1. With Nero, the line of the Caesars became extinct. Among the many prophetic indications of this event, two outstanding ones are mentioned by historians. As Livia was returning to her villa at Veii after marrying Augustus, an eagle flew by and dropped into her lap a white hen which it had just pounced upon. Noticing a laurel twig in its beak, she decided to keep the hen for breeding and to plant the twig. Soon the hen raised such a brood of chickens that the house is still known as ‘The Poultry’; moreover, the twig took root and grew so luxuriously that the Caesars always plucked laurels from it to wear at their triumphs. It also became an imperial custom to cut new slips and plant these close by, and, remarkably enough, the death of each emperor was anticipated by the premonitory wilting of his laurel. In the last year of Nero’s reign, then, not only did every tree wither at the root, but the whole flock of poultry died. And, as if that were insufficient warning, a thunderbolt presently struck the temple of the Caesars, decapitated all the statues at a stroke, and dashed Augustus’ sceptre from his hands.
2. Galba succeeded Nero. Though not directly related to the Julii, he came from a very ancient aristocratic house, and he used to amplify the inscriptions on his own statues with the statement that Quintus Catulus Capitolinus was his greatgrandfather; as emperor, he even had a tablet set up in the forecourt of his house tracing his ancestry back to Jupiter on the male side, and to Pasiphae, 1 Minos’ wife, on the female side.
3. It would be tiresome to reproduce this pedigree here in all its glory, but I shall touch briefly on Galba’s immediate family. Why the surname Galba was first assumed by a Sulpicius and where it originated must remain moot points. One suggestion is that after a tediously protracted siege of some Spanish town the Sulpicius in question set fire to it, using torches smeared with resin [galbanum ]. Another is that he resorted to galbeus,a kind of poultice, during a long illness. Others are that he was very fat, the Gallic word for which is galba; or that, on the contrary, he was very small – like the galba,a creature which breeds in oak trees. The Sulpicii acquired a certain lustre during the consulship of Servius Galba, described as the most eloquent speaker of his time, and preserve a tradition that, while governing Spain as praetorian governor, he massacred 30,000 Lusitanians – an act which provoked the war with Viriatus.2 Servius Galba’s grandson, enraged when Julius Caesar, whose legate he had been in Gaul, passed him over for the consulship, joined the assassins Brutus and Cassius and was subsequently sentenced to death under the Pedian Law. The emperor Galba’s father and grandfather were descended from this personage. The grandfather had a far higher reputation as a scholar than as a statesman, never rising above the rank of praetor but publishing a monumental, and not negligible, historical work. The father, however, won a consulship and, although so squat as to be almost a hunchback and a speaker of modest abilities, was extremely active as an advocate. He married first Mummia Achaica, granddaughter of Catulus and great–granddaughter of the Lucius Mummius who sacked Corinth, and then Livia Ocellina, a rich and beautiful woman, whose affections are said to have originally been stirred by his rank, but afterwards even more by his frankness – in reply to her bold advances he furtively stripped to the waist and revealed his hump as a proof that he wished to hide nothing from her. Achaica bore him two sons, Gaius and Servius. Gaius, the elder, left Rome owing to financial embarrassment and, because Tiberius crossed him off the list of proconsuls when he became due for a province, committed suicide.
4. On 24 December, when Marcus Valerius Messala and Gnaeus Lentulus were consuls, 3 Servius Galba, the future emperor, was born in a hillside house beside the road which links Tarracina with Fundi. To please his stepmother Livia Ocellina, who had adopted him, he took the nomen Livius, the cognomen Ocellare and even the praenomen Lucius until becoming emperor. There is a widespread story that Augustus once singled Galba out from a group of small boys and chucked him under the chin, saying in Greek, ‘You too will taste a little of my power, child,’ and Tiberius, hearing that he would be emperor when an old man, grunted, ‘Very well, let him live in peace; it has nothing at all to do with me.’ One day, as Galba’s grandfather was expiating a bolt of lightning, an eagle suddenly snatched the victim’s intestines out of his hands and carried them off to an oak tree laden with acorns. A bystander suggested that this sign portended great honour for the family. ‘Yes, yes, perhaps so,’ the old man agreed, smiling, ‘on the day that a mule foals.’ When Galba later launched his rebellion, what encouraged him most was the news that a mule had, in fact, foaled. Although everyone else considered this a disastrous omen, Galba remembered the sacrifice and his grandfather’s quip, and interpreted it in precisely the opposite sense.
