The Works of Tacitus
tr. by Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb
[1864-1877]
Tacitus: History Book 1 [80]
80. Meanwhile, from a trifling cause, whence nothing was apprehended, there
arose a tumult, which had nearly proved fatal to the capital. Otho had ordered
the 7th cohort to be brought up to Rome from Ostia, and the charge of arming
it was entrusted to Varius Crispinus, one of the tribunes of the Praetorian
Guard. This officer, thinking that he could carry out the order more at his
leisure, when the camp was quiet, opened the armoury, and ordered the wagons
of the cohort to be laden at night-fall. The time provoked suspicion, the motive
challenged accusation, the elaborate attempt at quiet ended in a disturbance,
and the sight of arms among a drunken crowd excited the desire to use them.
The soldiers murmured, and charged the tribunes and centurions with treachery,
alleging that the households of the Senators were being armed to destroy Otho;
many acted in ignorance and were stupefied by wine, the worst among them were
seeking an opportunity for plunder, the mass was as usual ready for any new
movement, and the military obedience of the better disposed was neutralised
by the darkness. The tribune, who sought to check the movement, and the strictest
disciplinarians among the centurions, were cut down. The soldiers seized their
arms, bared their swords, and, mounted on their horses, made for the city and
the palace.
81. Otho was giving a crowded entertainment to the most distinguished men
and women of Rome. In their alarm they doubted whether this was a casual outbreak
of the soldiers, or an act of treachery in the Emperor, and whether to remain
and be arrested was a more perilous alternative than to disperse and fly. At
one time making a show of courage, at another betrayed by their terror, they
still watched the countenance of Otho. And, as it happened, so ready were all
to suspect, Otho felt as much alarm as he inspired. Terrified no less by the
Senate’s critical position than by his own, he had forthwith despatched the
prefects of the Praetorian Guard to allay the fury of the soldiery, and he now
ordered all to leave the banquet without delay. Then on all sides officers of
state cast aside the insignia of office, and shunned the retinues of their friends
and domestics; aged men and women wandered in the darkness of night about the
various streets of the city; few went to their homes, most sought the houses
of friends, or some obscure hiding-place in the dwelling of their humblest dependents.
82. The rush of the soldiers was not even checked by the doors of the palace.
They burst in upon the banquet with loud demands that Otho should shew himself.
They wounded the tribune, Julius Martialis, and the prefect, Vitellius Saturninus,
who sought to stem the torrent. On every they brandished their swords, and menaced
the centurions and tribunes at one moment, the whole Senate at another. Their
minds were maddened by a blind panic, and, unable to single out any one object
for their fury, they sought for indiscriminate vengeance. At last Otho, regardless
of his imperial dignity, stood up on a couch, and by dint of prayers and tears
contrived to restrain them. Reluctant and guilty, they returned to the camp.
The next day the houses were closed as they might be in a captured city. Few
of the citizens could be seen in the streets, the populace were dejected, the
soldiers walked with downcast looks, and seemed gloomy rather than penitent.
Licinius Proculus and Plotius Firmus, the prefects, addressed the companies
in the gentler or harsher terms that suited their respective characters. The
end of these harangues was that 5000 sesterces were paid to each soldier. Then
did Otho venture to enter the camp; the tribunes and centurions surrounded him.
They had thrown aside the insignia of their rank, and they demanded release
from the toils and perils of service. The soldiers felt the reproach; returning
to their duty, they even demanded the execution of the ringleaders in the riot.
83. Otho was aware how disturbed was the country, and how conflicting the
feelings of the soldiery, the most respectable of whom cried out for some remedy
for the existing licence, while the great mass delighted in riot and in an empire
resting on popularity, and could be most easily urged to civil war by indulgence
in tumult and rapine. At the same time he reflected that power acquired by crime
could not be retained by a sudden assumption of the moderation and of the dignity
of former times, yet he was alarmed by the critical position of the capital
and by the perils of the Senate. Finally, he addressed the troops in these terms:
“Comrades, I am not come that I may move your hearts to love me, or that I may
rouse your courage; love and courage you have in superfluous abundance. I am
come to pray you to put some restraint on your valour, some check on your affection
for me. The origin of the late tumult is to be traced not to rapacity or disaffection,
feelings which have driven many armies into civil strife, much less to any shrinking
from, or fear of danger. It was your excessive affection for me that roused
you to act with more zeal than discretion. For even honourable motives of action,
unless directed by judgment, are followed by disastrous results. We are now
starting for a campaign. Does the nature of things, does the rapid flight of
opportunities, admit of all intelligence being publicly announced, of every
plan being discussed in the presence of all? It is as needful that the soldiers
should be ignorant of some things as that they should know others. The general’s
authority, the stern laws of discipline, require that in many matters even the
centurions and tribunes shall only receive orders. If, whenever orders are given,
individuals may ask questions, obedience ceases, and all command is at an end.
