by Gwyn Morgan
Though Galba denied his supporters the right to debate his choice of heir, he allowed them to discuss a question the answer to which should have been a foregone conclusion, whether they should announce the adoption first to the people, to the senate, or to the soldiery. Since the emperor plumed himself on his respect for constitutional proprieties (no matter how often he flouted them), the senate should have been the first to hear. Yet the upshot of the discussion was to pass over both senate and people, though a large crowd had gathered outside the palace. Instead, the announcement would be made in the praetorian camp. Purely practical considerations played some part in this. The guard could be paraded far faster than the senate could be called into session, and there was nothing to be gained by delay. But Tacitus declares that the decision was justified with the specious argument that the guard would appreciate the compliment: “it was wrong to court the soldiery with bribes and flattery, but their support was not to be despised when gained by honorable means.”
The weather was terrible: the skies were dark, there was torrential rain, and there was much thunder and lightning. In the old days, says Tacitus, this would have been considered an evil omen, justifying the cancellation of any public meeting. If we were to believe Suetonius’ stories of the omens that affected Galba, for good or ill, the emperor would have called off the meeting. But since he was not to be deterred, it seems better to accept Tacitus’ explanation, that either Galba thought such phenomena natural (it was a warm winter), or he was a fatalist who believed that there was no avoiding what fate had in store. The emperor certainly made his way to the praetorian camp, the troops were paraded in the pouring rain, and he addressed them in a brief, soldierlike manner. He informed the men that he had adopted Piso as his heir, after a precedent set by Augustus, and in a manner that seems to have been used in the distant past to raise recruits for the army (the troops probably had no idea what he was talking about). Then, to prevent the spread of rumors that problems in Germany were getting out of hand, he admitted that the two legions in Mogontiacum had mutinied. But he attributed this to a handful of troublemakers, and added that since there had been no violence so far, it would be easy for the legions to return to their allegiance. And that was that. There was no flattery. And there was no mention of money, either the donative Nymphidius had promised the men six months before or a new one, to mark a supposedly festive occasion like the announcement of an heir.5
Brusque as the speech was, the tribunes and the centurions, along with the men in the front ranks, raised a cheer. The rest of the guard maintained a sullen silence, angered by the non-mention of a donative. It is generally agreed, says Tacitus, that even the smallest concession would have won them over, but Galba’s old-fashioned rigor and his excessive harshness damaged his cause irreparably. This is an oversimplification, to cue the epigram that nobody else could come up to Galba’s high standards. For a start, Otho was already working hard to win the favor of the rankers, and they must have been disconcerted to learn that Piso was to be the next emperor. Then too, there must have been problems with the officers, since Galba cashiered four of them in this same period, Antonius Taurus and Antonius Naso from the praetorian guard, Aemilius Pacensis from the urban cohorts, and Julius Fronto from the cohorts of the watch. The fact that the last two would be reinstated by Otho cannot prove that they had been agitating on his behalf. They may simply have failed to deal with the unrest among their men. But Tacitus states that dismissing these four solved nothing, as it induced all the others to believe that they were suspect in Galba’s eyes. And the fear that kept them loyal led them to crack down more harshly still on the discontented rankers.
From the camp Galba and his associates made their way back to the senate. Here the emperor gave another speech, as brief and brusque as the one he had delivered to the troops. This time, however, Piso spoke too and—in the one and only official act he took as emperor designate—he won favor with his courtesy. The senators, of course, felt it incumbent upon them to respond, and one by one they declared their delight at this turn of events. As Tacitus puts it, some genuinely liked Piso; those who did not were correspondingly more effusive; and those who cared neither way, the majority, acquiesced easily. They were more preoccupied with their own futures under the new dispensation than with the question whether the adoption served the best interests of the state.
By the time all who wanted to speak had had their say, it must have been relatively late in the day, but the senate took up the question of sending an embassy to the mutinous legions. There were endless revisions, as senators’ names were added to or removed from the list. Those who wanted to go were motivated primarily by ambition, says Tacitus, those who preferred to stay in Rome by fear. Finally, the task of picking the envoys was turned over to Galba and with that the session came to an end. For Tacitus talks next of a private meeting, held perhaps that same day, in which emperor and advisers discussed whether they should send Piso on this mission as well, to represent the emperor as its other members represented the senate. Tiberius had done something of this sort when he sent his son Drusus to quell the Pannonian mutiny of 14, but he had been accompanied by two cohorts of the guard and the prefect Sejanus. Yet a proposal to send Laco was met with the prefect’s flat refusal to put himself in harm’s way. Just as absurdly, there was no agreement on which senators were to serve, since Galba changed his mind on the embassy’s composition as often as the senators had. All in all, it is remarkable that a delegation ever set out, or so the reader is supposed to conclude. Tacitus delays reporting that it did until much later in his narrative.