On reaching adulthood, Galba dreamed that the goddess Fortuna announced that she was tired of waiting outside his door and would he please let her in quickly or she would be fair game for the next passerby. He awoke, opened the door, and found on the landing a bronze image of the goddess, more than a cubit tall. This he carried lovingly to Tusculum, his summer home, and consecrated a domestic shrine to Fortuna, worshipping her with monthly sacrifices and an annual vigil.
Even as a young man he faithfully observed the national custom, already obsolescent and maintained only in his home, of summoning the freedmen and slaves twice a day to wish him good morning and goodnight, one after the other.
5. Galba received a sound education of the usual sort, and also studied law. He took marriage seriously but, on losing his wife Lepida and the two sons she had borne him, remained single for the rest of his life. Nobody could interest him in a second match, not even Agrippina, who, when her husband Domitius died, made such shameless advances to him – though he had not yet become a widower – that his mother–in–law gave her a public reprimand, going so far as to slap her before an entire gathering of married women.
Galba was always particularly attentive to Livia Augusta, who showed him considerable favour while she lived, and then left him 50 million sesterces, the largest bequest of all. But, because the amount was expressed in marks, not words, Tiberius, as her executor, reduced it to a mere 500,000, and Galba never handled even that modest sum.
6. He won his first public appointment while still underage. As praetor in charge of the games of the goddess Flora, he introduced the spectacular novelty of tightrope–walking elephants. Then he governed the province of Aquitania for nearly a year, and next held a consulship for six months. Curiously enough, Galba succeeded Nero’s father, Gnaeus Domitius, and preceded Salvius Otho, father of Otho – a foreshadowing of the time when he should reign between these two consuls’ sons. At Gaius’ orders, Galba replaced Gaetulicus as governor of Upper Germany. The day after taking up his command he put a stop to applause at a festival by circulating a notice to the effect that ‘hands will be kept inside cloaks on all occasions.’ Very soon the following doggerel went the rounds:
Soldier, soldier, on parade,
You should learn the soldier’s trade,
Galba’s now commanding us –
Galba, not Gaetulicus!
Galba came down just as severely on requests for leave. In gruelling manoeuvres he toughened old campaigners as well as raw recruits, and he sharply checked a barbarian raid into Gaul. Altogether, he and his army made so favourable an impression when Gaius came to inspect them that they won more praise and prize money than any other troops in the field. Galba scored a personal success by not only directing the ceremonial drill but also running for twenty miles beside the emperor’s chariot.
7. Although strongly urged to seize the occasion after Gaius’ murder, Galba held back, thus earning Claudius’ heartfelt gratitude. Claudius, indeed, considered Galba so close a friend that, when a slight indisposition overtook him, the British expedition was postponed on his account. Later, Galba became proconsul in Africa for two years on an extraordinary appointment, with instructions to suppress the disturbance caused there by domestic rivalries and a native revolt. He executed his commission somewhat ruthlessly it is true, but showed scrupulous attention to justice. Discovering, for instance, that while rations were short a certain legionary had sold a surplus peck of wheat from his rations for 100 denarii, he forbade all ranks to feed the fellow when his stores were exhausted, and so let him starve to death. At a court of inquiry into the ownership of a transport animal, Galba found both the evidence and the pleadings unsatisfactory and, since the truth seemed to be anybody’s guess, gave orders: ‘Lead the beast blindfolded to its usual trough and let it drink. Then uncover its eyes and watch to whom it goes of its own accord. That man will be the owner.’
8. For these achievements in Africa and his previous successes in Germany, Galba won triumphal decorations and a triple priesthood, being elected to the Quindecimviri, the Sodales Titii and the Sodales Augustales.4 But from then onward, until the middle years of Nero’s reign, he lived almost exclusively in retirement, never going anywhere, even for a country drive, without the escort of a second carriage containing 1 million sesterces. At last, while living at Fundi, he was offered the governorship of Tarraconensian Spain, where, soon after his arrival, as he sacrificed in a temple, the boy who carried the incense went white–haired before his eyes – a sign shrewdly read as portending the succession of a young emperor by an old one. And presently, when a thunderbolt struck a Cantabrian lake, twelve axes, unmistakable emblems of high authority, were recovered from it.
