2

The Five Days’ Caesar

On 9 January a fast messenger arrived at the palace in Rome from Pompeius Propinquus, financial secretary of the province of Belgian Gaul, whose headquarters were at Trier on the Mosel. He brought with him grave news. On the morning of I January, at the military parade at which—at Mainz as at every other military station throughout the empire—the soldiers’ annual oath * of loyalty was to be renewed, the Fourth and Twenty-Second Legions, who were encamped together, had refused to swear allegiance to Galba. There had recently been mutterings against him. If one Spanish legion could make an emperor, why could not seven German ones? It was intolerable that Galba had punished the Gallic tribes who had opposed the rebel Vindex and shown favour to the supporters of the man whom they themselves had defeated and crushed at Besançon. Nor, by all accounts, did the new emperor promise to be an easy chief. He belonged to the old school. He was a martinet and a stickler for the regulations. What was more, he had probably engineered in the autumn the death of the popular and easygoing governor of Lower Germany, Fonteius Capito. To crown all, their own candidate for the empire, Verginius Rufus, had had to give way, as general officer commanding the Upper Rhine, to the gouty and feeble Hordeonius Flaccus.⁹

On this occasion the general and his legionary commanders had taken up their position as usual on a raised tribunal, surrounded by the eagles and standards before which—and before the emperor’s statue—the oath was to be administered. Flaccus had had to look on helplessly as a party of activists from the Fourth Legion rushed the platform. Four centurions of the Twenty-Second Legion, whose loyalty was at first less undermined, tried to protect it, but were overwhelmed in the stampede and hustled off to confinement. The statue was overturned, the portrait medallions torn from the standards, and a chaos ensued in which some of the officers joined. Eventually the troops did take the oath, not to Galba, but to the Senate and People of Rome—a convenient political slogan already employed by Vindex, Verginius Rufus and Galba himself. It perhaps meant little, and certainly invited the nomination of a candidate to be retrospectively accepted by the authorities in Rome. At this stage no name had emerged, and no one attempted to harangue the troops.

Later that day the officers of the two legions had held a secret emergency meeting.* It seemed necessary to take urgent steps to prevent a complete breakdown of discipline and the risk of civil war. It was shown that the upper army would have none of Galba. Hordeonius Flaccus was out of the question. The obvious remaining candidate was the officer governing Lower Germany, Aulus Vitellius. But there were differences of opinion on this, too. Vitellius was scarcely known, and though he seemed to have made a favourable impression on his own men in the short month since taking up his command, it was impossible to judge his qualifications for empire. But the commander of the Fourth, Caecina Alienus, who had his own reasons for disliking Galba, came out strongly in favour of an approach to Vitellius, and though the meeting had come to no clear decision, he had secretly sent off the standard-bearer of his legion to carry the news of the revolt against Galba to Vitellius at Cologne.

Of Aulus Caecina Alienus we know little beyond what the history of the Long Year tells us. He belonged, like the commander at Bonn, Fabius Valens, to a type of army officer afflicted by political or rather personal ambitions not easily satisfied by the slow advancement of a regular army career. He was born at Vicenza in northern Italy, and in April 68, as we have seen, was financial secretary of the province of Southern Spain and as such had quickly rallied to Galba. In the summer or autumn he was rewarded with the command of the Fourth (Macedonian) Legion. But almost immediately his past caught up with him. Galba, it seemed, had given orders, not yet executed, for his prosecution on the charge of having misappropriated public funds, a weakness not to the liking of the new emperor. The alleged offence had presumably been committed in Spain, and was perhaps revealed when his books were examined by his successor there; but whatever the details, Caecina had a strong motive for swapping allegiance at speed.

His aquilifer covered the 120 miles rapidly and entered Cologne after dusk on the same day at an hour when Vitellius was entertaining a large and distinguished company to a New Year dinner. The governor had to come to an immediate decision on a situation for which he was not perhaps entirely unprepared. It is hard to resist the suspicion that he had already been tentatively sounded by the two men who were to figure so prominently in his future reign, Caecina Alienus and Fabius Valens. But now the fateful decision was his. He must either countenance, or else crush, a scandalous breach of loyalty to the reigning emperor. The oath of allegiance to the Senate and People was a transparent fiction. The safest thing, he considered, would be to report the events in a neutral tone to his legionary commanders in Lower Germany and await their reaction. He could then declare himself one way or the other. Power and privilege had some attractions for the impoverished Vitellius; but they were not overwhelming.

But of these calculations Pompeius Propinquus’ messenger could know nothing. All he could report to Rome was that the legions of Upper Germany had broken their oath of loyalty, inviting thereby a change of emperor. Pompeius had acted immediately on hearing the news. His messenger was instructed to use the utmost speed in this calamitous situation. In eight days he covered 1,000 miles, posting along the main roads that connected Trier, Besancçon, the Great St Bernard, Milan and Rome.*

