8 1 Such were the varied sentiments at Rome, natural in a city with so vast a population. Of the provinces, Spain was governed by Cluvius Rufus, a man of ready eloquence, expert in the arts of peace but untrained in war. The Gallic provinces were held to their allegiance, not only by their memory of the failure of Vindex, but also by the recent gift of Roman citizenship, and by the reduction of their taxes for the future; yet the Gallic tribes nearest the armies of Germany had not been treated with the same honour as the rest; some had actually had their lands taken from them, so that they felt equal irritation whether they reckoned up their neighbours’ gains or counted their own wrongs. The armies in Germany were vexed and angry, a condition most dangerous when large forces are involved. They were moved by pride in their recent victory and also by fear, because they had favoured the losing side. They had been slow to abandon Nero; and Verginius, their commander, had not pronounced for Galba immediately; men were inclined to think that he would not have been unwilling to be emperor himself; and its believed that the soldiers offered him the imperial power. Even those who could not complain of the execution of Fonteius Capito were none the less indignant. But they had no leader, for Verginius had been taken away under the cloak of friendship. The fact that he was not sent back, but was actually brought to trial, the soldiers regarded as an accusation against themselves.
9 1 The army in Upper Germany despised their commander, Hordeonius Flaccus. Incapacitated by age and lameness, he had neither courage nor authority. Even when the soldiers were quiet he had no control; once exasperated, the feebleness of his restraint only inflamed them further. The soldiers of Lower Germany were a considerable time without a general of consular rank, until Galba sent out Aulus Vitellius, the son of that Vitellius who had been censor and three times consul: his father’s honours seemed to give him enough prestige. In the army stationed in Britain there were no hostile feelings; and indeed no other legions through all the confusion caused by the civil wars made less trouble, either because they were farther away and separated by the ocean, or else they had learned in many campaigns to hate the enemy by preference. There was quiet in Illyricum also, though the legions which Nero had called from that province, while they delayed in Italy, had made overtures to Verginius through their representatives; but the various armies, separated by long distances — which is the most effective means of maintaining the fidelity of troops — did not succeed in combining either their vices or their strength.
10 1 The East was as yet undisturbed. Syria and its four legions were held by Licinius Mucianus, a man notorious in prosperity and adversity alike. When a young man he had cultivated friendships with the nobility for his own ends; later, when his wealth was exhausted, his position insecure, and he also suspected that Claudius was angry with him, he withdrew to retirement in Asia and was as near to exile then as afterwards he was to the throne. He displayed a mixture of luxury and industry, of affability and insolence, of good and wicked arts. His pleasures were extravagant if he was at leisure; whenever he took the field, he showed great virtues. You would have praised his public life; but his private life bore ill repute. Yet by diverse attractions he gained power with his subordinates, with those close to him, and with his associates in office; and he was a man who found it easier to bestow the imperial power than to hold it himself. The war against the Jews was being directed with three legions by Flavius Vespasianus, whom Nero had selected as general. Neither Vespasian’s desires nor sentiments were opposed to Galba, for he sent his son, Titus, to pay his respects and to show his allegiance to him, as we shall tell at the proper time. The secrets of Fate, and the signs and oracles which predestined Vespasian and his sons for power, we believed only after his success was secured.
11 1 Egypt, with the troops to keep it in order, has been managed from the time of the deified Augustus by Roman knights in place of their former kings. It had seemed wise to keep thus under the direct control of the imperial house a province which is difficult of access, productive of great harvests, but given to civil strife and sudden disturbances because of the fanaticism and superstition of its inhabitants, ignorant as they are of laws and unacquainted with civil magistrates. At this time the governor was Tiberius Alexander, himself an Egyptian. Africa and its legions, now that Clodius Macer had been killed, were satisfied with any emperor after their experience of a petty tyrant. The two provinces of Mauritania, Raetia, Noricum, Thrace and the other districts which were in charge of imperial agents, were moved to favour or hostility by contact with forces more powerful than themselves, according to the army near which each was. The provinces without an army, and especially Italy itself, were exposed to slavery under any master and destined to become the rewards of war.
This was the condition of the Roman state when Servius Galba, chosen consul for the second time, and his colleague Titus Vinius entered upon the year that was to be for Galba his last and for the state almost the end.
12 1 A few days after the first of January a despatch was brought from Pompeius Propinquus, imperial agent in Belgic Gaul, saying that the legions of Upper Germany had thrown off all regard for their oath of allegiance and were demanding another emperor, but that they left the choice to the senate and to the Roman people, that their disloyalty might be less seriously regarded. This news hastened Galba’s determination. He had already been considering with himself and his intimates the question of adopting a successor; indeed during the last few months nothing had been more frequently discussed throughout the state, first of all because of the licence and the passion which men now had for such talk, and secondly because Galba was already old and feeble. Few were guided by sound judgment or real patriotism; the majority, prompted by foolish hope, named in their selfish gossip this man or that whose clients or friends they were; they were also moved by hatred for Titus Vinius, whose unpopularity increased daily in proportion to his power. Moreover, Galba’s very amiability increased the cupidity of his friends, grown greedy in their high good fortune; since they were dealing with an infirm and confiding man, they had less to fear and more to hope from their wrong-doings.