When and where Otho heard that he was not to be Galba’s heir we are not told. But it is unlikely that he learnt of it only in the senate meeting of 10 January, a meeting he must have attended despite the humiliation it brought him. More probably, he heard of Galba’s decision almost as soon as it was announced, perhaps from Vinius, perhaps through his contacts in the praetorian guard (they must have been ordered to get ready for the parade at which Galba revealed his choice). His initial reaction was rage. Suetonius reports that he thought of seizing control of the praetorian camp that same day, and of killing Galba while he dined in the palace. The story illustrates how desperate Otho’s situation had become. Aside from the disappointment of his hopes, the waste of eight months of effort, and the humiliation of being passed over, Otho had run up enormous debts, according to Plutarch in the neighborhood of 200 million sesterces. What had kept his creditors at bay was their belief—which he no doubt fostered assiduously—that he would settle up with them once he was designated Galba’s heir.6 Hence the joke he made as he calmed down, that he could not keep his feet unless he became emperor, and it made little difference whether he fell at the hands of his enemies on the battlefield or of his creditors in the Forum. Luckily, he had laid hands on a million sesterces a day or so before, and with this war chest he launched a plan to assassinate Galba and Piso. He left the details to Onomastus, the most talented of his freedmen, and the latter latched onto two noncommissioned officers, Barbius Proculus, a “tesserarius” in charge of the password for the emperor’s bodyguard (more or less a corporal), and Veturius, an “optio” or second-in-command to a centurion (in modern terms an adjutant). After sizing them up and finding them as crafty as they were daring, Onomastus promised them enormous rewards and gave them enough cash to recruit a few accomplices meanwhile. As Tacitus puts it with a mixture of indignation and incredulity, “two noncommissioned officers undertook to transfer the empire of the Roman people from one man to another and, what is more, they did.”7
Barbius and Veturius let only a handful of praetorians into the secret, but they took every opportunity to stir up the rest of the men. To those who had been promoted by Nymphidius they pointed out that this alone rendered them suspect in Galba’s eyes. In the rest they rekindled anger and despair over the oft-promised donative. Some they reminded of the good old days under Nero, when much less stress had been placed on discipline and duty. And all alike they
terrified by emphasizing that there was no remedy for their grievances. Those who complained would be demoted or dismissed by Galba, and those who hoped for better days under his successor were deluding themselves now that he had settled on Piso Licinianus.
The conspirators’ first plan, says Tacitus, was to grab Otho under the cover of darkness as he returned home from a dinner party on the night of 14 January, and to rush him to the praetorian camp. They had to abandon this idea, because the unrest among the praetorians had spread to the legionary detachments and auxiliary units scattered around the city. There was a real risk that somebody else would be seized and rushed to the camp by legionaries from Pannonia or Germany. These men had not the least idea what Otho looked like, and since they would probably be drunk into the bargain, it would be difficult even to get them to follow the plan. As it was, there were plenty of indications that a conspiracy was being hatched. The plotters did what they could to hush it up, but what saved them was Laco’s discounting the rumors that reached Galba’s ears. He had no idea how deep the disaffection of the troops went, but he refused to support any action he had not suggested himself, and he was relentless in his opposition to those who knew or claimed to know more than he. Whether or not the conspirators were aware of this, they recognized that further delay would lead to their betrayal. So the decision was made to go ahead on the morning of 15 January.
For Galba that morning opened with a sacrifice for good omens in front of the temple of Apollo attached to the palace. He was attended not only by his leading associates but also by Otho, who had come—as was customary—to pay his respects. The ceremony ran longer than expected. The priest in charge was Umbricius, supposedly the best seer of his day, and he announced that the signs were bad: there was a plot under way and an enemy within the walls. None of this disquieted Galba (so Tacitus states), since he was contemptuous of such matters. But as emperor and head of the official state religion he could not walk away. So the search for favorable omens had to continue.
Otho, standing next to the emperor, was more inclined to believe in heavenly signs. But rather than being dismayed by Umbricius’ apparent knowledge of his activities, he took the announcement of evil omens for Galba as proof that his own plans were destined to succeed. So he was ready to go ahead with his coup when he was joined by his freedman Onomastus. The latter had come to inform him that it was time to meet with the master-builder and the contractors about an old house Otho was buying. On its face, the message was innocuous and plausible: Otho was so penniless that he could afford only a tumbledown place bound to need major repairs. At another level, it told anybody who inquired that Otho had accepted Galba’s adoption of Piso, since he had obviously abandoned any hopes of moving into the palace. And at base it was a message in code: Onomastus (the master-builder) and the guardsmen he had suborned (the contractors) were ready to make their move.
To calm suspicions that there might be more here than met the eye, Otho still took his time about leaving the sacrifice and made his way by a circuitous route down to the Forum. He had arranged to meet his accomplices outside the temple of Saturn, and since the praetorians wore civilian dress inside the city even when on duty, a large body of men would not be recognized for what they were amid the hustle and bustle of the busiest spot in Rome. As it happened, there were only 23 guardsmen at the rendezvous. Perhaps because this unnerved Otho, perhaps because his leisurely stroll had put them behind schedule, the plotters quickly hailed him emperor, bundled him into a chair, and with drawn swords rushed him off to the camp well over a mile away. They were joined by another 20 to 30 men along the way. Some, says Tacitus, were already in the plot and brandished their swords with noisy enthusiasm. Others were merely curious, not loyal to Galba but unwilling to commit to Otho. Yet when this group reached the camp, the tribune on duty, Julius Martialis, was so taken aback that he made no attempt to stop them entering. People thought later that he was in the conspiracy, but more probably he was shocked by the small number of plotters and by their audacity. Unable to imagine that 50-odd men would try to seize the throne, he refused to risk his neck in case the conspiracy was more widespread. The other officers showed no more initiative. Tacitus asserts that they preferred dishonor to danger, but as Laco was at the palace, nobody may have taken the lead because Laco was no keener than Galba on displays of initiative by his subordinates.