Galba’s reaction was equally prompt. He was anxious, if not unduly alarmed, about the recalcitrance of the two legions, and could know nothing of the length to which the Rhineland plots had gone. He was in no position to repel an invasion of Italy. His troops in the capital were a mixed bunch of drafts of varying quality, and he had already sent off the formation in which he could have fully trusted, VII Galbiana,* dispatched under its enterprising commander Antonius Primus to Petronell on the Danube to take the place of the Tenth, transferred to Spain. It was clearly high time to put into operation a move which he had been contemplating in recent weeks: the public adoption of an heir, a co-Caesar, selected and trained to take over power whenever the moment came. This was how Augustus had proclaimed Tiberius his heir and presumptive successor ten years before his own death, and in A.D. 14 power had passed smoothly to the new emperor. For Galba the choice was not difficult. Gossips believed that Otho was the obvious candidate, and Otho shared their view. He was backed by the emperor’s consular colleague, Titus Vinius, who may have hoped to marry off his daughter to Otho. But Galba, though grateful for the support of the governor of Lusitania in the early days, could see flaws of character:* the man was designing, selfish, a spendthrift, a popularity-hunter. He wore a wig, put scent on his feet and on the march to Rome it was suspected that he studied his appearance in a mirror, like an actor in his dressing-room. No, it was little use having inherited power from Nero if this were to pass to Otho. The name of another possible candidate had been canvassed: Cornelius Dolabella came of a famous line and was closely connected with Galba. But the emperor thought little of Dolabella’s prudence, though the latter’s status was high enough to earn him exile at the hands of Otho and death at the bidding of Vitellius.

The tenth day of January was an unpleasantly stormy day, pronounced of ill omen by those who were wise after the event: there was thunder, and lightning filled a sullen sky. But idle superstition meant nothing to Galba. He summoned a privy council consisting of Vinius, Laco, Ducenius Geminus, prefect of the city and ex-officio commander of the Urban Cohorts, and finally of one of the consuls designate, the excellent and loyal Marius Celsus * who managed to serve—and survive—a succession of emperors. After a few remarks on his advancing years and childlessness, and the need for a young heir, Galba summoned his choice. The great secret was revealed. A thirty-year-old man was presented: Lucius Calpurnius Piso Licinianus, the next emperor, it seemed, of the Romans.

He came of an unlucky line. He was the fourth son of Marcus Licinius Crassus Frugi, consul in 27 under Tiberius and crony of Claudius, who honoured him with triumphal ornaments and the pontificate, and then executed him together with one of his sons. Another brother had died a year or so before 69 as victim of Nero. A third survived Nero and the Long Year to share the family fate a little later, probably in 70 and at the command of Mucianus. His sister was married to the Piso who was governor of Africa in 69/70 and who despite his extreme caution was to be assassinated by a military colleague anxious to curry favour with the new régime. Piso himself, Galba’s choice, had been exiled by Nero. Such a grim record of persecution and extermination argues family pretentions and prominence dangerous under suspicious rulers; names too famous—and descent on the maternal side from the great Pompey, on the paternal from the great Crassus—proved a damnable inheritance under Julians and Flavians alike.

The young man’s appearance was presentable, even handsome; his demeanour was modest; and nothing was known against his character. In January 69 he enjoyed the considerable advantage of having been one of Nero’s victims, not, like Otho, one of his favourites, for that emperor had had him denounced by the notorious informer, Regulus, no doubt in connection with the witch-hunt that followed the conspiracy of 65. On coming to power, Galba had brought him back to Rome from exile and as supreme pontiff had given him what often accompanied office, and now served as a substitute for it, a priesthood. It was not generally known that Piso was already named in Galba’s will as his private heir.* The emperor now took the young man by the hand in token of intent to give him public and political adoption, offering some sensible advice on the tasks that lay ahead. ‘You are called,’ he said, ‘to be the leader of a people that can tolerate neither total servitude nor total liberty.’ Tiberius, in Galba’s youth, had said the same thing more brutally: being emperor was like holding a wolf by the ears. The advice given, the privy council offered their congratulations, taking the consent of Senate and People for granted. Piso, it was noted with approval, betrayed no indications of elation now or afterwards. He addressed his adoptive father and sovereign in respectful language, and gave the impression of being competent, rather than eager, to be emperor. Piso was clearly a man after Galba’s own heart, possessing old-fashioned virtues which Rome had not seen in its rulers for many a day. Even now we cannot deny that, if fortune had allowed him survival, he might have gone down in history as one of the ‘good emperors’. His lack of political experience, inevitable in a young man and an exile, would have been rectified by office and time.

The selection of Piso as heir and presumptive emperor was then announced in the Praetorian barracks, earlier than in the Senate. This attempt to placate the restless Guard was not entirely unsuccessful. Beneath a leaden sky, Galba delivered a prepared speech of military brevity, saying that in adopting a successor outside his own family and the circle of his military men, he was following, indeed improving upon, the example set by Augustus in his choice of Tiberius. To stop exaggerated rumours, he openly admitted that the Mainz legions had failed to swear fealty, but added that this was merely a matter of words: they would soon return to duty. Unfortunately, there was still no mention of a donative. Despite this curt and unaccommodating announcement, the officers and front ranks cheered. Those who did not needed only a token inducement to join in. No such inducement was offered.

Piso was then presented to the Senate in an equally brief ceremony, and received a warm welcome, much of it genuine, some of it perfunctory. He was now officially Servius Sulpicius Galba Caesar, son of Augustus, and in honour of his adoption under this name (which, however, owing to the briefness of his reign appears in no other extant source), the minute book of the dutiful Brethren of the Fields notes the inevitable sacrifice upon the Capitol to Jupiter, Minerva and the well-being of Rome. The oxen were slaughtered to no purpose. Piso’s reign was to last just five days. His record is brief—and good.

