69 AD: The Year of Four Emperors

by Gwyn Morgan

  The seizure of goods therefore went ahead all over Rome, along with auctions at which anything recovered was put up for sale, but to little avail. The auctions brought in hardly any cash, people not being prepared to lay out large sums in a depressed and uncertain market. They provoked apprehension among those who thought themselves likely targets of the enquiry, and intrigues between the people already targeted and the commissioners whose attentions they wanted to evade. And they benefited the bulk of the population not at all. Nero’s victims, according to Tacitus, were given the malicious pleasure of seeing imperial favorites who still had money reduced to the same penury they were suffering. But Plutarch asserts that the only person to enrich himself was Vinius, snapping up valuable items at a fraction of their worth (in fact Plutarch credits him with inspiring the process). This may be why the commissioners went after beneficiaries outside the city too. Dio states that they recovered 40,000 sesterces that Nero had handed over to the priestess of Apollo at Delphi, but this sum—a drop in the bucket—may have been their most noteworthy achievement. Dio mentions too that the judges of the Olympic Games had been given a million sesterces by Nero, but he says nothing to indicate whether they complied with a demand for its return.

  The entire operation was not merely disruptive. It was futile, in the sense that Galba had no intention of using any of the money raised to pay the troops even a fraction of the donative they had been promised. Nor was this the only example of Galba’s economizing, both at other people’s expense and without material benefit to the community. An inscription set up in the fall of 68 has been taken to suggest that the emperor made repairs to the Horrea Sulpicia, the largest granary in Rome and—as its name shows—not just a family monument but his own personal property. He certainly advertised his concern for the grain supply on his copper coinage, the small change people used everyday. Yet he either refused or decided that he could not afford to restore the frumentationes, the allocations of free grain to adult male citizens resident in Rome. Suspended by Nero after the Great Fire of 64, these were reinstated only when the Flavians had taken power. Ineptitude like this could not fail to make Galba unpopular with the citizenry, and Suetonius illustrates this with a story that picks up all at once on the emperor’s penny-pinching, his old-fashioned ways, and his isolation.

  At the first games held after Galba’s arrival in the city, in November it seems, the actors were performing an Atellan farce, an ancient form of drama going back to the period before Latin playwrights began adapting Greek originals to their needs. When the actors reached a song the first line of which was “Onesimus is back from the country,” the entire audience not only joined in but sang the whole thing several times. Although this is the only reference we have to this particular play, Onesimus was undoubtedly the traditional, hard-lining, stingy parent we find ridiculed elsewhere in Roman comedy, while his implied preference for the rough life of the countryside over the softness of city living was clearly taken as a jibe not only at Galba’s general behavior but also at his eight-year term in the wilds of Tarraconensis. Such demonstrations in the theater were traditional, it is true, and they seldom produced significant results. But sensible emperors valued them as a guide to the mood of the populace. Galba, in his isolation, showed no signs of caring what the people thought.

  On his dealings with the senate during this same period we have very little information. As he had killed individual members of the order out of hand during his march to Rome, it would have been wise to show the survivors collectively more respect than he had given to the “kind of senate” he had recruited in Spain. That he did so seems unlikely. Tacitus, for example, tells a story involving Helvidius Priscus. He was the son-in-law of Thrasea Paetus, a prominent senator and supposed martyr to free speech whom Nero had forced to suicide in 66, on the basis of charges laid by Eprius Marcellus (his reward was five million sesterces). Galba not only recalled Helvidius from exile but also made him praetor designate for 70. No sooner had Helvidius returned, however, than he took advantage of a senate meeting to try to settle scores with Marcellus. In later days Helvidius too would be idolized by supposedly freedom-loving senators, but he must have been almost impossible to deal with in person. On this occasion his conduct split the senate. The possibility of Marcellus’ conviction carried with it the frightening prospect that “a whole host” of lesser senators would be charged with similar offenses. And so the matter was dropped, not least “because Galba’s wishes were uncertain.” Here it does not matter if Galba reserved to himself the right to settle scores, if he preferred to let sleeping dogs lie, or if his concern was that senators not waste his time with their squabbling. The important point is that he gave the body no guidance and took no account of matters it thought vital.

  The same high-handedness shows up in another story, though this time it is unclear whether it deals with facts or perceptions. To document Galba’s rigor and frugality, Suetonius asserts that the emperor “was thought to be contemplating” a plan that would have limited to two years the military and administrative posts allocated to men of senatorial and equestrian rank, and even then would have assigned these posts only to the men who did not want them. The underlying idea, of course, was that the posts would go to senators and knights who viewed their appointments as something other than routes to power and wealth. But most senators approved of efficient and disinterested administration, if at all, only in the abstract. Attempts to put such a novelty into practice, whether championed by Julius Caesar or by Domitian, were invariably met with passive resistance, grumbling, or abuse. This is not all. If Galba actually assigned any such posts to men who did not want them, he may have been making a virtue out of necessity. The evidence suggests strongly that few senators were willing to take service under him anyway.7

