night about the various streets
of the city; few went to their homes, most sought the houses of friends, or
some obscure hiding place in the dwelling of their humblest dependents.
The rush of the soldiers was not even checked by the doors of the palace.
They burst in upon the banquet with loud demands that Otho should shew
himself. They wounded the tribune, Julius Martialis, and the prefect,
Vitellius Saturninus, who sought to stem the torrent. On every they
brandished their swords, and menaced the centurions and tribunes at one
moment, the whole Senate at another. Their minds were maddened by a blind
panic, and, unable to single out any one object for their fury, they sought
for indiscriminate vengeance. At last Otho, regardless of his imperial
dignity, stood up on a couch, and by dint of prayers and tears contrived to
restrain them. Reluctant and guilty, they returned to the camp. The next
day the houses were closed as they might be in a captured city. Few of the
citizens could be seen in the streets, the populace were dejected, the
soldiers walked with downcast looks, and seemed gloomy rather than
penitent. Licinius Proculus and Plotius Firmus, the prefects, addressed the
companies in the gentler or harsher terms that suited their respective
characters. The end of these harangues was that 5000 sesterces were paid to
each soldier. Then did Otho venture to enter the camp; the tribunes and
centurions surrounded him. They had thrown aside the insignia of their
rank, and they demanded release from the toils and perils of service. The
soldiers felt the reproach; returning to their duty, they even demanded the
execution of the ringleaders in the riot.
Otho was aware how disturbed was the country, and how conflicting the
feelings of the soldiery, the most respectable of whom cried out for some
remedy for the existing licence, while the great mass delighted in riot and
in an empire resting on popularity, and could be most easily urged to civil
war by indulgence in tumult and rapine. At the same time he reflected that
power acquired by crime could not be retained by a sudden assumption of the
moderation and of the dignity of former times, yet he was alarmed by the
critical position of the capital and by the perils of the Senate. Finally,
he addressed the troops in these terms: "Comrades, I am not come that I may
move your hearts to love me, or that I may rouse your courage; love and
courage you have in superfluous abundance. I am come to pray you to put
some restraint on your valour, some check on your affection for me. The
origin of the late tumult is to be traced not to rapacity or disaffection,
feelings which have driven many armies into civil strife, much less to any
shrinking from, or fear of danger. It was your excessive affection for me
that roused you to act with more zeal than discretion. For even honourable
motives of action, unless directed by judgment, are followed by disastrous
results. We are now starting for a campaign. Does the nature of things,
does the rapid flight of opportunities, admit of all intelligence being
publicly announced, of every plan being discussed in the presence of all?
It is as needful that the soldiers should be ignorant of some things as
that they should know others. The general's authority, the stern laws of
discipline, require that in many matters even the centurions and tribunes
shall only receive orders. If, whenever orders are given, individuals may
ask questions, obedience ceases, and all command is at an end. Will you in
the field too snatch up your arms in the dead of night? Shall one or two
worthless and drunken fellows, for I cannot believe that more were carried
away by the frenzy of the late outbreak, imbrue their hands in the blood of
centurions and tribunes, and burst into the tent of their Emperor?
"You indeed did this to serve me, but in the tumult, the darkness, and the
general confusion, an opportunity may well occur that may be used against
me. If Vitellius and his satellites were allowed to choose, what would be
the temper and what the thoughts with which they would curse us? What would
they wish for us but mutiny and strife, that the private should not obey
the centurion, nor the centurion the tribune, that thus we should rush,
horse and foot together, on our own destruction? Comrades, it is by
obeying, not by questioning the orders of commanders, that military power
is kept together. And that army is the most courageous in the moment of
peril, which is the most orderly before the peril comes. Keep you your arms
and your courage, leave it to me to plan, and to guide your valour. A few
were in fault, two will be punished. Let all the rest blot out the
remembrance of that night of infamy. Never let any army hear those cries
against the Senate. To clamour for the destruction of what is the head of
the Empire, and contains all that is distinguished in the provinces, good
God! it is a thing which not even those Germans, whom Vitellius at this
very moment is rousing against us, would dare to do. Shall any sons of
Italy, the true youth of Rome, cry out for the massacre of an order, by
whose splendid distinctions we throw into the shade the mean and obscure
faction of Vitellius? Vitellius is the master of a few tribes, and has some
semblance of an army. We have the Senate. The country is with us; with
them, the country's enemies. What! do you imagine that this fairest of
cities is made up of dwellings and edifices and piles of stones? These dumb
and inanimate things may be indifferently destroyed and rebuilt. The
eternal duration of empire, the peace of nations, my safety and yours, rest
on the security of the Senate. This order which was instituted under due
auspices by the Father and Founder of the city, and which has lasted
without interruption and without decay from the Kings down to the Emperors,
we will bequeath to our descendants, as we have inherited it from our
ancestors. For you give the state its Senators, and the Senate gives it its
Princes."