These events were a severe shock to Otho. As one of the first provincial governors to support Galba in the spring of 68, as one familiar—though at the distance of ten years’ exile in Lusitania—with Roman society, a member of a family distinguished for public service (his father had been greatly honoured by Claudius), with a good record as a provincial governor and of an easy and affable manner, he had believed it inevitable that he would be chosen to succeed on the death of the elderly stop-gap. Looking ahead, Otho had already ingratiated himself with Galba’s Praetorians, both on the march to Rome and now in the capital, as men recollected afterwards. He had secured the friendship of Plotius Firmus, commander of the Watch, and his methods of corruption were enterprising. For instance, a member of the emperor’s bodyguard, Cocceius Proculus, happened to be in dispute with a neighbour over part of the latter’s land: Otho bought up the whole of the neighbour’s farm and presented it to Proculus as a gift.

Until 10 January, he seems to have had no inkling of the great disappointment to come. Yet without realizing it, he had by now ceased to belong to the inner circle of Galba’s advisers. His reaction to the choice of Piso makes this conclusion inevitable. Otho’s repugnance for civil war, revealed in the coming months, makes it likely that he would never have sought the principate if Galba had revealed to him the increasingly serious news from Germany. Otho was not the man to advance knowingly into a head-on confrontation with the most powerful and coherent army group in the Roman empire. In ignorance of the danger from outside Italy, he had eyes only for the preservation of his career in the capital. He was thirty-six years old, the new Caesar thirty. This similarity in age, no less than their difference in character, was such as to render an eventual succession in the last degree improbable, even if Otho could wait so long. For their own reasons his followers played upon his mortification, and even persuaded him that his life might be in danger. With these alarmist suggestions Otho half agreed: they salved his conscience. In a fit of pique and desperation, he decided upon a gambler’s throw—all or nothing. Galba was old, Piso as yet untried and unknown. He, Otho, would strike hard and strike at once. If the treason succeeded, he would be emperor. If not, there was always a quick way out.

Otho put his confidential freedman Onomastus in charge of the plot, and the latter produced two non-commissioned officers of the imperial bodyguard, whom by careful sounding Otho found to be both competent and unscrupulous. They were handsomely bribed, and given money for bribing others. The men, Veturius and Proculus (their names survive, carefully consigned to eternal infamy), played upon the anger and anxiety of those of the Praetorians who were disgruntled at Galba’s tightening of discipline, greedy for the donative or fearful of being under a cloud as supporters of the unsuccessful putsch of Nymphidius Sabinus in 68. A few were let into the inner counsels of the plot. Some attempt was also made to seduce all the scattered legionary detachments and auxiliary regiments. Early in January, for reasons that cannot be unconnected with his suspicion of Otho, Galba had cashiered two tribunes of the Praetorian Guard, and a tribune each of the paramilitary Urban Cohorts and Watch, respectively Aemilius Pacensis and Julius Fronto. One of the cashiered Praetorian tribunes, Lucius Antonius Naso, must certainly have stood well in Otho’s esteem. An inscription found at Baalbek tells us that he had already had an honourable and lengthy military career. Decorated by Nero as a company commander in two legions, he had been senior company commander of a third, staff officer of a fourth, and had then been given a cohort of the Watch and in succession two Urban Cohorts. Now, by January 69, he was in command of the Ninth Praetorian Cohort. As a reward for his support of Otho he was destined to be advanced to the command of a good fighting formation, the Fourteenth Legion. Whatever the part played by Naso in the complicated activities of this legion in our year, he continued his career unimpeded by the changes of emperor. Still to come were the posts of tribune of the First Cohort of Praetorians and an imperial secretaryship in the Anatolian province of Pontus and Bithynia. As late as 77 or 78, another stone (from Bursa in that province) records his road-building activities in the neighbourhood. That Galba had thought it necessary to discharge a man of this calibre shows that Otho could rely on some solid support among the Praetorians. The sequel, indeed, was to prove it. As Plutarch remarks (and perhaps read in his Roman source), ‘a loyal army could not have been corrupted in four days, which was the extent of the interval between the adoption and the assassination’. Less certain is the suspicion that Titus Vinius was implicated. Though a friend of Otho, he had received the signal honour of sharing the consulship with the emperor, and he had little to gain by treachery that loyalty had not already secured him. He opposed advice that proved fatal to Galba on 15 January, and his own death (given high priority in the instructions to the assassins) might seem to attest his innocence. But Vinius gets hostile treatment in our sources. He was perhaps selected by the Othonian pamphleteers for the role of Galba’s evil genius, a propaganda stroke by which they hoped to excuse the Othonian treason and account for Vinius’ perhaps unintended death.¹⁰

But the numbers involved in the conspiracy were not great, and Tacitus may be forgiven his sally: ‘Two ordinary soldiers took it upon themselves to award the Roman Empire to a usurper: and they succeeded.’ A wild idea to carry Otho off from a banquet on 11 January in order to be declared emperor in the barracks was rightly scotched by Onomastus. He proved to be a good organizer. On 15 January * Otho was to stay by the emperor’s side until the very last minute, find a pretext for leaving him when all was ready, move to the Praetorian barracks and make a bid for the support of the guards as a whole. If this succeeded, it would be easy to surround the palace, and, to make assurance doubly sure, key accomplices had been found in the very cohort that would be on duty there at the time. No speedy or effective intervention was likely from the legionaries and auxiliaries scattered through Rome in temporary quarters; in any case they hardly rivalled the Praetorian Guard in strength or prestige. And seizing the barracks had an additional and vital advantage. Arms were not normally worn by troops within the city; their issue in an emergency would take time, and indeed the principal armoury of Rome lay precisely within the area of the Praetorian barracks. If Otho dominated these, he dominated Rome, and Galba—at any rate temporarily—would be helpless.

