21 1 In the meantime Otho, who had nothing to hope from a peaceful arrangement, and whose purpose depended wholly on disorder, was spurred on by many considerations. His extravagance was such as would have burdened an emperor, his poverty a private citizen could hardly have borne. He was angry toward Galba and jealous of Piso. He invented fears also to give his greed greater scope. He said that he had been formidable to Nero, and that he could not look again for Lusitania and the honour of a second exile; that tyrants always suspected and hated the man who was marked out as their successor; this had already injured him with the aged emperor, and was going to injure him still more with the young one, who was cruel by nature and embittered by long exile. An Otho could be murdered; therefore he must be bold and act while Galba’s authority was still weak and Piso’s not yet established; this time of transition was opportune for great attempts, and a man must not delay when inactivity is more ruinous than rash action. Death nature ordains for all alike; but it differs as it brings either oblivion or glory in after ages; and if the same end awaits the guilty and the innocent, it is the duty of a man of superior vigour to deserve his death.
22 1 Otho’s mind was not effeminate like his body. His intimate freedmen and slaves, who had more licence than prevails in private houses, constantly held before his eager eyes Nero’s luxurious court, his adulteries, his many marriages, and other royal vices, exhibiting them as his own if he only dared to take them, but taunting him with them as the privilege of others if he did not act. The astrologers also — a tribe of men most untrustworthy for the powerful, deceitful towards the ambitious, a tribe which in our state will always be both forbidden and retained — they also urged him on, declaring from their observation of the stars that there were new movements on foot, and that the year would be a glorious one for Otho. Many of these astrologers, the worst possible tools for an imperial consort, had shared Poppaea’s secret plans, and one them, Ptolemy, who had been with Otho in Spain, had promised him that he should survive Nero. Having won credit by the event, he had then, employing his own conjectures and the gossip of those who compared Galba’s old age and Otho’s youth, persuaded Otho that he would be called to the imperial office. But Otho accepted his prophecies as if they were genuine warnings of fate disclosed by Ptolemy’s skill, for human nature is especially eager to believe the mysterious. And Ptolemy did not fail to do his part; he was already urging Otho even to crime, to which from such aspirations the transition is most easily made.
23 1 Yet it is uncertain whether the idea of committing crime came suddenly to Otho; he had long been trying to win popularity with the soldiers because he hoped for the succession or was preparing some bold step. On the march, at review, or in camp he addressed all the oldest soldiers by name, and, reminding them that they had attended Nero together, he called them messmates. Others he recognized, some he asked after and helped with money or influence; oftentimes he let drop words of complaint and remarks of a double meaning concerning Galba, and did other things that tended to disturb the common soldiery. For they were grumbling seriously over the toilsome marches, the lack of supplies, and the hard discipline. The men who had been in the habit of going by ship to the lakes of Campania and the cities of Achaia found it hard to climb the Pyrenees and the Alps under arms and to cover endless marches along the high roads.
24 1 When the minds of the soldiers were already inflamed, Maevius Pudens, one of Tigellinus’s nearest friends, added fuel to the fire. Winning over all who were of a restless temper or who needed money and were hot-headed for a revolution, he gradually came to the point, whenever Galba dined at Otho’s house, of using the dinner as an excuse for distributing one hundred sesterces to each member of the cohort that stood on guard. This was a kind of gift from the state, but Otho added to its significance by secret gifts to individuals; and he grew so bold in his acts of corruption that when Cocceius Proculus, one of the bodyguard, had a quarrel with his neighbour with regard to boundaries, Otho bought up the neighbour’s whole farm with his own money and gave it to Proculus. This was possible through the dullness of the prefect Laco, who equally failed to see what was notorious and what was secret.