9. He governed Tarraconensian Spain for eight years, beginning with great enthusiasm and energy, and even going a little too far in his punishment of crime. He sentenced a moneychanger of questionable honesty to have both hands cut off and nailed to the counter, and crucified a man who had poisoned his ward to inherit the property. When this murderer begged for justice, protesting that he was a Roman citizen, Galba recognized his status and ironically consoled him by saying, ‘Let this citizen hang higher than the rest and have his cross whitewashed.’ As time wore on, however, he grew lazy and inactive, but this was done purposely to deny Nero any pretext for disciplining him: in his own words, ‘Nobody can be forced to give an account of how he spends his leisure hours.’
Galba was holding assizes at Carthago Nova when news reached him of the revolt in the Gallic provinces. It came in the form of an appeal for help sent by the governor of Aquitania, which was followed by another from Vindex asking whether he would take the lead in rescuing humanity from Nero. He accepted the suggestion, half hopefully, half fearfully, but without much delay, having accidentally come across Nero’s secret orders for his own assassination; he took heart from certain very favourable signs and portents – especially the predictions of a nobly born girl which, according to Jupiter’s priest at Clunia, matched the prophecies spoken in a trance by another girl two centuries before: the priest had just found a record of these in the temple vault, following directions given him in a dream. The gist of these prophecies was that the lord and master of the world would some day arise in Spain.
10. Accordingly, Galba took his place on the tribunal as though going about the business of freeing slaves, but before him were ranged statues and pictures of Nero’s prominent victims. A young aristocrat, recalled from exile in the nearby Balearic Islands for this occasion, stood near while Galba deplored the present state of the empire. Galba was at once hailed as imperator and accepted the honour, announcing that he represented the Senate and People of Rome. He closed the courts and began raising legions and auxiliary troops from the native population to increase his existing command of one legion, two squadrons of cavalry and three infantry cohorts. Next he chose the most distinguished and intelligent provincials to serve in a kind of senate, to which matters of importance could be referred whenever necessary. He also picked certain young equites instead of ordinary troops to guard his sleeping quarters, and although these ranked as volunteer infantrymen they still wore the gold rings proper to their condition. Then he called upon everyone in the provinces to unite energetically in the common cause of rebellion. At about this time a ring of ancient design was discovered in the fortifications of the city that he had chosen as his headquarters, the engraved gem representing Victory raising a trophy. Soon afterwards an Alexandrian ship drifted into Dertosa, loaded with arms, but neither helmsman, crew nor passengers were found aboard her – which left no doubt in anyone’s mind that this must be a just and righteous war, favoured by the gods.
Suddenly, however, without the least warning, Galba’s rebellion nearly collapsed. As he approached the station where one of his cavalry troops was quartered, the men felt a little ashamed of their defection and tried to go back on it; Galba kept them at their posts only by a great effort. Again, he was nearly murdered on his way to the baths: he had to pass down a narrow corridor lined by a company of slaves whom one of Nero’s freedmen had presented to him, obviously with some treachery in view. But while they plucked up their courage by urging one another ‘not to miss this opportunity’, one of his staff took the trouble to ask, ‘What opportunity is this?’; later they confessed under torture.
11. Galba’s embarrassments were increased by the death of Vindex, a blow so heavy that it almost turned him to despair and suicide. Presently, however, messengers arrived from Rome with the news that Nero too was dead, and that the citizens had all sworn obedience to himself; so he dropped the title of governor and assumed that of Caesar. He now wore a commander’s cloak, with a dagger hanging from his neck, and did not put on a toga again until he had accounted first for the men who were plotting further trouble: the praetorian prefect Nymphidius Sabinus in Rome, and Fonteius Capito and Clodius Macer, who commanded respectively in Germany and Africa.5
12. Stories of Galba’s cruelty and greed preceded him: it was said that he punished townships in Spain and Gaul which had been slow to receive him by levying huge taxes and even dismantling their fortifications; that he executed not only local officials and administrators, but their families too; and that, when the people of Tarraco offered him a golden crown from the ancient temple of Jupiter, described as weighing fifteen pounds, he had this melted down and made them supply the three ounces needed to tip the scales at the advertised weight. Galba more than confirmed this reputation on his entry into Rome. He sent back to rowing duty some sailors whom Nero had turned into soldiers, and when they stubbornly insisted on their right to the Eagle and the standards he not only scattered them with a cavalry charge but also decimated them.6 Galba also disbanded the cohort of Germans who had served as bodyguards for the Caesars and proved consistently loyal, repatriating them without a bounty on the ground that they had shown excessive devotion to Gnaeus Dolabella7 by camping close to his estate. Other anecdotes to his discredit, possibly true, possibly false, went the rounds: when an especially lavish dinner was set before him he had groaned aloud; when presented with the usual abstract of treasury accounts, he had rewarded the treasurer’s scrupulous labours with a bowlful of beans; delighted by Canus’ performance on the flute, he had drawn the magnificent sum of five denarii from his purse and pressed them on him.