At dawn on 15 January a ceremony took place at the altar before the Temple of Apollo on the Palatine, most commonly, but not beyond dispute, identified with a shrine on the south-west flank of the hill overlooking the Circus Maximus. Servius Sulpicius Galba, Emperor Caesar Augustus Pontifex Maximus, was performing his morning sacrifice. He was no doubt attended by his suite, and certainly by Otho himself. When the court diviner Gaius Umbricius Melior examined the lobes and markings of the liver of the victim, he prophesied doom: a plot was imminent, the traitor was within the gates. Otho, standing immediately behind Galba, overheard the prophecy, and was as much delighted by a prediction that seemed to promise success to himself as others were alarmed by the menace to their emperor. A few minutes later, Onomastus appeared and whispered to Otho: ‘The architect and contractors are waiting for you at home.’ This was the prearranged code message indicating that the moment had come, and that a party of troops was waiting to take Otho from the north-west end of the Forum Romanum, where their presence would evoke no comment, to the Praetorian barracks. As Otho made to move away, someone said, ‘Why are you going?’ Otho had his reply ready: he was proposing to buy some decayed property, which had to be surveyed before the deal was complete. Then without impediment he slipped to the rear of the temple, hurried along beside the Palace of Tiberius by the 150-foot gallery where Nero’s stucco putti looked down upon him, descended to the rear of the Basilica Julia and from there passed in a moment to the Golden Milestone near the Temple of Saturn. From this cylinder of marble faced with gilded bronze, centre of the civilized world, departed all the great roads of an empire studded with its humbler and more functional brethren. For Otho, too, this was a beginning. He must follow his road to a new and unknown destination.¹¹

But on reaching the Miliarum Aureum he was appalled by the fewness of the troops awaiting him. They were twenty-three speculatores, members of the imperial bodyguard. Still, they saluted him briskly as Imperator, quickly placed him in a closed chair, drew their swords and carried him away. Otho himself was on tenterhooks with anxiety, repeatedly urging on the bearers: unless they hurried, all would be lost. A somewhat greater number joined in with the party while it was in the Forum or else further on the way—some in the know, many bewildered, a few shouting and flourishing their swords, others in silence, prudently. The officer on duty at the barracks was the tribune Julius Martialis. Whether he lost his nerve when confronted with an inconceivable coup, or whether he was an accomplice of the mutineers, no one was ever able to discover. What is certain is that he—and the other officers present—offered no resistance. Nobody knew for certain the extent and ramifications of the movement, and there was no individual who had the resolution to challenge the determined little band of plotters. Gradually, at first in ones and twos, compelled by the rebels that surrounded them, then contagiously in a growing stream, sheeplike, afraid to be left behind, the other ranks joined the men gathered round Otho. The pretender greeted each newcomer with a handshake. When general support seemed assured, he climbed on to a platform, from which the ceremonial golden statue of Galba had been hastily removed, and against a background of massed flags and standards acknowledged the plaudits of his men, less like an emperor than a popular entertainer. He raised his hands in acknowledgement of the applause of the audience, bowed to the mob, and even threw kisses to them, aping the servant in order to become the master. His inflammatory speech dwelt heavily upon Galba’s failure to pay the promised bounty, his severity and the undue influence of his inner clique of advisers. It was plausibly argued, well delivered and received with acclaim. The armoury was then opened at Otho’s order and weapons hastily distributed. Preparations were made to occupy key points in the city.

Meanwhile, at the altar of Apollo, Galba continued to pray to the gods of an empire no longer his. Suddenly news came that a senator of unknown identity was being conducted by an armed retinue to the Praetorian barracks. After a while the man was identified as Otho. So this was a coup d’état. Galba consulted his immediate entourage. It seemed advisable that Piso should explore the loyalty of the Praetorian cohort on duty at the palace. He addressed a parade in sensible language, stressing the unsuitability of Otho as an emperor and the Praetorian tradition of loyalty to the sovereign and concluding with an undertaking that the long-delayed donative would now be paid. The speech was well enough received,* and preparations were made for the emergency, though precisely what action to take was less obvious, and the elite of the cohort, the speculatores, had slipped away, evidently to join Otho or carry out some traitorous task assigned to them. A second step was to probe the attitude of the motley collection of troops scattered in the city. The faithful Marius Celsus, who had commanded a legion years before, was sent off to the drafts called up by Nero from the Danube armies and brought back by him to Rome at the time of the Vindex crisis in March 68. They were bivouacked among the cloistered laurels of the Portico of Agrippa, a mile to the north, on the east side of Broad Street beyond the aqueduct. But here Onomastus and his officers had done their work well. The men had hoped to serve Nero in the East. They declared for Nero’s one-time friend, and drove Celsus away at the point of the pilum. Three Praetorian cohort commanders—one at least, Subrius Dexter, survived the year and turns up as governor of Sardinia in 74—had a more difficult task. They were dispatched upon the desperate, and, as it proved, hopeless, errand of seeing if the situation in the barracks could be retrieved. Subrius and one other were greeted with threats, and the third, a known friend of Galba, roughly handled and put under close arrest. Nearer at hand, Liberty Hall behind the Senate House served as quarters for the contingents from the armies of Germany. Two centurions sent to approach them found these forces less hostile, for Galba had given them considerate treatment as a recompense for enduring the agonies of boredom and seasickness entailed by the useless winter voyage to and from Egypt. But even these troops were divided in their sympathies. After all, they came from formations in an area which seemed to be supporting neither Galba nor Otho, but Vitellius, and owing to their proximity to the palace, some individuals among them had been given special instructions by Onomastus. As for the naval legion, quartered we know not where—perhaps by the lake in the grounds of Nero’s abandoned Golden House—Galba’s rough treatment of it on his arrival in Rome had successfully killed its loyalty. To this formation no approach was made. It was a pity that the Seventh had been sent off. As it was, Galba seemed to have only a handful of men upon whom he could call.¹²