25 1 Then Otho put one of his freedmen, Onomastus, in charge of the crime he planned. When Onomastus had won over Barbius Proculus, the officer of the password for the bodyguard, and Veturius, a subaltern of the same, and had learned through various conversations that they were clever and bold, he loaded them with rewards and promises, and gave them money to tamper with the loyalty of a larger number. Two common soldiers thus undertook to transfer the imperial power, and they transferred it. Few were admitted to share the plot. By various devices they worked on the anxieties of the rest — on the soldiers of higher rank by treating them as if they were suspected because of the favours Nymphidius had shown them, on the mass of the common soldiers by stimulating their anger and disappointment that the donative had been so often deferred. There were some who were kindled by their memory of Nero and a longing for their former licence: but all had one common fear of some change in their conditions of service.
26 1 This infection touched the loyalty of the legions also and of the auxiliaries, who were already unsettled, now that it was a matter of common knowledge that the army in Germany was disaffected. And so ready were the ill-disposed for revolt and even the loyal to wink at wrong-doing, that on the fourteenth of January they planned to carry off Otho as he was returning from dinner, and would have done so if they had not been deterred by the uncertainty of night, by the dispersion of the soldiers in detachments scattered through the whole city, and by the difficulties of common action when men are in their cups. They were not influenced by any anxiety for the state, for in their sober senses they were preparing to pollute it with the blood of their emperor; but they feared that in the darkness any man who fell in the way of the soldiers from Pannonia or Germany might be proclaimed as Otho, for the majority did not know him. There were many signs of the outbreak of the revolt, but these were repressed by the plotters. Some things reached Galba’s ears, but the prefect Laco made light of them; he was unacquainted with the soldiers’ spirit, and he was opposed to any plan, however excellent, which he did not himself propose, and obstinate against those who knew better than himself.
27 1 On the fifteenth of January, when Galba was sacrificing in front of the temple of Apollo, the seer Umbricius declared that the omens were unfavourable, that a plot was imminent, and that an enemy was in his house. Otho heard this, for he stood next to Galba, and interpreted it by contraries as favourable to himself and auguring well for his purposes. Presently his freedman, Onomastus, announced to him that his architect and the contractors were waiting for him, this having been agreed upon as a sign that the soldiers were already gathering and that the conspiracy was ripe. When some asked Otho why he was leaving, he gave as an excuse that he was buying some properties of whose value he was doubtful because of their age, and therefore he wished to examine them first. Taking the arm of his freedman he walked through the palace of Tiberius to the Velabrum, and then to the golden milestone hard by the temple of Saturn. There twenty-three of the bodyguard hailed him as emperor; when he was frightened because there were so few to greet him, they put him quickly into a chair and with drawn swords hurried him away. About the same number of soldiers joined them as they went, some through knowledge, more through wonder, a part with shouts and drawn swords, a part in silence, ready to take their cue from the result.
28 1 Julius Martialis the tribune was the officer of the day in the camp. Terrified by the enormity of the sudden crime, ignorant of the extent to which the camp was disloyal, and fearing death if he opposed, he made the majority suspect him of complicity. All the rest of the tribunes also and the centurions preferred present safety to a doubtful but honourable course. And such was the attitude of their minds that the foulest of crimes was dared by a few, desired by more, and acquiesced in by all.
29 1 Galba in the meantime was in ignorance. Intent upon his sacrifices, h
e was importuning the gods of an empire which was already another’s, when a report was brought to him that some senator or other was being hurried to the camp. Afterwards rumour said that it was Otho; and at the same time people came from the whole city — some, who had happened to meet the procession, exaggerating the facts through terror, some making light of them, for they did not even then forget to flatter. On consultation it was decided to try the temper of the cohort that was on guard at the palace, but not through Galba himself, whose authority was kept unimpaired for more serious measures. Piso, standing on the steps of the palace, called the soldiers together and spoke as follows: “It is now five days, my comrades, since, in ignorance of the future, I was adopted as Caesar, not knowing whether this name was one to be desired or feared. The fate of our house and the State depends on you. I say this not because I fear misfortune on my own account, for I have known adversity, and at the present moment I am learning that prosperity brings no less danger. But I grieve for the fate of my father, the senate, and the very empire, if we must either ourselves die to-day or kill others — an act which brings equal sorrow to the good. In the last uprising we were solaced by the fact that the city was unstained by blood and the government transferred without dissension: adoption seemed to provide against any occasion for war even after Galba’s death.