This speech, which was meant to touch and to calm the feelings of the
soldiers, and the moderate amount of severity exercised (for Otho had
ordered two and no more to be punished), met with a grateful acceptance,
and for the moment reduced to order men who could not be coerced. Yet
tranquillity was not restored to the capital; there was still the din of
arms and all the sights of war, and the soldiers, though they made no
concerted disturbance, had dispersed themselves in disguise about private
houses, and exercised a malignant surveillance over all whom exalted rank,
or distinction of any kind, exposed to injurious reports. Many too believed
that some of the soldiers of Vitellius had come to the capital to learn the
feelings of the different parties. Hence everything was rife with
suspicion, and even the privacy of the family was hardly exempt from fear.
It was however in public that most alarm was felt; with every piece of
intelligence that rumour brought, men changed their looks and spirits,
anxious not to appear discouraged by unfavourable omens, or too little
delighted by success. When the Senate was summoned to the Chamber, it was
hard for them to maintain in all things a safe moderation. Silence might
seem contumacious, and frankness might provoke suspicion, and Otho, who had
lately been a subject, and had used the same language, was familiar with
flattery. Accordingly, they discussed various motions on which they had put
many constructions. Vitellius they called a public enemy and a traitor to
his country, the more prudent contenting themselves with hackneyed terms of
abuse, though some threw out reproaches founded in truth, yet only did so
in the midst of clamour, and when many voices were heard at once, drowning
their own speech in a tumult of words.
Prodigies which were now noised abroad from various sources increased men's
terror. It was said that in the porch of the Capitol the reins of the
chariot, on which stood the goddess of Victory, had dropped from her hand,
that from the chapel of Juno there had rushed forth a form greater than the
form of man, that the statue of the Divine Julius, which stands on the
island in the Tiber, had turned from the West to the East on a calm and
tranquil day, that an ox had spoken aloud in Etruria, that strange births
of animals had taken place, besides many other things, such as in barbarous
ages are observed even during seasons of peace, but are now heard of only
in times of terror. But an alarm greater than all, because it connected
immediate loss with fears for the future, arose from a sudden inundation of
the Tiber. The river became vastly swollen, broke down the wooden bridge,
was checked by the heap of ruins across the current, and overflowed not
only the low and level districts of the capital, but also much that had
been thought safe from such casualties. Many were swept away in the
streets, many more were cut off in their shops and chambers. The want of
employment and the scarcity of provisions caused a famine among the
populace. The poorer class of houses had their foundations sapped by the
stagnant waters, and fell when the river returned to its channel. When
men's minds were no longer occupied by their fears, the fact, that while
Otho was preparing for his campaign, the Campus Martius and the Via
Flaminia, his route to the war, were obstructed by causes either fortuitous
or natural, was regarded as a prodigy and an omen of impending disasters.
Otho, after publicly purifying the city and weighing various plans for the
campaign, determined to march upon Gallia Narbonensis, as the passes of the
Penine and Cottian Alps and all the other approaches to Gaul were held by
the armies of Vitellius. His fleet was strong and loyal to his cause, for
he had enrolled in the ranks of the legion the survivors of the slaughter
at the Milvian bridge, whom the stern policy of Galba had retained in
custody, while to the rest he had held out hopes of a more honourable
service for the future. To the fleet he had added some city cohorts, and
many of the Praetorians, the stay and strength of his army, who might at
once advise and watch the generals. The command of the expedition was
entrusted to Antonius Novellus and Suedius Clemens, centurions of the first
rank, and Aemilius Pacensis, to whom Otho had restored the rank of tribune,
taken from him by Galba. Oscus, a freedman, retained the charge of the
fleet, and went to watch the fidelity of men more honourable than himself.