It was some little time before the forlorn envoys returned to announce failure. They were surprised to find a mood of jubilation in and around the palace. In the interval a mob, alerted by the strange passage of Otho to the barracks, had gathered in the Forum and even within the palace grounds on the hill, vociferous, buoyant and surprisingly pro-Galban. They clamoured for Otho’s head. Within the palace itself, the emperor was still closeted with Piso, Vinius, Laco and Icelus, debating his course of action. The council of war was split. Vinius held that the Palatine Hill should be defended until the mutineers had had time—and such things had happened more than once before—to come to their senses and return to duty. It would still be possible to venture out if the situation improved, but a premature exit might jeopardize everything irremediably. Critics of Galba’s reign later alleged that Vinius was implicated in the plot. We have seen that this is improbable. His advice now was good, though he can hardly have known how good. Even with some inkling of the activities of Otho and Onomastus, he could not have foreseen the crucial synchronisms. But the pompous Laco, with Icelus’ support, pooh-poohed the danger and asserted that honour and fortitude demanded a bold front and a confident appearance in public. In this they had a telling argument. Galba valued duty more highly than life, and a long career might well have taught him that courage in a crisis was the policy of success. With a friendly public around him and protected by a cohort believed to be loyal, Galba could surely risk encountering a few mutineers. Whatever else he was or was not, Galba was not a coward, and it seems that Piso agreed with his adoptive father. Now, after his apparent success with the Palatine cohort, the young Caesar was given the chance of trying his persuasive powers and the prestige of his rank upon the main body of the Praetorians in their barracks. Galba had sent his officers in vain. He was now sending his son. In the last resort he would face the men himself.

Soon after Piso left the palace, Othonian agents planted in the Forum spread the bogus report that the pretender had been killed. Then certain individuals claimed to have witnessed his death. At this point, it seems, some senators and knights burst open the palace gates and poured on Galba a torrent of congratulation. The multitude everywhere lapped up the pleasant news. Finally one of the imperial bodyguard, Julius Atticus, obviously acting a part, came in to the now crowded palace and called out to Galba that he had done the deed himself, flourishing a blood-stained sword as if that were proof. He did not know his Galba. The emperor’s retort was immediate and incisive: ‘And who gave you the order, my man?’ The remark was relished by the retailers of anecdotes. But Galba, however anxious to preserve military discipline, had not bothered, or was not able, to interrogate the braggart more closely, nor had he reckoned with Onomastus’ cunning. It seemed that Otho was dead and that Piso’s mission had been unnecessary. Galba put on a light protective garment and had himself carried in the imperial litter through the clapping and jubilant throng on his way, not now to face the mutineers in the barracks, but to express thanks for deliverance to the god who punishes traitors and guarantees the life of Rome.

The emperor had not reached the Forum when Piso met him with bad news. Celsus too returned with information of his failure. As hope faded and Otho’s control of the barracks was confirmed, chaos set in among Galba’s followers. Laco and many of the loud-mouthed champions quietly melted away. But for Galba himself there was no going back now. The euphoria of the mob or its uncertainty, flowing this way and that, swept the litter and its occupant irresistibly forward into the scuffling press of bodies in the piazza. The guards appeared to be useless. Galba was carried this way and that, the helpless victim of adulation and treachery. Yet the mob was strangely quiet. Their faces bore a look of vague bewilderment, their ears were strained to catch the latest rumour. There was no shouting, only an indistinct murmurous rumour of expectation, neither fearful nor angry. Those who looked on from the podia of the temples seemed to be spectators at a show that was about to begin, as if the Forum were a circus or a theatre.

Galba had made his slow progress past the little round Temple of Vesta, moving to the north-west end of the square whence the road led up to the Capitol. By the seventh arch of the Basilica Julia he was close to the Basin of Curtius, that spot of many legends almost in the middle of the Forum, where, by a monumental well-head, a fig tree, an olive and a vine provided loungers in the piazza with welcome shade. A body of cavalry appeared to the right, in the opening of the Argiletum alongside the Senate House. They were Praetorians, but Galba noticed that they were improperly dressed. Then through the columns of the Basilica Aemilia there emerged infantry. These must have been men of the drafts from Germany, quartered just behind. They had clearly been waiting their moment. The cavalry, Praetorian or auxiliary, charged across the Forum, driving their way through high and low, making a desolation. The crowd scattered before them towards the balcony of the Basilica Julia, or the steps of the Temples of Castor, Saturn, Julius Caesar and Concord, deities now condemned to contemplate impassively an unarmed old man, a consul, a pontifex maximus, an emperor, murdered without warning or mercy by his own guards. The litter stood isolated. The cavalry paused. Then Atilius Vergilio (so most authorities say), an ensign of the cohort which should have protected Galba, ripped the medallion carrying the emperor’s effigy from the pole of his standard and dashed it to the ground. This was the prearranged gesture to which Otho, in his speech at the barracks, had made reference in the words, ‘When the cohort on the Palatine catches sight of you, when it receives my signal, you will know that all the troops are with you. The only struggle that awaits you is a competition to see who can earn my deepest gratitude.’¹³

The nature of this competition was now revealed: it was to select the speediest assassins. First some pila were hurled by the infantry at the litter, but they missed it. Then the men drew their swords, obeying the familiar drill of battle. But this time there was no danger. One soldier alone on Galba’s side did his duty—Sempronius Densus, a Praetorian centurion who accompanied the little group as Piso’s personal bodyguard. He stood in front of Galba’s litter and raising his centurion’s vine rod shouted to the advancing infantry to spare their emperor.They tried to push past him. He then drew his pugio and entirely unaided engaged Galba’s assailants for some time until he was brought to the ground by a knee-blow and killed.

