Galba

Wherefore he was not without apprehension for the future, and fearing Piso, blaming Galba, and angry with Vinius, he went away full of various passions. For the soothsayers and Chaldaeans who were always about him would not suffer him to abandon his hopes or give up altogether, particularly Ptolemaeus, who dwelt much upon his frequent prediction that Nero would not kill Otho, but would die first himself, and that Otho would survive him and be emperor of the Romans (for now that he could point to the first part of the prediction as true, he thought that Otho should not despair of the second part). Above all, Otho was encouraged by those who secretly shared his resentment and chagrin on the ground that he had been thanklessly treated. Moreover, most of the adherents of Tigellinus and Nymphidius, men who had once been in high honour, but were now cast aside and of no account, treacherously went over to Otho, shared his resentment, and spurred him on to action.

Among these were Veturius and Barbius the one an optio, the other a tesserarius (these are the Roman names for scout and messenger). In company with these Onomastus, a freedman of Otho’s, went round corrupting the soldiers, some with money, and others with fair promises. The soldiers were already disaffected and wanted only a pretext for treachery. For four days would not have sufficed to change the allegiance of a loyal army, and only so many days intervened between the act of adoption and the murder, since on the sixth day after the adoption (the Romans call it the eighteenth before the Calends of February[*](January 15th (A.D. xviii. Cal. Feb.), 68 A.D.)), Galba and Piso were slain.

On that day, shortly after dawn, Galba was sacrificing in the Palatium in the presence of his friends; and as soon as Umbricius, the officiating priest, had taken the entrails of the victim in his hands and inspected them, he declared not ambiguously, but in so many words, that there were signs of a great commotion, and that peril mixed with treachery hung over the emperor’s head. Thus the god all but delivered Otho over to arrest.

For Otho was standing behind Galba, and noted what was said and pointed out by Umbricius. But as he stood there in confusion and with a countenance changing to all sorts of colours through fear, Onomastus his freedman came up and told him that the builders were come and were waiting for him at his house. Now, this was a token that the time was at hand when Otho was to meet the soldiers.

With the remark, then, that he had bought an old house and wished to show its defects to the vendors, he went away, and passing through what was called the house of Tiberius, went down into the forum, to where a gilded column stood, at which all the roads that intersect Italy terminate.