30 1 “I make no claim of high birth or character for myself, and I need not catalogue virtues when the comparison is with Otho. His faults, which are the only things in which he glories, were undermining the empire even when he pretended to be the friend of the emperor. Was it by his bearing and gait or by his womanish dress that he deserved the throne? They are deceived who are imposed upon by extravagance under the garb of generosity. He will know how to ruin, he will not know how to give. Adulteries and revelries and gatherings of women fill his thoughts: these he considers the prerogatives of imperial power. The lust and pleasure of them will be his, the shame and disgrace of them will fall on every Roman; for imperial power gained by wicked means no man has ever used honourably. The consent of all mankind made Galba Caesar, and Galba made me so with your consent. If the State and the Senate and People are but empty names, it is your concern, comrades, that the emperor should not be made by the worst citizens. A revolt of the legions against their generals has sometimes been heard of; your loyalty and good name have remained unimpaired down to the present day. It was Nero, too, who deserted you, not you Nero. Shall less than thirty renegades and deserters, men whom no one would allow to choose a centurion or tribune, bestow the empire? Will you allow this precedent, and by inaction make their crime yours? Such licence will spread to the provinces, and the consequence of their crimes will fall on us, the resulting wars on you. The reward given the assassins for the murder of the emperor will not be greater than that which will be bestowed on those who refrain from crime; nay, you will receive no less a gift from us for loyalty than you will from others for treason.”
31 1 The members of the bodyguard slunk away, but the rest of the cohort did not refuse to hear his speech and, as frequently happens in times of excitement, they seized their standards haphazard, without any plan as yet, rather than, as was afterwards believed, to conceal their treachery. Celsus Marius was sent to the picked troops from Illyria, who were encamped in the Vipsanian Colonnade; Amullius Serenus and Domitius Sabinus, centurions of the first rank, were ordered to summon the German troops from the Hall of Liberty. The legion of marines was not trusted, for they were still hostile to Galba, because he had immediately massacred their comrades when he first entered the city. The tribunes, Cetrius Severus, Subrius Dexter, and Pompeius Longinus, went even into the praetorian camp to see if the mutiny were still incipient and not yet come to a head, so that it could be averted by wiser counsels. Subrius and Cetrius the soldiers attacked and threatened, Longinus they forcibly restrained and disarmed; this action was prompted by his fidelity to his emperor, which was due not to his military position, but to his friendship for Galba; therefore the mutineers regarded him with the greater suspicion. The legion of marines without hesitation joined the praetorians. The picked troops from Illyria drove Celsus away at the point of their spears. The German detachments hesitated for a long time; they were still weak physically and were kindly disposed towards Galba, for Nero had sent them back to Alexandria, and then on their return, when sick from their long voyage, Galba had taken great pains to care for them.
32 1 The whole mass of the people, with slaves among them, filled the palace. There were discordant cries demanding Otho’s death and the execution of the conspirators, exactly as if the people were calling for some show in the circus or the theatre; there was neither sense nor honesty in their demands, for on this very same day they would have clamoured for the opposite with equal enthusiasm; but they acted according to the traditional custom of flattering the emperor, whoever he might be, with fulsome acclamations and senseless zeal.
In the meantime Galba was torn between two proposals; Titus Vinius urged the necessity of staying in the palace, arming the slaves for defence, blocking the entrances, and not going to the infuriated troops. Let Galba, he said, give time for the disloyal to repel, for the loyal to come to a common agreement; crimes gained strength by impulsive action, wise counsels through delay; and, after all, he would later have the same opportunity to go on his own motion if it should seem wise, but if he went now and regretted it, his return would depend on others.