Will you in the field too snatch up your arms in the dead of night? Shall one
or two worthless and drunken fellows, for I cannot believe that more were carried
away by the frenzy of the late outbreak, imbrue their hands in the blood of
centurions and tribunes, and burst into the tent of their Emperor?
84. “You indeed did this to serve me, but in the tumult, the darkness, and
the general confusion, an opportunity may well occur that may be used against
me. If Vitellius and his satellites were allowed to choose, what would be the
temper and what the thoughts with which they would curse us? What would they
wish for us but mutiny and strife, that the private should not obey the centurion,
nor the centurion the tribune, that thus we should rush, horse and foot together,
on our own destruction? Comrades, it is by obeying, not by questioning the orders
of commanders, that military power is kept together. And that army is the most
courageous in the moment of peril, which is the most orderly before the peril
comes. Keep you your arms and your courage, leave it to me to plan, and to guide
your valour. A few were in fault, two will be punished. Let all the rest blot
out the remembrance of that night of infamy. Never let any army hear those cries
against the Senate. To clamour for the destruction of what is the head of the
Empire, and contains all that is distinguished in the provinces, good God! it
is a thing which not even those Germans, whom Vitellius at this very moment
is rousing against us, would dare to do. Shall any sons of Italy, the true youth
of Rome, cry out for the massacre of an order, by whose splendid distinctions
we throw into the shade the mean and obscure faction of Vitellius? Vitellius
is the master of a few tribes, and has some semblance of an army. We have the
Senate. The country is with us; with them, the country’s enemies. What! do you
imagine that this fairest of cities is made up of dwellings and edifices and
piles of stones? These dumb and inanimate things may be indifferently destroyed
and rebuilt. The eternal duration of empire, the peace of nations, my safety
and yours, rest on the security of the Senate. This order which was instituted
under due auspices by the Father and Founder of the city, and which has lasted
without interruption and without decay from the Kings down to the Emperors,
we will bequeath to our descendants, as we have inherited it from our ancestors.
For you give the state its Senators, and the Senate gives it its Princes.”
85. This speech, which was meant to touch and to calm the feelings of the
soldiers, and the moderate amount of severity exercised (for Otho had ordered
two and no more to be punished), met with a grateful acceptance, and for the
moment reduced to order men who could not be coerced. Yet tranquillity was not
restored to the capital; there was still the din of arms and all the sights
of war, and the soldiers, though they made no concerted disturbance, had dispersed
themselves in disguise about private houses, and exercised a malignant surveillance
over all whom exalted rank, or distinction of any kind, exposed to injurious
reports. Many too believed that some of the soldiers of Vitellius had come to
the capital to learn the feelings of the different parties. Hence everything
was rife with suspicion, and even the privacy of the family was hardly exempt
from fear. It was however in public that most alarm was felt; with every piece
of intelligence that rumour brought, men changed their looks and spirits, anxious
not to appear discouraged by unfavourable omens, or too little delighted by
success. When the Senate was summoned to the Chamber, it was hard for them to
maintain in all things a safe moderation. Silence might seem contumacious, and
frankness might provoke suspicion, and Otho, who had lately been a subject,
and had used the same language, was familiar with flattery. Accordingly, they
discussed various motions on which they had put many constructions. Vitellius
they called a public enemy and a traitor to his country, the more prudent contenting
themselves with hackneyed terms of abuse, though some threw out reproaches founded
in truth, yet only did so in the midst of clamour, and when many voices were
heard at once, drowning their own speech in a tumult of words.
86. Prodigies which were now noised abroad from various sources increased
men’s terror. It was said that in the porch of the Capitol the reins of the
chariot, on which stood the goddess of Victory, had dropped from her hand, that
from the chapel of Juno there had rushed forth a form greater than the form
of man, that the statue of the Divine Julius, which stands on the island in
the Tiber, had turned from the West to the East on a calm and tranquil day,
that an ox had spoken aloud in Etruria, that strange births of animals had taken
place, besides many other things, such as in barbarous ages are observed even
during seasons of peace, but are now heard of only in times of terror. But an
alarm greater than all, because it connected immediate loss with fears for the
future, arose from a sudden inundation of the Tiber. The river became vastly
swollen, broke down the wooden bridge, was checked by the heap of ruins across
the current, and overflowed not only the low and level districts of the capital,
but also much that had been thought safe from such casualties. Many were swept
away in the streets, many more were cut off in their shops and chambers. The
want of employment and the scarcity of provisions caused a famine among the
populace. The poorer class of houses had their foundations sapped by the stagnant
waters, and fell when the river returned to its channel. When men’s minds were
no longer occupied by their fears, the fact, that while Otho was preparing for
his campaign, the Campus Martius and the Via Flaminia, his route to the war,
were obstructed by causes either fortuitous or natural, was regarded as a prodigy
and an omen of impending disasters.
