Galba

“ Sulpicius Galba is owned by all to have been the richest private person that ever came to the imperial seat. And besides the additional honor of being of the family of the Servii, he valued himself more especially for his relationship to Catulus, the most eminent citizen of his time both for virtue and renown, however he may have voluntarily yielded to others as regards power and authority. Galba was also akin to Livia, the wife of Augustus, by whose interest he was preferred to the consulship by the emperor. ”

“ When Galba first declared against Nero, nothing gave him so much confidence of success, as a mule's happening at that time to have a foal. And whilst all others were shocked at the occurrence, as a most inauspicious prodigy, he alone regarded it as a most fortunate omen, calling to mind the sacrifice and saying of his grandfather. When he took upon him the manly habit, he dreamt that the goddess Fortune said to him, "I stand before your door weary; and unless I am speedily admitted, I shall fall into the hands of the first who comes to seize me." ”

“ GALBA, SERVIUS SULPICIUS, Roman general and orator. He served under Lucius Aemilius Paulus in the third Macedonian War. As praetor in 151 B.C. in farther Spain he made himself infamous by the treacherous murder of a number of Lusitanians, with their wives and children, after inducing them to surrender by the promise of grants of land. ”

“ Tidings came immediately to Galba in the Palatium, whilst the priest was still present and the sacrifices at hand, so that persons who were most entirely incredulous about such things, and most positive in their neglect of them, were astonished, and began to marvel at the divine event. A multitude of all sorts of people now began to run together out of the forum; Vinius and Laco and some of Galba's freedmen drew their swords and placed themselves beside him ”

“ What will become of us, my fellow-soldiers, if we neither set up another general, nor retain the present one? This will be not so much to desert from Galba as to decline all subjection and command. It is useless to try and maintain Flaccus Hordeonius, who is but a mere shadow and image of Galba. But Vitellius, commander of the other Germany, is but one day's march distant, whose father was censor and thrice consul, and in a manner co-emperor with Claudius Caesar; and he himself has the best proof to show of his bounty and largeness of mind, in the poverty with which some reproach him. ”

“ These tidings hastened the plans of Galba, who had been long debating the subject of adoption with himself and with his intimate friends. There was indeed no more frequent subject of conversation during these months, at first because men had liberty and inclination to talk of such matters, afterwards because the feebleness of Galba was notorious. Few had any discrimination or patriotism, many had foolish hopes for themselves, and spread interested reports, in which they named this or that person to whom they might be related as friend or dependant. ”

“ The emperor, forsaken by his flatterers, found his vast palace a gloomy and insupportable solitude. Tigellinus, Helius, and Nymphidius, the guilty instruments of his crimes, abandoned him at this critical juncture. Galba, called upon by the army, the people, and by Julius Vindex, the virtuous Gaul, opposed the caution of age to the call of patriotism and the voice of ambition. ”

“ The roar of the rapidly increasing crowd sounded from afar like the tempestuous waves of the ocean, while the strict discipline of the army prevented any demonstrations of disorder immediately around the palace. Amidst the distant uproar, the name of Galba was reiterated with joyful acclamations, mingled with deep and terrible denunciations of death for the tyrant. Such, thought the young Roman, is the mutability of greatness; but his reflections were interrupted by a favorable answer to his request for admittance, and he followed an attendant to the presence of the Emperor. ”

“ And it fell out that as he was offering sacrifice in a public temple after his arrival in the province, the hair of a young attendant who was carrying an incense-box suddenly turned white all over his head, and there were some who did not hesitate to interpret this as a sign of a change of rulers and of the succession of an old man to a young one; that is to say, of Galba to Nero. Not long after this lightning struck a lake of Cantabria and twelve axes were found there, an unmistakable token of supreme power. ”

“ M. Salvius Otho, formerly governor of Lusitania, and one of Galba’s earliest supporters, disappointed at not being chosen instead of Piso, entered into communication with the discontented praetorians, and was adopted by them as their emperor. Galba, who at once set out to meet the rebels—he was so feeble that he had to be carried in a litter—was met by a troop of cavalry and butchered near the Lacus Curtius. ”

“ Investigations have shown that the Wallisi had the right bank of the Dranse and the Romans the left. Suddenly Galba discovered that all the inhabitants had deserted their houses in one night and that a great body of the Seduni and Veragri were occupying the heights. They knew that the legion was not complete, that two cohorts were at Acaunum and that a good many had gone over the Alps to get provisions and that the fortifications were not finished.
“Galba held a council of war. Some of the men were in favor of fighting their way back; but the majority voted to defend the camp. ”

“ IX. Intelligence of Galba's death arriving soon after, when he had settled his affairs in Germany he divided his troops into two bodies, intending to send one of them before him against Otho, and to follow with the other himself. The army he sent forward had a lucky omen; for, suddenly, an eagle cams flying up to them on the right, and having hovered (433) round the standards, flew gently before them on their road. ”

“ In what description you yourselves are to be classed, is to me a matter of doubt, and must remain so, till the question is decided whether you have in your camp the emperor of Rome, or a public enemy. Hear ye how the same voice that demands vengeance on me, calls for your destruction? So evident is it that we can neither die nor live otherwise than together.
Such is the humanity of Galba, perhaps he has already pronounced our doom; since, without a request, of his own free will, he could consign to the sword so many thousand innocent soldiers. ”

“ But at Rome, Nymphidius Sabinus, not gently and little by little, but at once, and without exception, engrossed all power to himself; Galba, being an old man (seventy-three years of age) , would scarcely, he thought, live long enough to be carried in a litter to Rome; and the troops in the city were from old time attached to him, and now bound by the vastness of the promised gift, for which they regarded him as their benefactor, and Galba as their debtor. Thus presuming on his interest, he straightway commanded Tigellinus, who was in joint commission with himself, to lay down his sword ”