33 1 All the rest thought that he should act immediately, before the conspiracy, as yet weak and confined to a few, should gain strength. They declared that Otho would lose heart. He had slipped away by stealth, had presented himself to people who did not know him, and now, because of the hesitancy and inactivity of those who were wasting their time, he was having an opportunity to learn to play the emperor. There must be no waiting for Otho to settle matters in the camp, invade the forum, and go to the Capitol under the very eyes of Galba, while that most noble emperor with his valiant friends barred his house and did not cross his threshold, being ready, no doubt, to endure a siege! It was a brilliant backing, too, that they would find in slaves, if the united sentiment of the whole people and their first indignation, which is the strongest, should be allowed to cool! The dishonourable, therefore, was the dangerous resolve; even if they must fall, they should go forth to meet danger; that would bring more disrepute on Otho and honour to themselves. When Vinius opposed this view Laco attacked him with threats, goaded on by Icelus, who persisted in his personal enmity towards Vinius to the ruin of the state.
34 1 Galba did not delay any longer, but favoured those who offered the more specious advice. Yet Piso was sent first to the camp, for he was young, had a great name, and enjoyed fresh popularity; he was also an enemy of Titus Vinius; either that was a fact, or else in their anger the opponents of Vinius wished to have it so: and it is so much easier to believe in hatred. Piso had hardly left the palace when a report was brought, vague and uncertain at first, that Otho had been killed in the camp. Presently, as is natural in falsehoods of great importance, some appeared who declared that they had been present and had seen the murder. Between those who rejoiced in the news and those who were indifferent to it, the story was believed. Many thought this rumour had been invented and exaggerated by Otho’s partisans who were already in the crowd and spread abroad the pleasant falsehood in order to lure Galba from his palace.
35 1 Then indeed it was not the people only and the ignorant mob that burst into applaud and unrestrained enthusiasm, but many of the knights and senators as well. They laid aside all fear and became incautious, broke down the doors of the palace and burst in, presenting themselves to Galba, and complaining that they had been robbed of vengeance. They were all rank cowards, and, as the event proved, men who would show no courage in time of danger, but who now were exceedingly bold with words and savage of tongue. No one knew; everyone affirmed. Finally, overcome by the dearth of truth and by the common error, Galba put on his breastplate; then since his years and strength we
re unequal to resisting the inrushing crowds, he was raised aloft in a chair. Julius Atticus, one of the bodyguard, met him in the palace, and exhibiting his bloody sword cried out that he had killed Otho. “Who gave you orders, comrade?” said Galba; for Galba showed a remarkable spirit in checking licence on the part of the soldiers; before threats he was unterrified, and incorruptible against flattery.
36 1 There was no longer any doubt as to the sentiments of all the soldiers in the camp. Their enthusiasm was so great that they were not satisfied with carrying Otho on their shoulders as they advanced, but they placed him on a platform where shortly before the gilded statue of Galba had stood, and surrounded him with the standards and ensigns. Neither tribune nor centurion was allowed to approach him: the common soldiery kept calling out that they must beware of their commanders above all. There was utter confusion, with shouts and tumult and mutual exhortation — not such as one sees in a gathering of the people and populace, when there are various cries and half-hearted flattery, but they seized everyone they saw coming over to them, embraced them with their arms, placed them next to them, repeated the oath of allegiance, now recommending the emperor to the soldiers, now the soldiers to the emperor. Otho did not fail in his part: he stretched out his hands and did obeisance to the common soldiers, threw kisses, and played in every way the slave to secure the master’s place. After the entire legion of marines had sworn fidelity to him, enthusiasm in his strength and thinking that he must now encourage in a body those whom he had hitherto incited as individuals, he began to speak from the wall of the camp as follows:
Complete Works of Tacitus (Delphi Classics) (Delphi Ancient Classics Book 24) Page 17