The manner of Otho’s departure from the Forum was too unusual not to be reported back to Galba. So he, still intent on his sacrifice—to gods of an empire, as Tacitus puts it, that belonged now to another—was told first that an unidentified senator had been hurried off to the camp and, later, that the senator was Otho. After a hasty consultation it was decided to test the loyalties of the cohort of the guard on duty at the palace. Neither Galba nor his advisers seem to have grasped how serious a problem they faced. So their decision that the emperor be kept in reserve, in case the situation deteriorated, may in fact have been a diplomatic means of ensuring that he not make matters worse by alienating the troops with another of his brusque, even brutal, speeches. Instead, the task was given to the heir designate, Piso.
According to the speech Tacitus wrote for him, Piso seized the moral high ground and made much of honor and shame. There was the honor of the imperial house that—he told the guardsmen—rested now in their hands. There was the honor of the guard itself. Although legions had mutinied, the guard had never abandoned their duly constituted emperor. Nero had deserted them, not they him. There was the disgrace they must all endure if an extravagant and effeminate playboy like Otho became emperor. And there was the shame of letting a handful of renegades and deserters set up an emperor, when they were men who could not be trusted to choose their own junior officers. Yet in his peroration Piso came down to earth. If the cohort followed Otho, the only result would be a war they would have to fight. And there was no point in that when Galba would give them a donative as large as any sums they could expect from the usurper.
Tacitus obviously constructed a speech he thought appropriate to Piso’s character. How successful the reader is supposed to consider it is another matter. It is full of incongruities. A long-time exile addresses praetorians as “comrades”—and for the emperor or his heir to address soldiers as comrades was itself a sign that civil war impended. Piso tells an audience of soldiers that good men think to kill is as terrible as to be killed. Piso claims disingenuously that Galba had gained the throne not only legitimately but without bloodshed, reviving the legalism with which Galba himself had justified his usurpation. Piso depicts Otho as another Nero, not the best tactic when the guard was still devoted to Nero’s memory. And Piso promises the men the donative for which they have been waiting so long, without indicating why they should believe that he had the influence to deliver on his promise. We know that Galba and his entourage thought Piso had done a good job (it was one reason why they sent him to the praetorian camp later in the day). But their judgment need have been no sounder on this than it was on any other matter. In fact, the heir designate managed only to delay the inevitable. The cohort gave Piso a hearing, but he may not have aroused much enthusiasm. Tacitus states that the men milled around in confusion rather than doing anything in particular. And whatever enthusiasm they mustered evaporated in a matter of hours.
While Piso addressed the cohort, emissaries were also sent to other forces scattered about the city. There is no mention of any appeal to the urban cohorts, probably because their loyalty was taken for granted. (They had been placed under Galba’s own nominee, Ducenius Geminus.) But since they were quartered in the praetorian camp, they must have made common cause with the guard, and so do not appear as a separate entity. Similarly, the idea of appealing to the men of I Adiutrix was mooted, but no action was taken, this time for the opposite reason, the recognition that these troops still resented the treatment Galba had meted out to their former companions at the Milvian Bridge. But Marius Celsus was sent to a detachment from the Illyrian legions quartered in the Vipsanian Portico
; two senior centurions approached the German troops in the Hall of Liberty (Atrium Libertatis); and three military tribunes hurried to the praetorian camp, in hopes of bringing the guardsmen around. It would be some time before Galba heard that none of these efforts had borne fruit. The three military tribunes were sent about their business; Marius Celsus was driven off at spear point; and though the German troops were well disposed toward Galba, they never turned up.
By this time a large crowd had gathered outside the palace, calling for the execution of Otho and his accomplices. None of them preferred Galba to Otho, says Tacitus. They were simply following the traditional pattern of flattering the emperor because he was the emperor. Inside the palace there was less unanimity. Vinius urged Galba to fortify the building, block the entrances, and arm the palace slaves. This, he is supposed to have argued, would give loyalists time to assemble, the plotters time to rethink—and abandon—their plan. The emperor could always venture forth when the situation improved, but he risked getting caught out in the open if he left immediately. It is uncertain if Vinius was involved in Otho’s plot, but even if he was not, his advice now lent credibility to that interpretation. The rest of Galba’s entourage took the opposite line: they must move at once to crush the conspiracy, before it could grow larger, and before Otho could find his feet. Better to go meet the danger, even if it meant their deaths. That was their duty and, if nothing else, it would make Otho an assassin as well as a usurper.