During the scuffle the bearers had set down their burden in a panic, and had fled. The chair was overturned in the confusion, and Galba was thrown to the ground, sprawling. He offered his throat to the assassins, telling them to get the business over quickly: ‘Strike—if this is what is best for Rome.’ A soldier of the Fifteenth Legion from Vetera (if the usual version is right) thrust his sword deep into Galba’s throat. Others hacked at the unprotected arms and legs in a frenzy. Vinius quickly suffered a similar fate. In front of the Temple of Julius Caesar, he was struck by a blow on the back of the knee and transfixed from side to side by a legionary. As for Piso, the heroic resistance of Sempronius Densus had given him time to cover the 100 yards to the Temple of Vesta, where he hoped to find sanctuary. But the goddess of the eternal fire, whose life typified Rome’s own life, no more protected him than she had the Pontifex Maximus, Quintus Mucius Scaevola, 150 years before. The temple officer, a state slave, took pity on Piso and concealed him in a tiny room, perhaps the penus in which the sacred Palladium was kept. But two of Otho’s men had been detailed to dispatch his hated rival. One was Sulpicius Florus, member of an auxiliary cohort serving in Britain who had just been given Roman citizenship by Galba. The other was the imperial bodyguard, Statius Murcus. Even assassins have their scruples. They dragged Piso out and murdered him at the door of the temple. So perished violently Servius Sulpicius Galba, sixth emperor of Rome, his heir Piso and his fellow-consul Vinius.¹⁴

The bodies of Galba, Piso and Vinius were decapitated, and the heads carried to the barracks to be displayed to Otho. They were then impaled and paraded round the square in a grisly procession backed by the cohort standards of the Praetorians and the legionary eagle of the marine legion. A number of men claimed without justification the merit of participating in the slaughter, and demanded a prize for an infamy they had not achieved. Indeed, it is said that more than 120 petitions demanding a reward for some ‘service’ on 15 January later fell into the hands of Vitellius.

The mob and some magistrates now hastily made their way to the barracks, where Otho awaited the issue of the day, and lavished on the new master the compliments with which, a few hours before, they had been so free towards the old. Among those who presented themselves the most considerable was Marius Celsus, a loyal supporter of Galba to the last and consul designate for July and August according to that emperor’s dispositions. The troops, or some of them, were aware of his appeal to the Danubian contingents to defend Galba, and demanded his execution, a request which Otho properly and successfully resisted by alleging that Celsus must first be interrogated. He thus managed to save, and soon publicly honoured, a man of character and integrity, qualities of which the new régime stood sorely in need. Fresh Praetorian prefects, Plotius Firmus and Licinius Proculus, were chosen by the troops themselves, and Flavius Sabinus, the elder brother of Vespasian, was given the prefecture of the city, a position which he had already held for many years under Nero. This appointment was judicious: it seems to have been designed to win the support of Vespasian and yet maintain a link with Nero. Demands for reforms in the military regulations were voiced, and in due course amendments were made, and indeed retained as beneficial by later emperors. The ex-prefect Laco, who had made himself scarce during the confusion in the Forum, was given the impression that he would be exiled, but Otho arranged for him to be put to death. Icelus the freedman was publicly executed on the spot.

Then the Senate met at the summons of the city praetor, both consuls being dead. Otho made a speech in the chamber seeking to exculpate himself by claiming that he had been made emperor willy-nilly by the troops; and a subservient Senate—what else could it do?—hastened to award him the imperial titles of Imperator Caesar Augustus. Motions were passed recommending him for the consulship, the enjoyment of tribunician power, and the post of Pontifex Maximus. These three still lay theoretically in the gift of the Roman people, and formal elections were necessary. They are alluded to in the minutes of the Brethren of the Fields under the respective dates 26 January, 28 February and 9 March. It will be observed that Otho was apparently in no mood to hurry on the formalities. The reasons for this caution may become apparent as our narrative proceeds.

From the Senate House Otho passed across the Forum to the Capitol, presumably for the mockery of invoking Jupiter’s blessing upon the day’s work, and thence along the Basilica Julia and Nero’s Colonnade to the Clivus Palatinus that gave access to the palace. The headless bodies of Piso, Vinius and Galba still lay where they had fallen. The new emperor gave permission for the relatives of the former two to bury their dead. Titus Vinius’ body was carried away by his daughter Crispina, whose name had once been linked by gossips with Otho’s. Piso was laid to rest by his widow Verania Gemina, daughter of the distinguished soldier Quintus Veranius, who had been governor of Britain from 57 and had died there the following year. Visitors to the Terme Museum in Rome may read the simple and dignified inscription, handsomely lettered, of a grave altar erected by her in quieter times and completed at her own death thirty years later:

TO THE DIVINE SPIRIT

OF L. CALPURNIUS PISO

FRUGI LICINIANUS

MEMBER OF THE COMMITTEE OF 15 IN CHARGE OF SACRIFICES

AND OF VERANIA

DAUGHTER OF Q. VERANIUS CONSUL AND AUGUR

GEMINA

WIFE OF PISO FRUGI

There is no mention here of ’Caesar’, of old unhappy things of long ago; but the brief description of Piso as member of a sacred college recalled the whole grim story to the observer. The stone, with two others relating to the Crassus family, was found in 1884 in a sepulchral chamber on the Via Salaria between the Colline and Salarian Gates, in the grounds of the former Villa Bonaparte. Both Crispina and Verania had been compelled to search for the heads and pay a ransom for them.