Suetonius Paullinus, Marius Celsus, and Annius Gallus, were appointed to
command the infantry and cavalry. The Emperor, however, placed most
confidence in Licinius Proculus, prefect of the Praetorian Guard; an active
officer at home, without experience in war, he founded perpetual
accusations on the high influence of Paullinus, on the energy of Celsus, on
the mature judgment of Gallus, in fact, on each man's special excellence, a
thing most easy to do; and thus the unscrupulous and the cunning were
preferred before the modest and the good.
About this time Cornelius Dolabella was banished to the Colonia Aquinas,
but he was not kept in strict or secret custody; it was not for any crime
that he suffered; he was marked out for suspicion by his ancient name and
by his relationship to Galba. Many of the officers of state and a large
proportion of the men of consular rank Otho ordered to accompany him to the
field, not indeed to share or serve in the campaign, but to form a retinue.
Among them was Lucius Vitellius, whom Otho treated as he treated the rest,
and not as though he were the brother either of an Emperor, or of an enemy.
This roused the anxieties of the capital; no rank was free from
apprehension or peril. The leading men of the Senate either suffered from
the infirmities of age, or were enervated by a prolonged peace; the
nobility were indolent and had forgotten how to fight; the Equestrian order
knew nothing of service; and the more they endeavoured to hide and repress
their alarm the more evident was their terror. On the other hand, there
were some who with senseless ostentation purchased splendid arms and
magnificent horses, and some who procured by way of equipments for the war
the luxurious furniture of the banquet and other incentives to profligacy.
The wise looked to the interests of peace and of the Commonwealth, while
the giddy and those who were thoughtless of the future were inflated with
idle hopes. Many whose credit had been shaken in the years of peace
regained their spirits amidst the confusions of the time, and found their
best safety in revolution.
The mob and the people generally, whose vast numbers cut them off from all
interest in the state, began by degrees to feel the evils of war, now that
all the currency had been diverted to the purposes of the army, and the
prices of provisions were raised. These evils had not equally distressed
the common people during the insurrection of Vindex; the capital was safe,
and the war was in the provinces, and, fought as it was between the legions
and Gaul, it seemed but a foreign campaign. Indeed from the time that the
Divine Augustus consolidated the power of the Caesars, the wars of the
Roman people had been in remote places, and had caused anxiety or brought
honour to but one man. Under Tiberius and Caius men dreaded for the
Commonwealth only the miseries of peace. The rising of Scribonianus against
Claudius was crushed as soon as heard of. Nero was driven from power by
evil tidings and rumours rather than by the sword. Now the legions and the
fleets were brought into action, and with them a force used but on few
other occasions, the Praetorian and city soldiery. In their rear were the
provinces of the East and of the West with all their forces; had they
fought under other generals there was all the material for a protracted
war. Many suggested to Otho, as he was setting out, a religious obstacle in
the fact that the sacred shields had not been restored to their place. He
spurned all delay, as having been Nero's fatal mistake; and the fact that
Caecina had now crossed the Alps urged him to action.
On the 14th of March, after commending the State to the care of the Senate,
he presented to those who had been recalled from exile what was left of the
Neronian confiscations, or had not yet been paid into the Imperial
treasury, a most equitable and apparently most splendid piece of
liberality, but practically worthless, as the property had been hastily
realized long before. Soon afterwards he summoned an assembly, and enlarged
on the dignity of the capital and the unanimity of the Senate and people in
his favour. Of the party of Vitellius he spoke with moderation, charging
the legions with ignorance rather than with crime, and making no mention of
Vitellius himself. This moderation was either his own, or was due to the
writer of the speech, who, fearing for himself, abstained from invectives
against Vitellius. For Otho was believed to avail himself of the abilities
of Galerius Trachalus in civil matters, just as he employed those of Celsus
and Paullinus in war. There were some who recognized the very style of
speaking, which was well known from his constant pleading at the bar, and
which sought to fill the popular ear with a copious and sonorous diction.
The acclamations and cries which habitual flattery prompted in the people
were at once extravagant and false. As if they were applauding a Dictator
like Caesar, or an Emperor like Augustus, they vied with each other in
their zeal and good wishes. They acted not from fear or affection, but from
the mere love of servitude; as it might be in some private household, each
had his own motives, and the public honour now went for nothing. Otho set
out, leaving the peace of the city and the cares of empire in the charge of
his brother Salvius Titianus.
