Sergius Sulpicius Galba (Galba) - C. Suetonius Tranquillus
XVIII. Many remarkable prodigies had happened from the (412) very
beginning of his reign, which forewarned him of his approaching fate. In
every town through which he passed in his way from Spain to Rome, victims
were slain on the right and left of the roads; and one of these, which
was a bull, being maddened with the stroke of the axe, broke the rope
with which it was tied, and running straight against his chariot, with
his fore-feet elevated, bespattered him with blood. Likewise, as he was
alighting, one of the guard, being pushed forward by the crowd, had very
nearly wounded him with his lance. And upon his entering the city and,
afterwards, the palace, he was welcomed with an earthquake, and a noise
like the bellowing of cattle. These signs of ill-fortune were followed
by some that were still more apparently such. Out of all his treasures
he had selected a necklace of pearls and jewels, to adorn his statue of
Fortune at Tusculum. But it suddenly occurring to him that it deserved a
more august place, he consecrated it to the Capitoline Venus; and next
night, he dreamt that Fortune appeared to him, complaining that she had
been defrauded of the present intended her, and threatening to resume
what she had given him. Terrified at this denunciation, at break of day
he sent forward some persons to Tusculum, to make preparations for a
sacrifice which might avert the displeasure of the goddess; and when he
himself arrived at the place, he found nothing but some hot embers upon
the altar, and an old man in black standing by, holding a little incense
in a glass, and some wine in an earthern pot. It was remarked, too, that
whilst he was sacrificing upon the calends of January, the chaplet fell
from his head, and upon his consulting the pullets for omens, they flew
away. Farther, upon the day of his adopting Piso, when he was to
harangue the soldiers, the seat which he used upon those occasions,
through the neglect of his attendants, was not placed, according to
custom, upon his tribunal; and in the senate-house, his curule chair was
set with the back forward.
XIX. The day before he was slain, as he was sacrificing in the morning,
the augur warned him from time to time to be upon his guard, for that he
was in danger from assassins, and that they were near at hand. Soon
after, he was informed, that Otho was in possession of the pretorian
camp. And though most of his friends advised him to repair thither
immediately, (413) in hopes that he might quell the tumult by his
authority and presence, he resolved to do nothing more than keep close
within the palace, and secure himself by guards of the legionary
soldiers, who were quartered in different parts about the city. He put
on a linen coat of mail, however, remarking at the same time, that it
would avail him little against the points of so many swords. But being
tempted out by false reports, which the conspirators had purposely spread
to induce him to venture abroad--some few of those about him too hastily
assuring him that the tumult had ceased, the mutineers were apprehended,
and the rest coming to congratulate him, resolved to continue firm in
their obedience--he went forward to meet them with so much confidence,
that upon a soldier's boasting that he had killed Otho, he asked him, "By
what authority?" and proceeded as far as the Forum. There the knights,
appointed to dispatch him, making their way through the crowd of
citizens, upon seeing him at a distance, halted a while; after which,
galloping up to him, now abandoned by all his attendants, they put him to
death.
XX. Some authors relate, that upon their first approach he cried out,
"What do you mean, fellow-soldiers? I am yours, and you are mine," and
promised them a donative: but the generality of writers relate, that he
offered his throat to them, saying, "Do your work, and strike, since you
are resolved upon it." It is remarkable, that not one of those who were
at hand, ever made any attempt to assist the emperor; and all who were
sent for, disregarded the summons, except a troop of Germans. They, in
consideration of his late kindness in showing them particular attention
during a sickness which prevailed in the camp, flew to his aid, but came
too late; for, being not well acquainted with the town, they had taken a
circuitous route. He was slain near the Curtian Lake [667], and there
left, until a common soldier returning from the receipt of his allowance
of corn, throwing down the load which he carried, cut off his head.
There being upon it no hair, by which he might hold it, he hid it in the
bosom of his dress; but afterwards thrusting his thumb into the mouth, he
carried it in that manner to Otho, who gave it to the drudges and slaves
who attended the soldiers; and they, fixing it upon the (414) point of a
spear, carried it in derision round the camp, crying out as they went
along, "You take your fill of joy in your old age." They were irritated
to this pitch of rude banter, by a report spread a few days before, that,
upon some one's commending his person as still florid and vigorous, he
replied,
Eti moi menos empedoi estin. [668]
My strength, as yet, has suffered no decay.
A freedman of Petrobius's, who himself had belonged to Nero's family,
purchased the head from them at the price of a hundred gold pieces, and
threw it into the place where, by Galba's order, his patron had been put
to death. At last, after some time, his steward Argius buried it, with
the rest of his body, in his own gardens near the Aurelian Way.
XXI. In person he was of a good size, bald before, with blue eyes, and
an aquiline nose; and his hands and feet were so distorted with the gout,
that he could neither wear a shoe, nor turn over the leaves of a book, or
so much as hold it. He had likewise an excrescence in his right side,
which hung down to that degree, that it was with difficulty kept up by a
bandage.