As for Galba, he had no wife or family to care for his remains. The truncated body lay disregarded for many hours, and perhaps in the darkness ghoulish marauders offered it further outrage. Finally, by means not entirely clear, it was buried in a humble grave in the grounds of Galba’s villa on the Via Aurelia, on the western outskirts of Rome. The head had been impaled like the others, and was found next day in front of the tomb of a creature of Nero’s sentenced by Galba. It was then laid to rest with the ashes of the body which had already been cremated.

Grisly as these details are for modern readers, they were even more shocking to the ancient observer. Dignity in death and burial was if anything more important than decorum in life and action. The events of 15 January provided, and provide, a painful example of the ease with which an inhuman barbarity could without warning shatter the fragile façade of order, loyalty and decency which Rome claimed as her peculiar qualities.

The judgment of historians upon Galba has been too often determined by the brilliant but superficial obituary notice—a concatenation of artful antitheses—which in Tacitus immediately follows the account of the emperor’s cremation and burial. It concludes with a forced and famous epigram: ‘So long as he was a subject, he seemed too great a man to be one, and by common consent possessed the makings of a ruler—had he never ruled’: omnium consensu capax imperii, nisi imperasset. The Roman historian has the weakness that he is not only seduced by epigram but given to post eventum condemnation. It is assuredly a fault to allow oneself to be assassinated in a palace conspiracy: it shows ignorance and recklessness. But the lapse tells us little about the victim’s qualities as man and emperor. Our questions relate to the life, not the death, of Galba.¹⁵*

Of his qualifications for the principate there could be no doubt. He had known, and had been on friendly terms with, all the Julio-Claudian emperors, except—latterly—Nero. He enjoyed distinguished ancestry and a very considerable inherited fortune which he husbanded almost as carefully as, at the end of his life, he controlled the finances of the state. He owned the country house at Fondi where he was born, and a suburban villa. These imply capital invested in landed property, and the family possessed the immense and immensely profitable granaries at Rome known as the Horrea Sulpicia. Physically he was as hard as nails. During his German command, he impressed Gaius during a visit of inspection in 39 by doubling for twenty miles behind the emperor’s chariot while directing a route-march with shield signals. He had been awarded the triumphal ornaments and three priesthoods—the highest military honours and orders of chivalry of ancient Rome. By 68 his career had been, as we have seen, long and distinguished. His strictness, regretfully criticized by Tacitus as unsuited to the degenerate modern age, was the subject of many anecdotes no doubt embroidered in the telling. He is said by Suetonius to have sentenced a money-changer of questionable honesty to have both hands cut off and nailed to the counter. He crucified, it seems, a man who had poisoned his ward to inherit the property. When the murderer protested that he was a Roman citizen and therefore could appeal to Caesar, Galba ironically remarked, ‘Let the Roman hang higher than the rest, and have his cross whitewashed.’¹⁶

The success of Otho’s plot, carefully planned though it was, was due in large part to a very practical weakness in Galba’s position as emperor. To the Senate and People he was as acceptable as an old man of strict principle can be; but he lacked something which on any reasonable expectation he should never have needed in the city of Rome—a body of troops personally devoted to him. The situation on 15 January might have been very different if the legion he had recruited in Spain and brought with him to Rome, VII Galbiana, had still been there. A force of this kind competently handled could have defended the palace area and swung the undecided garrison solidly behind it and against the plotter; and Otho’s task of persuading the Praetorians that they had everything to gain by treason would have been immeasurably harder. It may legitimately be claimed, therefore, that Galba was ill-served and over-confident. But if he is to be condemned as a failure, the charge must be a weightier one than this, and Otho’s resentment, the motive force of revolt, arose from decisions of Galba’s which can easily be defended.

His traducers and, we may assume, Otho in his speeches of self-justification echoed by Othonian scribblers, pointed to brutality, meanness and senility. The last charge may be dismissed out of hand. Galba had a mind of his own and did not shrink from unpopular decisions. The amount and speed of the business transacted in his short reign is impressive. Equally inapposite is the accusation of brutality. The rebel Clodius Macer—other names are cited, less known to us, and in circumstances more mysterious—could hardly complain if the extreme penalty was exacted. Many crocodile tears were shed by the Othonians for the naval petitioners scattered at the gates of Rome by Galba’s cavalry; but the casualties were grossly exaggerated by propagandists and their citation comes particularly badly from traitors prepared to practise butchery in the Forum. Galba might be strict: he was not vindictive. Julius Civilis, the Batavian noble sent to Nero for judgment on suspicion of rebellion, was set free. In an effort to curb corruption and to limit its consequences, the emperor fixed a two-year limit on provincial appointments. Galba also deprecated the prolonged witch-hunt begun immediately after Nero’s death by those senators who had wrongs to avenge upon the Neronian prosecutor Eprius Marcellus, and in this attitude of realism, as in other respects, he resembles Mucianus and Vespasian.