  With the armed forces, the legions especially, Galba showed a degree of self-confidence the situation hardly warranted, and a concern for discipline that might better have been imposed on his own entourage. Since he recognized Nero’s legion of ex-marines as a regular unit, I Adiutrix, probably in October, and since he had brought to Rome the legion he had recruited in Spain, VII Galbiana, there were now two full legions in the city, that is, two more than were usually stationed there. So Galba decided, apparently in November, to reassign one of them to Carnuntum in Pannonia (Hungary). His choice fell on VII Galbiana, not on I Adiutrix. Although VII Galbiana ought theoretically to have been more devoted to him, he appears to have thought that it was a new unit in need of discipline and some experience in warfare. The same could be said of I Adiutrix, of course, but it looks as if Galba also believed that the new recruits of VII Galbiana would succumb more readily to the temptations of the big city than would the ex-marines of I Adiutrix. The latter had had the experience of serving in Rome in Nero’s reign, and so should have been more inclined to resist temptation. And their loyalty could be taken for granted, because they had been cowed by the harsh punishment Galba had inflicted on the disaffected among them.8

  This contrasts strongly with Galba’s treatment of some detachments of soldiers from Germany. They had fallen ill as a result of being sent to and then recalled from Alexandria in the first half of 68, as part of the troop movements for Nero’s planned eastern expeditions. The nature of the illness is unknown, but Galba nursed the men back to health with unusual care. So devoted were these troops to Galba as a result that they were the one organized force to try to help him on the day of his murder. But they were either too ill to move (Tacitus), or too unfamiliar with the city’s layout to arrive in time (Suetonius). And that is why the story is told, to underline that even when the emperor inspired loyalty in his men, it bore no fruit. True, we have no information on the urban cohorts, except that Galba placed them under Aulus Ducenius Geminus, whom he apparently recalled from Dalmatia to become prefect of the city. But it is unlikely that these men were any happier than the praetorian guardsmen. Them Galba kept firmly under his own thumb, since Laco was installed as their prefect more for his dependence
on the emperor than for any ability to win the men’s loyalty, let alone their affection. And all requests for the donative promised by Nymphidius were met with Galba’s most notorious saying, that he selected his troops, he did not purchase them. As Tacitus puts it, it was “a statement which reflected well on him as emperor but was dangerous to him as a person, since nothing else came up to these standards.”

  Still, it was less the rankers than their commanders with whom Galba made grievous mistakes. It has been suggested that he tried to place able officers in intermediate positions, to keep the men under control and to report back on the doings of their superiors. Marcus Antonius Primus, appointed commander of VII Galbiana despite his spotty record under Nero, fell into this category. So did Manlius Valens, the aging legate of I Italica at Lugdunum. And so too did Aulus Caecina. But Caecina was soon to be ordered to trial on charges of embezzlement, and there is no evidence that the other two ever rendered Galba worthwhile service. Nor did one other man known to have been among the emperor’s early partisans, Cornelius Fuscus. He was appointed procurator probably of Dalmatia and Pannonia, but Tacitus describes him as a man who reveled in the perils of civil war rather than the rewards to be gained from it. So in all four cases there are enough oddities in the record to suggest that it was not their abilities that won them their appointments, but their readiness to work for an emperor under whom more conventional and circumspect men hesitated to serve.

  Where the high commands were concerned, Galba continued Nero’s practice of appointing nonentities. He had certainly installed Cluvius Rufus, “a good orator and a man of peace,” in Tarraconensis, and he probably made the urbane Junius Blaesus governor of Lugdunensis. It looks too as if he appointed Marcus Pompeius Silvanus governor of Dalmatia and Lucius Tampius Flavianus of Pannonia. Tacitus dismisses these two as “rich old men,” adding that the latter, apparently a kinsman of Vitellius, was “a procrastinator by nature.” And just as Galba had replaced Verginius Rufus with Hordeonius Flaccus in Upper Germany, so he appointed Aulus Vitellius to replace Fonteius Capito in Lower Germany. Widely considered the worthless son of the most illustrious senator of the previous generation, Lucius Vitellius, Aulus was a threat only to his own reputation. A notorious glutton and spendthrift, Aulus had to finance his journey to Germany, so Suetonius says, by moving his wife and children out of their house and into an apartment, and by stealing a pearl earring from his mother, while Dio reports that he was besieged by his creditors when he tried to set out. According to Suetonius, Galba commented that nobody was less to be feared than a man whose every thought was of eating, and that Vitellius’ insatiable appetite could feed on the resources of his province. As told, the story is probably fiction, but Tacitus’ one brief and elliptical comment on the subject confirms that the emperor felt only contempt for Vitellius.