13 1 The actual power of the principate was divided between Titus Vinius the consul and Cornelius Laco the praetorian prefect, nor was the influence of Icelus, Galba’s freedman, less than theirs. He had been presented with the ring of a knight, and people called him Marcianus, an equestrian name. This three quarrelled with one another, and in small matters each one worked for himself; but in the question of choosing a successor they were divided into two parties. Vinius favoured Marcus Otho; Laco and Icelus agreed not so much in favouring any particular person as in supporting someone other than Otho. Galba was not ignorant of the friendship between Otho and Titus Vinius; and the common gossip of the people, who let nothing pass in silence, was already naming Otho the son-in-law and Vinius the father-in-law, because the former was a bachelor and Vinius had an unmarried daughter. I can believe that Galba cherished also some thought for the state, which had been wrested from Nero in vain if it were to be left in the hands of an Otho. For Otho had spent his boyhood in heedlessness, his early manhood under no restraint. He had found favour in Nero’s eyes by imitating his extravagance; therefore Nero had left with him, privy as he was to his debaucheries, Poppaea Sabina, the imperial mistress, until he could get rid of his wife Octavia. Later the emperor suspected him in relation to this same Poppaea and removed him to the province of Lusitania, ostensibly as governor. He administered the province acceptably, but he was the first to join Galba’s party and he was not an inactive partisan. So long as war lasted he was the most brilliant of all Galba’s immediate supporters, and now, as soon as he had once conceived the hope of being adopted by Galba, he desired it more keenly every day that passed. The majority of the soldiers favoured him, and Nero’s court was inclined to him because he was like Nero.
14 1 But after Galba received word of the disloyal movement in Germany, though he had as yet no certain news with regard to Vitellius, he was distressed as to the possible out
come of the army’s violence, and had no confidence even in the soldiers within the city. So he held a kind of imperial comitia, which he regarded as his only remedy. Besides Vinius and Laco, he called Marius Celsus, the consul-elect, and Ducenius Geminus, the city prefect. He first spoke briefly of his own advanced years, then directed that Licinianus Piso should be called in, either because he was his own choice, or, as some believed, owing to the insistence of Laco, who had formed an intimate friendship with Piso at the house of Rubellius Plautus. But Laco cleverly supported Piso as if he were a stranger, and Piso’s good reputation added weight to Laco’s advice. Piso was the son of Marcus Crassus and Scribonia, thus being noble on both sides; his look and manner were those of a man of the ancient school, and he had justly been called stern; those who took a harsher view regarded him as morose, but this element in his character, which caused the anxious to suspect him, recommended him to Galba for adoption.
15 1 Then Galba, according to report, took Piso’s hand and spoke to this effect: “If as a private citizen I were adopting you according to curiate law before the pontifices, as is customary, it were both an honour to me to bring into my house a descendant of Gnaeus Pompey and Marcus Crassus, and a distinction for you to add the glories of the Sulpician and Lutatian houses to your own high rank. But as it is, called to the imperial office, as I have been, by the consent of gods and men, I have been moved by your high character and patriotism to offer you in peace the principate for which our forefathers fought, and which I obtained in war. Herein I follow the example of the deified Augustus, who placed in high station next his own, first his sister’s son Marcellus, then his son-in-law Agrippa, afterwards his grandsons, and finally Tiberius Nero, his step-son. But Augustus looked for a successor within his own house, I in the whole state. I do this not because I have not relatives or associates in arms; but I did not myself gain this power by self-seeking, and I would have the character of my decision shown by the fact that I have passed over for you not only my own relatives, but yours also. You have a brother as noble as yourself and older, worthy indeed of this fortune, if you were not the better man. You have reached an age which has already escaped from the passions of youth; your life is such that you have to offer no excuses for the past. Thus far you have known only adversity; prosperity tests the spirit with sharper goads, because we simply endure misfortune, but are corrupted by success. Honour, liberty, friendship, the chief blessings of the human mind, you will guard with the same constancy as before; but others will seek to weaken them by their servility. Flattery, adulation, and that worst poison of an honest heart, self-interest, will force themselves in. Even though you and I speak to each other with perfect frankness to-day, all other men will prefer to deal with our great fortune rather than ourselves. For to persuade a prince of his duty is a great task, but to agree with him, whatever sort of prince he is, is a thing accomplished without real feeling.