XXII. He is reported to have been a great eater, and usually took his
breakfast in the winter-time before day. At supper, he fed very
heartily, giving the fragments which were left, by handfuls, to be
distributed amongst the attendants. In his lust, he was more inclined to
the male sex, and such of them too as were old. It is said of him, that
in Spain, when Icelus, an old catamite of his, brought him the news of
Nero's death, he not only kissed him lovingly before company, but begged
of him to remove all impediments, and then took him aside into a private
apartment.
XXIII. He perished in the seventy-third year of his age, and the seventh
month of his reign [669]. The senate, as soon as they could with safety,
ordered a statue to be erected for him upon the naval column, in that
part of the Forum where he (415) was slain. But Vespasian cancelled the
decree, upon a suspicion that he had sent assassins from Spain into
Judaea to murder him.
* * * * * *
GALBA was, for a private man, the most wealthy of any who had ever
aspired to the imperial dignity. He valued himself upon his being
descended from the family of the Servii, but still more upon his relation
to Quintus Catulus Capitolinus, celebrated for integrity and virtue. He
was likewise distantly related to Livia, the wife of Augustus; by whose
interest he was preferred from the station which he held in the palace,
to the dignity of consul; and who left him a great legacy at her death.
His parsimonious way of living, and his aversion to all superfluity or
excess, were construed into avarice as soon as he became emperor; whence
Plutarch observes, that the pride which he took in his temperance and
economy was unseasonable. While he endeavoured to reform the profusion
in the public expenditure, which prevailed in the reign of Nero, he ran
into the opposite extreme; and it is objected to him by some historians,
that he maintained not the imperial dignity in a degree consistent even
with decency. He was not sufficiently attentive either to his own
security or the tranquillity of the state, when he refused to pay the
soldiers the donative which he had promised them. This breach of faith
seems to be the only act in his life that affects his integrity; and it
contributed more to his ruin than even the odium which he incurred by the
open venality and rapaciousness of his favourites, particularly Vinius.
FOOTNOTES:
[639] Veii; see the note, NERO, c. xxxix.
[640] The conventional term for what is most commonly known as,
"The Laurel, meed of mighty conquerors,
And poets sage,"--Spenser's Faerie Queen.
is retained throughout the translation. But the tree or shrub which had
this distinction among the ancients, the Laurus nobilis of botany, the
Daphne of the Greeks, is the bay-tree, indigenous in Italy, Greece, and
the East, and introduced into England about 1562. Our laurel is a plant
of a very different tribe, the Prunes lauro-cerasus, a native of the
Levant and the Crimea, acclimated in England at a later period than the
bay.
[641] The Temple of the Caesars is generally supposed to be that
dedicated by Julius Caesar to Venus genitrix, from whom the Julian family
pretended to derive their descent. See JULIUS, c. lxi.; AUGUSTUS, c. ci.
[642] A.U.C. 821.
[643] The Atrium, or Aula, was the court or hall of a house, the
entrance to which was by the principal door. It appears to have been a
large oblong square, surrounded with covered or arched galleries. Three
sides of the Atrium were supported by pillars, which, in later times,
were marble. The side opposite to the gate was called Tablinum; and the
other two sides, Alae. The Tablinum contained books, and the records of
what each member of the family had done in his magistracy. In the Atrium
the nuptial couch was erected; and here the mistress of the family, with
her maid-servants, wrought at spinning and weaving, which, in the time of
the ancient Romans, was their principal employment.
[644] He was consul with L. Aurelius Cotta, A.U.C. 610.
[645] A.U.C. 604.
[646] A.U.C. 710.
[647] A.U.C 775.
[648] A.U.C. 608.
[649] Caius Sulpicius Galba, the emperor's brother, had been consul
A.U.C. 774.
[650] A.U.C. 751.
[651] Now Fondi, which, with Terracina, still bearing its original name,
lie on the road to Naples. See TIBERIUS, cc. v. and xxxix.
[652] Livia Ocellina, mentioned just before.
[653] A.U.C. 751.
[654] The widow of the emperor Augustus.
[655] Suetonius seems to have forgotten, that, according to his own
testimony, this legacy, as well as those left by Tiberius, was paid by
Caligula. "Legata ex testamento Tiberii; quamquam abolito, sed et Juliae
Augustae, quod Tiberius suppresserat, cum fide, ac sine calumnia
repraesentate persolvit." CALIG. c. xvi.
[656] A.U.C. 786.
[657] Caius Caesar Caligula. He gave the command of the legions in
Germany to Galba.
[658] "Scuto moderatus;" another reading in the parallel passage of
Tacitus is scuto immodice oneratus, burdened with the heavy weight of a
shield.
[659] It would appear that Galba was to have accompanied Claudius in his
expedition to Britain; which is related before, CLAUDIUS, c. xvii.
[660] It has been remarked before, that the Cantabria of the ancients is
now the province of Biscay.
[661] Now Carthagena.
[662] A.U.C. 821.
[663] Now Corunna.
[664] Tortosa, on the Ebro.
[665] "Simus," literally, fiat-nosed, was a cant word, used for a clown;
Galba being jeered for his rusticity, in consequence of his long
retirement. See c. viii. Indeed, they called Spain his farm.
[666] The command of the pretorian guards.
[667] In the Forum. See AUGUSTUS, c. lvii.
[668] II. v. 254.
[669] A.U.C. 822.