13. Galba’s accession was not entirely popular, as became obvious at the first theatrical show he attended. This was an Atellan farce, in which occurred the well–known song ‘Here comes Onesimus, down from the farm.’ The whole audience took up the chorus with fervour, repeating that particular line over and over again.
14. His power and prestige were far greater while he was assuming control of the empire than afterwards: though affording ample proof of his capacity to rule, he won less praise for his good acts than blame for his mistakes. Three officials, nicknamed ‘the imperial nursemaids’, always hovered around Galba; he seemed to be tied to their apron strings. These were the greedy Titus Vinius, his former legate in Spain; the intolerably arrogant and stupid Cornelius Laco, an ex–assessor praetorian prefect; and his own freedman Icelus, who, having recently acquired the cognomen of Marcianus and the right to wear a gold ring, now had his eye on the highest appointment available to a man of his rank.8 Galba let himself be so continuously guided by these experts in vice that he was far less consistent in his behaviour – at one time meaner and more bitter, at another more wasteful and indulgent – than an elected princeps had any right to be in the circumstances.
He sentenced men of all ranks to death without trial on the scantiest evidence, and seldom granted applications for Roman citizenship. Nor would he concede the prerogatives which could in law be enjoyed by every father of three children except to an occasional claimant, and even then for a limited period only. When the judges recommended the formation of a sixth judicial division, Galba was not content simply to turn this down, but cancelled the privilege, which Claudius had allowed them, of being excused court duties in the winter months and at the beginning of the year.
15. It was generally believed that he intended to restrict all official appointments for both equites and senators to two–year periods, and to choose only men who either did not want them or could be counted on to refuse. He annulled all Nero’s awards, letting the beneficiaries keep no more than a tenth part and enlisting the help of fifty equites to ensure that his order was obeyed; he further ruled that if any actor or other performer had sold one of Nero’s gifts, spent the money and was unable to refund it, the missing sum must be recovered from the buyers. Yet he denied his friends and freedmen nothing, with or without payment – taxes here, exemptions there, an innocent party sentenced here, a culprit excused there. Moreover, when a popular demand arose for the punishment of Halotus and Tigellinus, undoubtedly the vilest of all Nero’s assistants, Galba not only protected their lives but gave Halotus a lucrative procuratorship and published an imperial edict charging the people with undeserved hostility towards Tigellinus.
16. Thus he outraged all classes at Rome; but the most virulent hatred of him smouldered in the army. Though the officers had promised a larger bonus than usual to the soldiers who had pledged their swords to Galba before his arrival in the city, he would not honour this commitment, but announced, ’It is my custom to levy troops, not to buy them.’ This remark infuriated the troops everywhere, and he earned the praetorians’ particular resentment by his dismissal of a number of them suspected of being in Nymphidius’ pay. The loudest grumbling came from camps in Upper Germany, where the men claimed that they had not been rewarded for their share in the operations against Vindex and the Gauls.9 These, the first Roman troops bold enough to withhold their allegiance, refused on the Kalends of January to take any oath except in the name of the Senate; they informed the praetorians by messenger that they were fed up with this made–in–Spain emperor, and would the praetorians please choose one who deserved the approval of the army as a whole?
17. Galba heard about this message and, thinking that he was being criticized for his childlessness rather than his old age, singled out from a group of his courtiers a handsome young man of good family, Piso Frugi Licinianus, whom he already highly esteemed, and appointed him perpetual heir to his name and property. Calling him ‘my son’, he led Piso into the praetorian camp, and there formally and publicly adopted him – without, however, mentioning the word ‘bounty’, and thus giving Marcus Salvius Otho an excellent opportunity for his coup d’état five days later.
