37 1 “Comrades, I cannot tell who I am who come before you, because I may not call myself a private citizen after you have named me emperor, nor emperor while another holds the imperial power. Your name, also, will be uncertain so long as there is any doubt whether you have an emperor or an enemy of the Roman people in your camp. Do you hear how men demand my execution and your punishment in the same breath? So clear it is that we can neither die nor be safe except together: and so merciful is Galba that perhaps he has already made promises such as befit the man who massacred all those thousands of innocent soldiers when no man demanded it. Horror comes over me whenever I recall his fateful entrance, and the single victory that he won, when he gave orders that those who surrendered should be decimated in the sight of the whole city; they were the very men whom he had received under his protection in answer to their appeals. Such were the auspices under which he entered the city. Now what glory has he brought to the principate, except the murder of Obultronius Sabinus and Cornelius Marcellus in Spain, of Betuus Cilo in Gaul, of Fonteius Capito in Germany, of Clodius Macer in Africa, of Cingonius on the way to Rome, of Turpilianus in the city, of Nymphidius in the camp? What province is there anywhere, what camp, that is not bloodstained and defiled, or, as Galba would say, purged and disciplined? For what other men call crimes he calls ‘remedies,’ falsely naming cruelty ‘strictness,’ avarice ‘frugality,’ the punishment and insults you suffer ‘discipline.’ It is seven months since Nero met his end, and already Icelus has stolen more than all that a Polyclitus and a Vatinius and an Aegialus squandered. Titus Vinius would have proceeded with less greed and lawlessness if he had been emperor himself; now he keeps us under his heel as if we were his slaves, and regards us as cheap because we belong to another. Galba’s house alone is equal to paying the donative which is never given to you, but daily thrown in your teeth.
38 1 “Furthermore, to prevent your having any hope even in his successor, Galba summoned from exile the man whose gloom and greed he reckoned made him most like himself. Comrades, you saw how even the gods by a wonderful storm expressed their disapproval of this ill-starred adoption. The senate, the Roman people, have the same feelings: they look to brave action on your part, for in you is all strength for honourable plans, and without you purposes, however noble, are of no avail. It is not to war or to danger that I am calling you; all the armed forces are on our side. And that one cohort in civil dress is not now defending Galba, but detaining him; when it has once seen you, has once accepted my watchword, the only rivalry between you will be to see who can put me most in his debt. There is no time for delay in a plan which is not praiseworthy unless put into effect.” Then he ordered the armoury to be opened. The soldiers immediately seized arms without regard to military custom or rank, with no desire to distinguish praetorian or legionary by their proper insignia; they wore the helmets and shields of auxiliaries without distinction; there was no tribune or centurion to direct them; each guided and spurred himself on; and the chief incentive of the rascals was the grief of loyal men.
39 1 Piso, already terrified by the roar that arose from the growing revolt and by the shouts whose echoes reached even the city, had now caught up with Galba, who had meanwhile left the palace and was approaching the forum. Already Marius Celsus had brought a discouraging report. Thereupon some proposed that Galba return to the palace, others that he try to reach the Capitol, while many urged the necessity of seizing the rostra. But the majority simply opposed the advice of others; and as usually happens in the case of such unfortunate proposals, those plans for which the opportunity was past, now seemed the best. Men say that Laco, without Galba’s king, considered killing Titus Vinius, either to appease the angry spirits of the soldiers by his punishment or because he believed him privy to Otho’s plans, or finally simply because he hated him. Time and place, however, made him hesitate, because when once a massacre has been started, it is hard to check it; moreover his plan was upset by disturbing reports and by the defection of his closest adherents, since the enthusiasm of all who at first had been eager to exhibit their loyalty and spirit was now weakening.
40 1 Galba was swept to and fro by the various movements of the surging mob; crowds everywhere filled the public halls and temples, contemplating the grim spectacle. Neither the common people nor the rabble uttered a word, but their faces showed their terror and they turned their ears to catch every sound; there was no uproar, no quiet, but such a silence as accompanies great fear and great anger. Yet Otho received a report that the rabble was being armed; he ordered his adherents to go with all haste and anticipate the danger. So Roman soldiers rushed on as if they were going to drive a Vologaesus or a Pacorus from the ancestral throne of the Arsacidae and were not hurrying to slay their own emperor — an old man all unarmed. They thrust aside the rabble, trampled down senators; terrifying men by their arms, they burst into the forum at full gallop. Neither the sight of the Capitol nor the sanctity of the temples which towered above them, nor the thought of emperors past and to come, could deter them from committing a crime which any successor to the imperial power must punish.
41 1 When he saw the armed force close upon him, the standard-bearer of the cohort escorting Galba — it is said that his name was Atilius Vergilio — tore Galba’s portrait from the standard and threw it on the ground. This signal made the feeling of all the soldiers for Otho evident; the people fled and deserted the forum; if any hesitated, the troops threatened them with their weapons. It was near the Lacus Curtius that Galba was thrown from his chair and rolled on the ground by his panic-stricken carriers. His last words have been variously reported according to the hatred or admiration of individuals; some say that he asked in an appealing tone what harm he had done and begged for a few days to pay the donative; many report that he voluntarily offered his throat to the assassins, telling them to strike quickly, if such actions were for the state’s interest. His murderers cared nothing for what he said. About the actual assassin nothing certain is known: some say that he was one Terentius of the reserve forces, others that his name was Laecanius; a more common story is that a soldier of the Fifteenth legion, Camurius by name, pierced his throat with a thrust of his sword. The rest shamefully mutilated his legs and arms, for his breast was protected, and in their cruel savagery they continued to inflict many wounds on his body even after his head had been cut off.
