The Twelve Caesars (30 page)

Vindex’ defeat briefly shook Galba’s confidence. He withdrew to Clunia, a hill-town in the north of his province. There the course of Roman history was decided by timely discoveries
in the Temple of Jupiter. A prophecy whose existence was revealed to the priest in a dream announced ‘that one day there would
come forth from Spain the ruler and lord
of the world’. Galba responded energetically. From the province’s leading nobles, he created an ersatz ‘senate’ intended to assist him. Appropriating the revenues of
imperial property within the province, he had already set about increasing the armed forces at his disposal. Both courses of action – practical on the one hand, nodding towards Republican
constitutional propriety on the other – steadied his resolve when he learned that Nero had dispatched troops under Petronius Turpilianus and Rubrius Gallus to quash his rebellion (in fact
Gallus defected and Turpilianus’ troops deserted).
⁹

The defection which made Galba emperor of Rome, however, happened within the city itself. A low-born adventurer took it upon himself to turn king-maker. In the first instance his motives were
probably self-preservation.

Nymphidius Sabinus was the son of an imperial freedwoman. Thanks to his slipshod approach to truthfulness, his father is unknown, but chief contenders include a gladiator called Marcianus and
the emperor Gaius. By 65 prefect of the Praetorian Guard alongside Tigellinus, three years later Nymphidius had manoeuvred himself into a position of virtual control. It was a heady achievement for
a man of unbridled ambition lacking scruples. Apparently more aware than Nero of the extent of the rebellion fomenting Empire-wide, Nymphidius embarked on a calculated gamble. He decided to
transfer his allegiance to Galba. He would take with him the allegiance of the Praetorian Guard, that company of emperor-makers whose loyalty to Augustus’ descendants had previously ranked
high among the latter’s trump cards.

It was a tall order but, as time would show, Nymphidius did not shrink from challenges. On the night of 8 June he announced to the Praetorians that Nero had abandoned the city and that they, the
emperor’s personal guard, were without an emperor.
Then, in Galba’s name, making free with that immense fortune which he anticipated shortly having at his
disposal, he promised them a donative bigger than any paid to date: 30,000 sesterces a man. On the same day the senate had declared Galba Rome’s newest
princeps
; the following day,
Nero committed suicide. But if Nymphidius had correctly judged the mood of the moment and the spirit of the men in his charge, he had misjudged his new master. Nymphidius’ donatives would
never be paid: too soon his broken promises contributed to Galba’s death.

Galba set out for Rome, dressed, Suetonius tells us, in a cloak with a dagger hanging around his neck, the very model of military vigour had it not been for his physical decrepitude. At Narbo
Martius in August, with every appearance of charm and consideration, he met representatives of the senate, entertaining them in a style of simple dignity that surely aped his earliest memories of
Augustus. Conspicuously he disdained to make use of the palace furniture sent from Rome by Nymphidius (indeed, he pointedly omitted to acknowledge Nymphidius’ gift): the power entrusted to
him recognized a lifetime’s service to the state, not at this stage a trumpery affair requiring stage-sets and elaborate costumes. In that spirit, early coin issues acclaimed an emperor of
messianic qualities with no hint of personal grandeur. Considered and propagandist as with all imperial coinage, they were careful to temper Galba’s attributes with proper acknowledgement of
the role of the senate (which was virtually no role at all bar the maintenance of appearances in the face of considerable
force majeure
). They attested an emperor chosen ‘by the
Senate’s decree for saving the citizens of Rome’ no less,
¹⁰
and predictably celebrated peace, safety, liberty, harmony (a quality Galba’s rule would do much to jeopardize) and, more
controversially, Galba’s equity (time would show that a vindictive emperor interpreted the term in
the light of his own harsh requirements). Subsequent ironies
notwithstanding, it was a dialect of selflessness and civic-mindedness at the outset of Galba’s reign, old-fashioned duty before personal gain; and a whitewashing of those reservations about
Galba’s candidature which may have existed in many breasts that summer when legions and adventurers dictated the corollary to Nero’s death.

In late October or early November, at the end of a progress described by Tacitus as ‘slow and blood-stained’, Galba arrived in Rome. That night the theatre staged
Atellan farces, those runaround comedies of low humour and ribald buffoonery popular in the Republic (even Sulla was said to have turned his hand to writing an Atellan farce). It was an evening
distinguished by laughter, most of it, according to Suetonius, at Galba’s expense. For the Atellan farces, forerunners of pantomime and the
commedia dell’arte
, employed a small
number of stock characters, among them a fat man, a clown and an old man on the brink of decrepitude. That night the old man was a skinflint bumpkin called ‘Onesimus’. ‘Here comes
Onesimus from his farm,’ began the actors. Like a ripple the laughter began. The audience joined in the song. When it finished, they began it again. And then again. Accompanying words with
actions. Over and over that night they laughed at Onesimus-Galba. Their laughter was a complex emotion: born of relief certainly, but also of fear. For the crowd had heard a rumour of tidings
outside the theatre, and what they had heard supplied grounds for apprehension.