  When Vitellius reached his new command, in the last days of November 68, discontent had been brewing for some time. In both Upper and Lower Germany, the troops were no more reconciled to Galba now than they had been at the time of Vesontio, and there were seven legions stationed in these two military districts. Tacitus declares that the troops loyal to Galba were about as numerous as the malcontents, but that the latter were far more active. He also gives a lengthy description of their state of mind. They were elated by their victory over Vindex and the loot they had won without effort or peril. They were eager for more campaigns of this kind, a refreshing change from the endless exertion, harsh discipline, and minimal reward they endured along the western bank of the Rhine, a terrible land with a terrible climate. Thanks to the fact that the forces that defeated Vindex had been drawn from both military districts, they were conscious of their strength as they had never been when they were kept separate. They were furious that their defeated foes, the Aedui, Sequani, and Arverni, were not only prospering again but boasting about it. And they were disquieted by a rumor inspired by Galba’s punishment of the marine demonstrators at the Milvian Bridge. This rumor, “craftily manufactured and readily believed,” put it about “that legions were being decimated and the most active officers dismissed,” clearly with the implication that the turn of the Rhine legions would not be long delayed.

  What Tacitus does not develop here, though it becomes more prominent later, is the “Germanic” character of the Rhine legions. Whenever he can, he seizes the chance to blur the distinction between these troops and the German tribesmen who accompanied them on campaign, as auxiliary troops or as native contingents. But though this is an exaggeration to suit his own purposes, it contains more than a grain of truth. These legionaries seem to have been recruited primarily from Italy and southern Gaul, but they had to acclimate to service on the German frontier. This affected their dress (hence Caecina’s taste for a parti-colored cloak and Gallic trousers), their diet (they became meat eaters to a far greater extent than was usual in other areas where legions were stationed), and even their weaponry, in that they appear to have adopted nonstandard equipment from the enemy (long spears for example), in order to combat that enemy better.9 All this created a striking paradox. These men were widely considered the flower of the Roman army and yet they neither looked nor behaved like the ideal, parade-ground legionary.

  This is part of a larger issue. It has long been recognized that an army unit tends to become a world unto itself, a “total institution.” As a result, it marks itself off from other elements in the population, draws sharp lines between soldier and civilian, and so reinforces its isolation still more. This behavior pattern is found just as much among Roman legionaries as it is in later forces for which we have better documentation.10 The detail that needs stressing, however, is that the intensity of this isolation could vary from unit to unit, and from province to province. The legions in Syria, for example, were billeted in the towns and were not only much less disciplined and combat-ready than they should have been (a point Tacitus makes in the Annals of Corbulo’s campaigns against the Parthians), but also formed closer bonds with the civilian populace (a detail he stresses in the Histories for its role in the Flavian revolt against Vitellius). With the Rhine legions, by contrast, the isolation was all but complete. The camps in which they were based and the shantytowns occupied by their camp-followers were set pretty much in open country. The one site along the river that qualified as a town at this stage was Colonia Agrippinensis (Cologne), the administrative center of Lower Germany. And none of the seven legions was quartered there. So, to put it invidiously, with no local culture to leaven the mix, the legions were forced back on themselves and, in the absence of alternative perspectives, could form their own opinions and nurse their own grievances, however distorted, with little likelihood of contradiction.

  Tacitus is our primary and our best source for what follows. According to his account, which alternates between Upper and Lower Germany in a way that will confuse or annoy the modern reader, what happened was this. In Lower Germany, Vitellius’ command, the situation was complicated by the troops’ feelings about his predecessor, Fonteius Capito. Some resented his murder, though they placed the opprobrium for that, not on the perpetrators, Fabius Valens and Cornelius Aquinus, but on Galba for condoning it. Others were angered more by Capito’s sneakiness and avarice. Even before Vindex’s revolt, he had granted or withheld privileges and promotions as a way of enriching himself. Vitellius showed quite uncharacteristic energy in remedying these abuses during his first month as commander. Even though it was winter, he made a careful tour of inspection immediately after his arrival. He restored their ranks to men who had been demoted, struck down the dishonorable discharges that had been given to some, and cleaned up the records of others who had been officially reprimanded. To an extent, Vitellius wanted to ingratiate himself with his troops, but he was also determined to redress injustices. Lower Germany was his first military command and he reveled in it.

  This was not the result of any wish to use the command as a stepping stone to the principate. That interpretation was put on his actions by his officers and men.
They could not conceive of a commander’s showing such consideration for any but ulterior motives, in itself an interesting insight into the thought patterns of the time. Vitellius, however, genuinely delighted in the company of ordinary people and cared for their welfare. Suetonius illustrates his “common touch” with reports that as Vitellius made his way to Germany, “he confirmed his reputation for an easy-going and open-handed nature; he embraced even the common soldiers he met en route, and he was unusually affable to the mule drivers and travelers at the inns and taverns along the way, asking each of them of a morning whether they had breakfasted yet and belching to prove that he had.” Tacitus more primly—and more revealingly—declares that talk of his affability was misplaced; respectable people thought him coarse.