18. A succession of signs had been portending Galba’s end in accurate detail. During his march on Rome, victims were being sacrificed right and left whenever he passed through a town, and once an ill–aimed axe blow made a frenzied ox break its harness and charge Galba’s chariot, rearing up and drenching him with blood. Then, as he climbed out, one of his runners, pushed by the mob, nearly wounded him with a spear. When he first entered the city and then the palace, a slight earthquake shock was felt, and a sound arose as of bulls bellowing. Clearer presages followed. Galba had set aside from his treasures a necklace of pearls and precious stones to adorn his image of the goddess Fortuna at Tusculum. But, impulsively deciding that it was too good for her, he consecrated it to Venus Capitolina instead. The very next night Fortuna complained to him in a dream that she had been robbed of a gift intended for herself and threatened to take back what she had already given him. At dawn, Galba hurried in terror towards Tusculum to expiate the fault revealed by his dream, having sent outriders ahead to prepare the sacrifices; but when he arrived he found only warm ashes on the altar and an old black–cloaked fellow offering incense in a glass bowl and wine in an earthenware cup.10 It was noticed too that while he was sacrificing on the Kalends of January his garland fell off, and that the sacred chickens flew away when he went to read the auspices. Again, before Galba addressed the troops on the subject of Piso’s adoption, his aides forgot to set a camp chair on the tribunal, and in the Senate House his curule chair was discovered facing the wall.
19. When attending an early–morning sacrifice, Galba was now repeatedly warned by a haruspex to expect danger – murderers were about. Soon afterwards news came that Otho had seized the praetorian camp. Though urged to hurry there in person, because his rank and presence could carry the day, Galba determined to stay where he was and rally to his standard the legionaries scattered throughout the city. He did, indeed, put on a linen corselet, although openly admitting that it would afford small protection against so many swords. But he was drawn out by false rumours, which the conspirators were diligently spreading about in order to entice him into the open: a few of his supporters rashly assured him that peace had been made and the rebels arrested – their troops were on the way to surrender and pledge loyal allegiance. Completely deceived, Galba went forward to meet them in the utmost confidence. When a soldier claimed with pride to have killed Otho, he snapped, ‘On whose authority?’, and hurried on to the Forum. There a party of cavalrymen, clattering through the streets and dispersing the mob, recognized him; these were his appointed assassins. They reined in for a moment, then charged at the solitary figure, abandoned now by all his followers, and cut him down.
20. Some people report that, just before his death, Galba shouted out, ‘What is all this, comrades? I am yours; you are mine!’, and went so far as to promise the bounty; but, according to the more usual account, he realized the soldiers’ intention, bared his neck, and encouraged them to go ahead and strike, since they thought it the right thing to do. It is amazing that no one present made any attempt to rescue the emperor, and that all the soldiers summoned to rally around him turned a deaf ear. Only a single company of soldiers from the troops in Germany rushed to his assistance, because he had once treated them with kindness while they were convalescents; not knowing the city well, however, they took a wrong turning and arrived too late.
Galba was murdered beside the Curtian Lake and left lying just as he fell. A private soldier returning from the grain issue set down his load and decapitated Galba’s body. He could not carry the head by the hair and so stuffed it in his cloak, and soon brought it to Otho with his thumb thrust into the mouth. Otho handed the trophy to a crowd of servants and camp boys, who stuck it on a spear and carried it scornfully round the camp, chanting at intervals:
Galba, Galba, Cupid Galba,
Please enjoy your vigour still!
Apparently Galba had enraged them by quoting to someone who congratulated him on his robust appearance, ‘so far my vigour undiminished is.’11 A freedman of the Neronian Patrobius bought the head for 100 aurei, but only to hurl it to the ground exactly where Patrobius had been executed at Galba’s orders. In the end his steward Argivus removed it, with the trunk, to the tomb in Galba’s private gardens which lay beside the Via Aurelia.
21. Galba was of medium height, with a completely bald head, blue eyes and a hooked nose. His hands and feet were twisted by arthritis or some such disease, which made him unable to unroll or even hold parchment scrolls or wear shoes. His body was badly ruptured on the right side, so that he required a truss for support.
22. He was a heavy eater, in winter always breakfasting before daylight, and with a habit at dinner of passing on accumulated leavings to his attendants. In his sexual tastes he inclined to males, with a decided preference for mature, sturdy men. It is said that when Icelus, one of his trusty bedfellows, brought the news of Nero’s death, Galba not only openly showered him with kisses, but begged him to strip without delay and led him off into his private quarters.
23. Galba died in his seventy–third year, before he had reigned seven months. The Senate, as soon as it was able, voted that a column decorated with ships’ beaks should be set up in the Forum to accommodate his statue and mark the spot where he had fallen. Vespasian, however, subsequently vetoed this decree; he was convinced that Galba had sent agents from Spain to Judaea with orders for his assassination.