It was, in its way, as much a public spectacle as any stage performance. Unlike slapstick comedy, it did not provoke
laughter. According to Dio, more than 7,000 men were
killed in an encounter with Galba’s convoy at the Milvian Bridge on the outskirts of Rome (the real figure may be much smaller: the rumour itself is significant). The men were sailors whom
Nero had recruited to form an impromptu legion. Greeting Galba noisily, they petitioned for formal acknowledgement of their altered status. The disciplinarian Galba had no truck with popular
pressure and responded evasively. It was a tinderbox moment. Vociferously the would-be soldiers reiterated their protests; some even drew their swords. Goaded by fury, Galba gave orders to the
troops under his command. They charged the protesters. Fatalities were widespread. With a semblance of calm restored, Galba thrust home his point. He ordered decimation, that obsolete Republican
punishment by which errant soldiers themselves killed one in ten of their number by lot, while the nine randomly chosen survivors were compelled to watch. His orders were carried out. ‘This
shows that even if Galba was bowed down with age and disease,’ Dio comments, pursuing a train of thought surely intended to echo Galba’s own, ‘yet his mind was vigorous and he did
not believe that an emperor should submit to compulsion in anything.’
¹¹

Not only fellow soldiers watched that day, but those crowds of the public who had journeyed to greet the emperor. Even in a city habituated to bloodshed, currently overrun with soldiers and
balanced in a precarious peace, their response is predictable. For they had witnessed a portent more powerful than foaling mules or white-haired sacristans or centuries-old predictions interred in
temple precincts. Later the same month, as they had wished, Galba formed the remaining soldier-sailors into a regular unit, Legio I
Adiutrix
.

Nero’s marines were not the only casualties of Galba’s march to Rome. By the time the winter emperor reached his capital, his axe of
retribution had swung widely. Petronius Turpillianus, that general dispatched by Nero to quell Galba’s rebellion, was forced to commit suicide for his loyalty, despite the defection of his
troops which had prevented him from inflicting on Galba any more than unease. Betuus Cilo had requested assistance in quashing Vindex’ rebellion: he died for his pains. Ditto Fonteius Capito,
governor of Lower Germany, killed by Fabius Valens and Cornelius Aquinus with Galba’s acquiescence, neither exact motives nor circumstances of his murder easy to unravel. In Africa, Galban
loyalists destroyed the legionary legate Clodius Macer, suspected of restricting the grain supply in order to strengthen his attempt to seize the throne. By late autumn, Nymphidius Sabinus had also
breathed his last. His eminence had been brief. Once frustration with Galba’s refusal to co-opt him as his principal adviser tipped the balance and encouraged Nymphidius to canvas for the
throne on his own behalf, his days were numbered. Men of the Praetorian Guard killed him, leaving the way open for Galba’s preferred candidate, Laco, to command their unit. Cingonius Varro,
elected to the consulate for 69, ‘a corrupt and venal orator’, according to Tacitus, was killed for having written the speech Nymphidius proposed to deliver to the Praetorians.

Luckier than most, in 68 Verginius Rufus escaped with his life. Loyal to Nero in punishing Vindex, he was saved by verbal pedantry: although he had renounced the throne for himself, he had also
resisted open opposition to Galba by repeatedly stating that he would abide by the choice of the senate. His reward in the short term was an existence of notable uncertainty. It was mercy after a
fashion. Not enough to convince any of those who had witnessed the brutality of the Milvian Bridge. Popular
outrage focused in particular on the deaths of Cingonius Varro and
Petronius Turpillianus, both of them senators of mature years.

Galba ‘considered that he had not seized the power but that it had been given to him (indeed he was constantly making this statement),’ Dio writes.
¹²
As in his
coinage, so in his public pronouncements: it was Galba’s version of Augustus’ illusion, himself called to serve, power a burden accepted with reluctance. The emperor may have intended
more than lip-service by such posturing. Evidence for his relationship with the senate is scant but does not support the inference of Dio’s statement, namely that Galba made steps towards
forsaking autocracy in favour of government more in line with Republican precept: like all of his predecessors, he rated his own power more highly than that of the senate. Admittedly, Galba himself
was of senatorial stock. Those quick-fire reprisals ordered on the journey to Rome unnerved both his own and Neronian supporters. In addition, Suetonius reports an unsubstantiated rumour that Galba
had in mind a plan almost certain to win the senate’s disapprobation. He contemplated restricting to two years the duration of those military commands, governorships and procuratorships which
traditionally comprised elements of the careers of senators and equestrians. His targets were ambition and corruption. It was in part a continuation of Nero’s policy of rewarding mediocrity.
Since the outcome was to deny potential conspirators any platform for the purple, the only beneficiary would be Galba himself. It was also an incursion into the political sphere of the
emperor’s parade-ground discipline. As such it smacked of the sort of tyrannous high-handedness associated with the
worst of Galba’s predecessors. Suetonius is
clear that in future appointments would only be made to those who ‘did not wish them and declined them’, perversity befitting Tiberius or Gaius. Dangerous, too, deliberately to engender
a culture in which dissembling and dissimulation became essential.