87. Otho, after publicly purifying the city and weighing various plans for
the campaign, determined to march upon Gallia Narbonensis, as the passes of
the Penine and Cottian Alps and all the other approaches to Gaul were held by
the armies of Vitellius. His fleet was strong and loyal to his cause, for he
had enrolled in the ranks of the legion the survivors of the slaughter at the
Milvian bridge, whom the stern policy of Galba had retained in custody, while
to the rest he had held out hopes of a more honourable service for the future.
To the fleet he had added some city cohorts, and many of the Praetorians, the
stay and strength of his army, who might at once advise and watch the generals.
The command of the expedition was entrusted to Antonius Novellus and Suedius
Clemens, centurions of the first rank, and Aemilius Pacensis, to whom Otho had
restored the rank of tribune, taken from him by Galba. Oscus, a freedman, retained
the charge of the fleet, and went to watch the fidelity of men more honourable
than himself. Suetonius Paullinus, Marius Celsus, and Annius Gallus, were appointed
to command the infantry and cavalry. The Emperor, however, placed most confidence
in Licinius Proculus, prefect of the Praetorian Guard; an active officer at
home, without experience in war, he founded perpetual accusations on the high
influence of Paullinus, on the energy of Celsus, on the mature judgment of Gallus,
in fact, on each man’s special excellence, a thing most easy to do; and thus
the unscrupulous and the cunning were preferred before the modest and the good.
88. About this time Cornelius Dolabella was banished to the Colonia Aquinas,
but he was not kept in strict or secret custody; it was not for any crime that
he suffered; he was marked out for suspicion by his ancient name and by his
relationship to Galba. Many of the officers of state and a large proportion
of the men of consular rank Otho ordered to accompany him to the field, not
indeed to share or serve in the campaign, but to form a retinue. Among them
was Lucius Vitellius, whom Otho treated as he treated the rest, and not as though
he were the brother either of an Emperor, or of an enemy. This roused the anxieties
of the capital; no rank was free from apprehension or peril. The leading men
of the Senate either suffered from the infirmities of age, or were enervated
by a prolonged peace; the nobility were indolent and had forgotten how to fight;
the Equestrian order knew nothing of service; and the more they endeavoured
to hide and repress their alarm the more evident was their terror. On the other
hand, there were some who with senseless ostentation purchased splendid arms
and magnificent horses, and some who procured by way of equipments for the war
the luxurious furniture of the banquet and other incentives to profligacy. The
wise looked to the interests of peace and of the Commonwealth, while the giddy
and those who were thoughtless of the future were inflated with idle hopes.
Many whose credit had been shaken in the years of peace regained their spirits
amidst the confusions of the time, and found their best safety in revolution.
89. The mob and the people generally, whose vast numbers cut them off from
all interest in the state, began by degrees to feel the evils of war, now that
all the currency had been diverted to the purposes of the army, and the prices
of provisions were raised. These evils had not equally distressed the common
people during the insurrection of Vindex; the capital was safe, and the war
was in the provinces, and, fought as it was between the legions and Gaul, it
seemed but a foreign campaign. Indeed from the time that the Divine Augustus
consolidated the power of the Caesars, the wars of the Roman people had been
in remote places, and had caused anxiety or brought honour to but one man. Under
Tiberius and Caius men dreaded for the Commonwealth only the miseries of peace.
The rising of Scribonianus against Claudius was crushed as soon as heard of.
Nero was driven from power by evil tidings and rumours rather than by the sword.
Now the legions and the fleets were brought into action, and with them a force
used but on few other occasions, the Praetorian and city soldiery. In their
rear were the provinces of the East and of the West with all their forces; had
they fought under other generals there was all the material for a protracted
war. Many suggested to Otho, as he was setting out, a religious obstacle in
the fact that the sacred shields had not been restored to their place. He spurned
all delay, as having been Nero’s fatal mistake; and the fact that Caecina had
now crossed the Alps urged him to action.
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