16 1 “If the mighty structure of the empire could stand in even poise without a ruler, it were proper that a republic should begin with me. But as it is, we have long reached such a pass that my old age cannot give more to the Roman people than a good successor, or your youth more than a good emperor. Under Tiberius, Gaius, and Claudius we Romans were the heritage, so to speak, of one family; the fact that we emperors are now beginning to be chosen will be for all a kind of liberty; and since the houses of the Julii and the Claudii are ended, adoption will select only the best; for to be begotten and born of princes is mere chance, and is not reckoned higher, but the judgment displayed in adoption is unhampered; and, if one wishes to make a choice, common consent points out the individual. Keep Nero before your eyes. Swelling as he was with pride over the long line of Caesars, it was not Vindex with an unarmed province, nor I with a single legion, but his own monstrous character, his own extravagance, that flung him from the necks of the people; yet never before had there been a precedent for condemning an emperor. We, who have been called to power by war and men’s judgment of our worth, shall be subject to envy, no matter how honourable we may prove. Yet do not be frightened if there are still two legions not yet reduced to quiet in a world that has been shaken to its foundations. I myself did not come to the throne in security, and when men hear that I have adopted you, I shall cease to seem an old man — the one charge that is now laid against me. Nero will always be missed by the worst citizens; you and I must take care that he be not missed also by the good. To give you further advice were untimely, and, besides, all the advice I would give is fulfilled if you prove a wise choice. The distinction between good and evil is at once most useful and quickest made. Think only what you might wish or would oppose if another were emperor. For with us there is not, as among peoples where there are kings, a fixed house of rulers while all the rest are slaves, but you are going to rule over men who can endure neither complete slavery nor complete liberty.”
Galba spoke further to the same effect, as if he were making an emperor, but everyone else conversed with Piso as if had been already made one.
17 1 People report that Piso gave no sign of anxiety or exaltation, either before those who were looking on at the time or afterward when the eyes of all were upon him. He answered with the reverence due to a father and an emperor; he spoke modestly about himself. There was no change in his look or dress; he seemed like one who had the ability rather than the desire to be emperor. The question was then discussed whether his adoption should be proclaimed from the rostra or in the senate or in the praetorian camp. It was decided to go to the camp, for this act, they thought, would be a mark of honour toward the soldiers, whose support, when gained through good arts, was not to be despised, however base it was to seek it by bribery and canvassing. In the meantime an expectant crowd had gathered around the palace, impatient to learn the great secret, while the unsuccessful efforts of those who wished to check the rumour only increased it.
18 1 The tenth of January, a day of heavy rain, was made dreadful by thunder, lightning, and unusual threats from heaven. In earlier times notice of these things would have broken up an election, but they did not deter Galba from going to the praetorian camp, for he despised these things as mere chance; or else the truth is that we cannot avoid the fixed decrees of fate, by whatever signs revealed. Before a crowded gathering of the soldiers, with the brevity that became an emperor, he announced that he was adopting Piso after the precedent set by the deified Augustus, and following the military custom by which one man chose another. And to prevent an exaggerated idea of the revolt by attempting to conceal it, he went on to say that the Fourth and Twenty-second legions had been led astray by a few seditious leaders, but their errors had not passed beyond words and cries, and presently they would be under discipline. He added no flattery of the soldiers, nor made mention of a gift. Yet the tribunes, centurions, and soldiers nearest him answered in a satisfactory manner; but among all the rest of the soldiers there was a gloomy silence, for they felt that they had lost through war the right to a gift which had been theirs even in times of peace. There is no question that their loyalty could have been won by the slightest generosity on the part of this stingy old man. He was ruined by his old-fashioned strictness and excessive severity — qualities which we can no longer bear.
19 1 Galba’s speech to the senate was as bald and brief as his address to the soldiers. Piso spoke with grace; and the senators showed their approval. Many did this from good-will, those who had opposed the adoption with more effusion, the indifferent — and they were the most numerous — with ready servility, for they had their private hopes in mind and cared nothing for the state. During the four days that followed between his adoption and murder Piso said and did nothing further in public. More frequent reports of the revolt in Germany arrived every day, and since the citizens were ready to accept and believe anything strange and bad, the senate voted to send a delegation to the army in Germany. There was a secret discussion as to whether Piso also should go, that so the mission might be more imposing: the other members would take with
them the authority of the senate, Piso the dignity of a Caesar. They voted to send Laco also, the prefect of the praetorian cohort; but he vetoed their plan. The senate had left the choice of members to Galba. With disgraceful lack of firmness he named men, excused them, made substitutions, as they pleaded with him to stay or go, according to their fears or hopes.
20 1 The next anxiety was with regard to finances. After full consideration it seemed fairest to look for money from the sources where the cause of the poverty lay. Twenty-two hundred million sesterces had been squandered by Nero in gifts. It was voted that individuals should be summoned, and that a tenth part of the gifts which Nero had made them should be left with each. But Nero’s favourites had hardly one-tenth left, for they had wasted the money of others on the same extravagances as they had their own; the most greedy and depraved had neither lands nor principal, but only what would minister to their vices. Thirty Roman knights were appointed to collect the money. This was a new office, and a burden because of the number and intrigue of its members. Everywhere there were auctions and speculators, and the city was disturbed by lawsuits. And yet there was great joy that those who had received gifts from Nero were going to be as poor as those from whom he had taken the money. During these same days four tribunes were dismissed, Antonius Taurus and Antonius Naso from the praetorian cohorts, from the city cohorts Aemilius Pacensis, and Julius Fronto from the police. This action was no assistance against the rest, but it did arouse their fears: individuals, they thought, were being driven from office craftily and cautiously one by one, because all were suspected.
Complete Works of Tacitus (Delphi Classics) (Delphi Ancient Classics Book 24) Page 16