The charge of meanness is even more senseless. After the extravagances of Nero’s latter years, symbolized by the blatant ostentation of the Golden House and the Colossus, retrenchment was inevitable and inevitably unpopular. At the best of times the financial resources of the empire were hardly adequate to meet the immense charges upon it. This is the fundamental reason—apart from questions of military discipline—for Galba’s reluctance to grant a donative to the Praetorians, who had done less than nothing to deserve it, or to encourage the prolongation of an evil into the future. For Galba himself the results of this inflexible insistence upon correct behaviour were fatal. Contemporary historians believed that if he could have brought himself to sacrifice principle to expediency even to the extent of a small token gift to the Praetorians and legionaries, he might never have lost his life. So evenly balanced, it was thought, were the scales of fortune; and Otho’s own diffidence, if such was rightly attributed to him, seems to bear out the view of the critics.

The emperor’s attempt to recover some of Nero’s ‘benefaction’ from his cronies was perhaps expedient, and some people were gratified by the spectacle of retribution; but not much of substance was achieved. Another similarly laudable attempt at reform was the appointment of a reliable soldier, Gnaeus Julius Agricola, the future father-in-law of Tacitus, to make an inventory of the gifts deposited in the temples of Rome—a hint that the administration of a valuable patrimony had become lax. Measures of this sort clearly did little to enhance Galba’s reputation except in the eyes of that tiny minority which had some concern for the public good; and they provided opponents with a useful propaganda weapon. Much was made of Galba’s avaritia: ‘covetousness’ in one sense, ‘economy’ in another.

However, in one respect Galba was generous, perhaps ill-advisedly. A toll of 2.5 per cent was exacted on goods passing through the numerous customs posts lying on main roads in an extensive area of the west comprising modern Belgium, France, portions of Germany, Switzerland and northern Italy at such points as Lyon, Langres, Grenoble, Geneva, St Maurice-en-Valais, and Zurich. Galba’s Gallic and Spanish coinage proclaimed its abolition. The measure was no doubt designed as some sort of compensation for the rough treatment handed out by the Rhine armies to Galba’s ally Vindex, though the concession must have affected a much vaster public, traders and consumers, for instance, in Britain and central Italy. This was a blunt, indiscriminate and costly concession. There is no doubt that it was scrapped by Vespasian. A similar move to reward old allies imposed fiscal punishments on Lyon, which had remained pertinaciously loyal to Nero in the spring of 68, and granted fiscal concessions to Vindex’ supporters—Vienne, the Aedui and the Sequani (whose capital Besançon had been the scene of Vindex’ defeat and death). These breaches of Galba’s own principles did nothing but harm, for they encouraged jealousies between the Gallic communities, always spiteful towards their immediate neighbours, prolonged old resentments and directly stimulated the movement which is dignified by the title of the Batavian War. Less undesirable was the grant of Latin rights (giving Roman citizenship to magistrates) made to Digne, for this method, whereby the peregrine was gradually admitted to the full privileges of civitas, was one traditionally practised by Rome to her own and the recipient’s benefit.¹⁷

An essential qualification in a leader is the ability to choose good lieutenants. One gains the impression that Galba had few reserves to draw on in this respect. Eight years in the comparative remoteness of Spain had to a certain extent isolated him, and of set purpose he had avoided, during the bad and later years of Nero, contact with his equals. Nor was his judgment as prescient as the armchair historian requires. Sometimes he chose well: we have observed the preferment of Antonius Primus and Julius Agricola. Nor was much harm done by placing a pliable and mild-mannered Valerius Marinus upon the list of future consuls. But Laco and Vinius, whatever the truth behind the violent attacks upon them, gave Galba little help in his hour of need; and his two chief appointments in Germany were disastrous. That they had serious consequences, not for Galba but for Rome, was due to the presence among their subordinates of ambitious and designing legionary commanders.

For Galba himself the momentous choice was that of a successor. He could not expect a long reign, and he had no intention of allowing Rome to fall into the hands of Otho, assiduous as the latter had been in his support. When Tacitus places in Galba’s mouth a long and eloquent speech on imperial adoption, he is clearly thinking of a contemporary event, the choice of Trajan by Nerva. By selecting a young man of promise from outside his own family, Galba introduced a method of appointment which marked a new step in constitutional development. The first Caesar, Julius, had chosen his grand-nephew Octavian. Augustus (Octavian) had selected a succession of heirs, all related to him by blood or marriage. Galba himself had been appointed by the acclaim of the troops, and the subsequent consent of the Senate and People. In now recommending his previously adopted private heir as his political successor, Galba might claim that he had solved the problem of reconciling irreconcilables—freedom and the principate. The mere fact that emperors were no longer born, but elected, and that their initial selection proceeded from the free choice of the reigning monarch among the best available talent irrespective of birth, approved by Senate and People, seemed a solution well suited to the empire, nor was Rome destined to find an answer that was better. There was general agreement before, during and after his reign that Galba was worthy and competent to be emperor; and the successful conspiracy of a disappointed courtier backed by a handful of desperadoes gives the historian no right to question the correctness of this judgment.

The fifteenth day of January in the year in which Servius Sulpicius Galba held the consulship for the second time with Titus Vinius as his colleague drew to its end. No one then living had experienced a day like it, and what the future held no one could guess. The ancestral curse, the inheritance of Romulus and Remus, was not yet exorcized.