“ Galba was sensible that, besides his age, his want of an heir rendered him less respected: he resolved, therefore, to adopt a person whose virtues might deserve such advancement, and protect his declining age from danger ”

“ But all things succeeded well with Galba after Nero's death; only Virginius Rufus, still standing doubtful, gave him some anxiety, lest he should listen to the suggestions of some who encouraged him to take the government upon him, having, at present, besides the command of a large and warlike army, the new honors of the defeat of Vindex and the subjugation of one considerable part of the Roman empire, namely, the entire Gaul, which had seemed shaking about upon the verge of open revolt. ”

“ The already aged veteran was prudently living in retirement, when Nero appointed him to be his legate in Spain, and for eight years he governed that province with great ability. But he was in the hands of evil ministers, and resigned himself entirely to them, and these ministers were at variance with one another: on one point alone did they agree—that at Galba's age some provision ought to be promptly made for a successor. But their harmony extended only to the general principle that Galba could not live much longer, and that there was already a formidable rival in the field. ”

“ Then that great man began to insist upon it, that his opinion was right and unquestionable. But Galba, with variety and plenty of allusions, brought a great many parallel cases, and talked a good deal in defence of equity against law; that Crassus being no match for Galba, though he was a well-spoken man, but not at all comparable to the other, he ran to his books, and brought the writings of his brother Publius Mucius, and the commentaries of Sextus Ælius, as vouchers for what he advanced; yet at the same time he owned that Galba had formed a very plausible, and almost a very just, argument. ”

“ Under Galba, to the general astonishment, at the end of 68 he was chosen to command the army of Lower Germany, and here he made himself popular with his subalterns and with his soldiers by outrageous prodigality and excessive good nature, which soon proved fatal to order and discipline. ”

“ They therefore could not bear the severity and frugality of Galba; nor would Galba depart from his temper and his purposes. Money would have made them his friends; but he would part with none. The reflection of the historian upon this conduct of his is fine, but melancholy; Nocuit antiquus rigor, & nimia severitas, cui jam pares non sumus: "He was ruined by reviving unseasonably the severe virtue of our ancestors: Alas! we are no longer equal to it." To conclude this head; the soldiers butchered an emperor that would not bribe them. ”

“ Vying with each other in an insolence of language proportioned to their cowardice of heart, they assailed with various accusations Annius Gallus, Suetonius Paullinus, and Marius Celsus. The murderers of Galba were the most ardent promoters of mutiny and discord. Frenzied with fear and guilt, they sought to plunge everything into confusion, resorting, now to openly seditious language, now to secret letters to Otho; and he, ever ready to believe the meanest of men and suspicious of the good, irresolute in prosperity, but rising higher under reverses, was in perpetual alarm. ”

“ Galba having fought some successful battles, and stormed several of their forts, upon ambassadors being sent to him from all parts and hostages given and a peace concluded, determined to station two cohorts among the Nantuates, and to winter in person with the other cohorts of that legion in a village of the Veragri, which is called Octodurus; and this village being situated in a valley, with a small plain annexed to it, is bounded on all sides by very high mountains. ”

“ That is Galba's only "victory". These were the auspices under which he made his entry; and what glory has he brought to the throne he occupies, save 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 his march to Rome, of Turpilianus in the city, and of Nymphidius in the camp? What 53province is there in the empire that has not been polluted with massacre? ”

“ Galba, 68 A. D. Galba, who succeeded Nero, was a man of good family but moderate attainments and soon showed himself unable to maintain his authority. That he would have been held “fit to rule, had he not ruled,” is the judgment of Tacitus. He had never been enthusiastically supported by the Rhine legions nor the praetorians, and his severity in maintaining discipline, added to his failure to pay the promised donative, completely alienated the loyalty of the guards. ”

“ Galba conducted him to the prætorian camp, but as he did not promise a donative, his speech to the soldiers aggravated his former unpopularity. The way was now prepared for Otho. To the disappointed guards a notorious prodigal was far more welcome than a frugal emperor. On the morning of the 15th of January, Galba was present at a sacrifice, and Otho in attendance on him. The entrails of the victims betokened risk to the emperor—"in his own household there lurked a foe." ”

“ Nerva soon saw that he was menaced with Galba’s fate, that he was defied and his office held in contempt. He therefore determined, like Galba, to adopt an energetic man who stood high in public esteem as co-regent, and was far happier in his choice than Galba had been. When anarchy had reached its zenith in the capital, the emperor surprised the Roman people by naming a successor, chosen not from the senate, but from the army, and one who possessed the love of the soldiers in the highest degree. ”

“ If he discovered any qualities of haughtiness and aspiration to power in any one, he despatched him whether or no. Yet so much did he investigate and understand what was fated for each of the prominent men that on meeting Galba (subsequently emperor) , when the latter had betrothed a wife, he remarked: "You also shall taste of the sovereignty." He spared him, as I conjecture, because this was settled as his fate; but, as he explained it himself, because Galba would reign only in old age and long after his death. ”

“ When in 68 his neighbour Galba, the governor of Hispania Tarraconensis, rose in revolt against Nero, Otho accompanied him to Rome. Resentment at the treatment he had received from Nero may have impelled him to this course, but to this motive was added before long that of personal ambition. Galba was far advanced in years, and Otho, encouraged by the predictions of astrologers, aspired to succeed him. But in January 69 his hopes were dissipated by Galba’s formal adoption of L. Calpurnius Piso as the fittest man to succeed him. Nothing remained for Otho but to strike a bold blow. ”