42 1 Then they attacked Titus Vinius. In his case also there is a question whether his terror of instant death deprived him of speech or whether he cried out that Otho had not given orders for his death. He may have invented this statement in his fear, or he may have thus confessed his complicity in the plot; but his life and reputation incline us rather to believe that he was privy to the crime of which he was the cause. He fell in front of the temple of the deified Julius at the first blow, which struck him in the back of the knee; afterwards he was run clean through the body by a legionary, Julius Carus.
43 1 A noble hero on that day our own age beheld in the person of Sempronius Densus. He was a centurion of a praetorian cohort whom Galba had assigned to protect Piso; he drew his dagger, rushed to meet the armed men, upbraided them for their crime, and drawing the attention of the assassins to himself by act and word, gave Piso a chance to escape, although he was wounded. Piso fled into the temple of Vesta, where he was received through the pity of one of the public slaves who hid him in his chamber. It was the obscurity of his hiding-place and not some scruple about the sacred spot or its rites that delayed for a time the end that threatened him; but presently, despatched by Otho who was consumed with a desire for Piso’s death above all others, there arrived Sulpicius Florus of the British auxiliaries, recently enfranchised by Galba, and Statius Murcus of the bodyguard; these dragged Piso out and slew him at the door of the temple.
44 1 No other murder, according to report, gave Otho greater joy; on no other head did he gaze with such insatiable eyes. The reason may have been that now his mind was first free from anxiety and so open to joy, or else th
at in the case of Galba the memory of his treason, and in the case of Titus Vinius the recollection of his friendship, distressed with gloomy visions even his cruel mind; but over the murder of Piso, his enemy and rival, he thought it lawful and right to rejoice. The victims’ heads were displayed on poles among the standards of the cohorts side by side with the eagle of the legion, while those who had committed the murders, those who had been present, and those who, whether truly or falsely, boasted of their share in what they regarded as a splendid and memorable act, vied in exhibiting their bloody hands. More than one hundred and twenty petitions demanding rewards for some notable deed done that day were afterwards found by Vitellius; their authors he ordered to be hunted out and killed without exception, not that he wished to honour Galba, but he acted according to the traditional custom of emperors in thus securing protection for the time being and vengeance for the future.
45 1 The senate and the people seemed wholly changed: all rushed to the camp, striving to pass those next them and to overtake those before; they inveighed against Galba, praised the soldiers’ decision, covered Otho’s hand with kisses, the extravagance of their acts being in direct proportion to their falsity. Otho did not rebuff individuals, while he sought to check the eager and threatening temper of the soldiers by his words and look. They demanded for punishment Marius Celsus, consul elect, who had been Galba’s faithful friend even to the very end; for they hated his energy and upright character as if they were vicious qualities. It was clear that they wished to begin murder, plunder, and the destruction of every honest citizen, but Otho had not yet the influence to forbid crimes: he could, however, already order them. Therefore, pretending to be angry, he ordered the arrest of Celsus, and by declaring that he was to suffer punishment, saved him from immediate death.
46 1 The soldiers’ will was henceforth supreme. The praetorians chose their own prefects, — Plotius Firmus, formerly a common soldier, but later chief of the city police, and a partisan of Otho even while Galba lived; as his associate they gave him Licinius Proculus, whose intimacy with Otho made men suspect that he had favoured his plans. As Prefect of the City they selected Flavius Sabinus, thus following Nero’s choice, for Sabinus had held the same office under Nero, while many in doing so had an eye on his brother Vespasian. The troops also demanded that the payments usually made to centurions to secure furloughs should be abolished, since they amounted to an annual tax on the common soldiers. A quarter of each company would be away on furlough or loafing about the camp itself, provided the soldiers paid the centurion his price, and no one cared how the burden pressed on the soldiers or how they got their money; in reality it was through highway robbery, petty thieving, and by menial occupations that the soldiers purchased rest from military service. Moreover the richest soldiers would be cruelly assigned to the most fatiguing labour until they bought relief. Then, impoverished and demoralized by idleness, the soldier would return to his company poor instead of well-to-do and lazy instead of energetic; so ruined one after another by the same poverty and lack of discipline, they were ready to rush into mutiny and dissension, and finally into civil war. But Otho wished to avoid alienating the centurions by generosity to the rank and file, and so he promised that the imperial treasury should pay for the annual furloughs, a procedure which was undoubtedly useful and which later was established by good emperors as a fixed rule of the service. The prefect Laco, who had been ostensibly banished to an island, was assassinated by a retired soldier whom Otho had despatched to kill him. Marcianus Icelus, being only a freedman, was publicly executed.
47 1 The day was spent in crimes, and the worst evil was the joy felt over the crimes. The senate was called together by the city praetor; the other magistrates vied in flattery; the senators hurried to their places, and voted Otho the tribunitian power, the title Augustus, and all the honours granted the other emperors; for all did their best to blot out the memory of their former abuse and insults, nor did anyone discover to his sorrow that these random utterances had found lodgment in Otho’s mind; whether he had forgotten them or put off his vengeance his reign was to short to show. He was then carried through the heaps of dead bodies, first to the Capitol and then to the Palatine; after that he allowed the bodies to be given up for burial and burning. Piso was laid to rest by his wife Verania and his brother Scribonianus, Titus Vinius by his daughter Crispina, after they had discovered and redeemed their heads, which the assassins had kept for profit.
48 1 Piso was near the end of his thirty-first year; his reputation had been better than his fortune. His brother Magnus had been put to death by Claudius, his brother Crassus by Nero. He himself, long an exile, was Caesar for four days; the only advantage he gained over his elder brother by his hasty adoption was that he was killed before him. Titus Vinius lived fifty-seven years; his character varied at different times. His father was of a praetorian family, his maternal grandfather one of the proscribed. He had disgraced himself in his first military service under the legate Calvisius Sabinus, whose wife, prompted by a shameful desire to see the camp, entered it at night disguised as a soldier. After she had interfered with the guard and the other soldiers on duty with unfailing effrontery, she had the hardihood to commit adultery in the general’s headquarters. Titus Vinius was charged with complicity in this crime and therefore was ordered by Caligula to be heavily loaded with chains. Later, when times changed, he was released; and then, advancing in office without interruption, he was appointed to the command of a legion after he had been praetor; and though he won success in this position, he later smirched his reputation by an act worthy of a slave; for he was charged with stealing a golden cup at a dinner given by Claudius, so that the next day Claudius ordered Vinius alone to be served with earthenware. But as proconsul of Gallia Narbonensis, Vinius ruled his province with strictness and honesty. Later, through friendship with Galba he was carried to a dangerous height. He was bold, cunning, efficient, wicked or virtuous, according to his inclination at the time; but he always showed the same vigour. His great riches made his will void, but Piso’s poverty secured the fulfilment of his last wishes.
49 1 Galba’s body was long neglected and abused with a thousand insults under the licence of darkness. Finally Argius, his steward, one of his former slaves, gave it humble burial in his master’s private garden. Galba’s head, which had been fixed on a pole and maltreated by camp-followers and servants, was finally found the next day before the tomb of Petrobius — he was one of Nero’s freedmen whom Galba had punished — and was placed with the body which had already been burned. This was the end of Servius Galba. He had lived seventy-three years, through the reigns of five emperors, with good fortune, and he was happier under the rule of others than in his own. His family was of the ancient nobility and possessed great wealth. Galba himself was of mediocre genius, being rather free from faults than possessing virtues. He was neither careless of reputation nor one who cared to boast of it. He was not greedy for another’s property; he was frugal with his own, stingy with the state’s. Kindly and complacent toward friends and freedmen, if he found them honest; if they were dishonest, he was blind even to a fault. But his high birth and the terror which the times inspired masked the truth, so that men called wisdom what was really indolence. While he was vigorous physically, he enjoyed a reputation for his military service in the German provinces. As proconsul he governed Africa with moderation and, when he was already an old man, ruled Hither Spain with the same uprightness. He seemed too great to be a subject so long as he was subject, and all would have agreed that he was equal to the imperial office if he had never held it.
50 1 Rome was in a state of excitement and horror-stricken not only at the recent outrageous crime, but also at the thought of Otho’s former character. Now it was terrified in addition by news with regard to Vitellius, which had been suppressed before Galba’s death, so that the citizens believed that only the army of Upper Germany had mutinied. Then the thought that two men, the worst in the world for their shamelessness, indolen
ce, and profligacy, had been apparently chosen by fate to ruin the empire, caused open grief not only to the senators and knights who had some share and interest in the state, but even to the common people. Their talk was no longer of the recent horrors of a bloody peace, but they recalled memories of the civil wars and spoke of the many times the city had been captured by Roman armies, of the devastation of Italy, of the plundering of the provinces, of Pharsalia, Philippi, Perusia, and Mutina, names notorious for public disaster. They said that the world had been well-nigh overturned, even when the principate was the prize of honest men; but yet the empire had remained when Julius Caesar won, and had likewise remained when Augustus won; the republic would have remained if Pompey and Brutus had been successful; but now — should they go to the temples to pray for an Otho or a Vitellius? Prayers for either would be impious and vows for either detestable when, in the struggle between the two, the only thing of which men were certain was that the victor would be the worse. There were some who had forebodings of Vespasian and the armies in the East, and yet although Vespasian was a better man than Otho or Vitellius, they shuddered at another war and another massacre. Indeed Vespasian’s reputation was uncertain; he, unlike all his predecessors, was the only emperor who was changed for the better by his office.
Complete Works of Tacitus (Delphi Classics) (Delphi Ancient Classics Book 24) Page 18