49. Finally, when his companions unanimously insisted on his trying to escape from the miserable fate threatening him, he ordered them to dig a grave at once, of the right size, and then collect any pieces of marble that they could find and fetch wood and water for the disposal of the corpse. As they bustled about obediently he muttered through his tears: ‘Dead! And so great an artist!’
A runner brought him a letter from Phaon. Nero tore it from the man’s hands and read that, having been declared a public enemy by the Senate, he would be punished ‘in ancient style’ when arrested. He asked what ‘ancient style’ meant, and learned that the executioners stripped their victim naked, thrust his head into a wooden fork, and then flogged him to death with sticks. In terror he snatched up the two daggers which he had brought along and tried their points; but threw them down again, protesting that the fatal hour had not yet come. Then he begged Sporus to weep and mourn for him, but also begged one of the other three to set him an example by committing suicide first. He kept moaning about his cowardice, and muttering: ‘How ugly and vulgar my life has become!’ And then in Greek: ‘This certainly is no credit to Nero, no credit at all,’ and: ‘Come, pull yourself together, man!’ By this time the troop of cavalry who had orders to take him alive were coming up the road. Nero gasped:
‘Hark to the sound I hear! It is hooves of galloping horses.’
Then, with the help of his scribe, Epaphroditus, he stabbed himself in the throat and was already half dead when a cavalry officer entered, pretending to have rushed to his rescue, and staunched the wound with his cloak. Nero muttered: ‘Too late! But, ah, what fidelity!’ He died, with eyes glazed and bulging from their sockets, a sight which horrified everybody present. He had made his companions promise, whatever happened, not to let his head be cut off, but to have him buried all in one piece. Galba’s freedman Icelus, who had been imprisoned when the first news came of the revolt and was now at liberty again, granted this indulgence.
50. They laid Nero on his pyre, dressed in the gold-embroidered white robes which he had worn on 1 January. The funeral cost 2,000 gold pieces. Ecloge and Alexandria, his old nurses, helped Acte, his mistress, to carry the remains to the Pincian Hill, which can be seen from the Campus Martius. His coffin, of white porphyry, stands there in the Domitian family tomb behind a rail of Thasian stone and overshadowed by an altar of Luna marble.
51. Physical characteristics of Nero:
Height: average.
Body: pustular and malodorous.
Hair: light blond.
Features: pretty, rather than handsome.
Eyes: dullish blue.
Neck: squat.
Belly: protuberant.
Legs: spindling.
His health was amazingly good: for all his extravagant indulgence he had only three illnesses in fourteen years, and none of them serious enough to stop him from drinking wine or breaking any other regular habit. He did not take the least trouble to dress as an Emperor should, but always had his hair set in rows of curls and, when he visited Greece, let it grow long and hang down his back. He often gave audiences in an unbelted silk dressing-gown, slippers, and a scarf.
52. As a boy Nero read most of the usual school subjects except philosophy which, Agrippina warned him, was no proper study for a future ruler. His tutor Seneca hid the works of the early rhetoricians from him, intending to be admired himself as long as possible. So Nero turned his hand to poetry, and would dash off verses without any effort. It is often claimed that he published other people’s work as his own; but notebooks and loose pages have come into my possession, which contain some of Nero’s best-known poems in his own handwriting, and have clearly been neither copied nor dictated. Many erasures and cancellations, as well as words substituted above the lines prove that he was thinking things out for himself. Nero also took more than an amateur’s interest in painting and sculpture.
53. His greatest weaknesses were his thirst for popularity and his jealousy of men who caught the public eye by any means whatsoever. Because he had swept the board of all public prizes offered for acting, and was also an enthusiastic wrestler—during his tour of Greece he had never missed a single athletic meeting—most people expected him to take part in the Classical events at the next Olympiad. He used to squat on the ground in the stadium, like the judges, and if any pair of competitors worked away from the centre of the ring, would push them back himself. Because of his singing and chariot-driving he had been compared to Phoebus Apollo; now, apparently, he planned to become a Hercules, for according to one story he had a lion so carefully trained that he could safely face it naked before the entire amphitheatre; and then either kill it with his club or else strangle it.
54. Just before the end Nero took a public oath that if he managed to keep his throne he would celebrate the victory with a music festival, performing successively on water-organ, flute, and bagpipes; and when the last day came would dance the role of Turnus in Virgil’s Aeneid. He was supposed to have killed the actor Paris because he considered him a serious professional rival.
55. Nero’s unreasonable craving for immortal fame made him change a number of well-known names in his own favour. The month of April, for instance, became Neroneus; and Rome was on the point of being renamed ‘Neropolis’.
56. He despised all religious cults except that of Atargatis, the Syrian Goddess, and showed, one day, that he had changed his mind even about her, by urinating on the divine image. He had come, instead, to rest a superstitious belief—the only one, as a matter of fact, to which he ever remained faithful—in the statuette of a girl sent him by an anonymous commoner as a charm against conspiracies. It so happened that a conspiracy came to light immediately afterwards; so he began to worship the girl as though she were a powerful goddess, and sacrificed to her three times a day, expecting people to believe that she gave him knowledge of the future. He did inspect some entrails once, a few months before his death, but they contained no omen at all favourable to him.
57. Nero died at the age of thirty-two, on the anniversary of Octavia’s murder. In the widespread general rejoicing, citizens ran through the streets wearing caps of liberty, as though they were freed slaves. But a few faithful friends used to lay spring and summer flowers on his grave for some years, and had statues made of him, wearing his fringed gown, which they put up on the Rostra; they even continued to circulate his edicts, pretending he was still alive and would soon return to confound his enemies. What is more, King Vologaesus of Parthia, on sending ambassadors to ratify his alliance with Rome, particularly requested the Senate to honour Nero’s memory. In fact, twenty years later, when I was a young man, a mysterious individual came forward claiming to be Nero; and so magical was the sound of his name in the Parthians’ ears that they supported him to the best of their ability, and were most reluctant to concede Roman demands for his extradition.
VII
GALBA
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 home at Veii after marrying Augustus,80 an eagle flew by and dropped into her lap a white pullet which it had just pounced upon. Noticing a laurel twig in its beak she decided to keep the pullet for breeding and to plant the twig. Soon the pullet 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. Remarkably enough, the death of each Emperor was anticipated by the premonitory wilting of his laurel; and in the last year of Nero’s reign 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’s sceptre from his hands.
2. Galba succeeded Nero. Though not directly related to the Ju
lians, he came from a very ancient aristocratic house, and used to amplify the inscriptions on his own statues with the statement that Quintus Catulus Capitolinus was his great-grandfather; and even had a tablet set up in the Palace forecourt, tracing his ancestry back to Juppiter on the male, and to Pasiphaë, Minos’s 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 Sulpician, 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 galbeum, 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 Sulpicians 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 pro-Praetor, he massacred 30,000 Lusitanians—an act which provoked the war with Viriathus. Servius Galba’s grandson, enraged when Julius Caesar, whose lieutenant 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.81 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 poor speaker into the bargain, he proved indefatigable in public business. He married, first Mummia Achaica, grand-daughter of Catulus and great-grand-daughter 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 3 B.C., while Messala and Lentulus were Consuls, Servius Galba, the Emperor-to-be, was born in a hillside house beside the road which links Terracina with Fundi. To please his stepmother Livia Ocellina, who had adopted him, he took the name Livius, the surname Ocellus, and even the forename Lucius, until becoming Emperor. According to some writers 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 glory, child’; and Tiberius, hearing that he would be Emperor when an old man, grunted: ‘Very well, let him live in peace; the news does not concern me in the least.’ One day, as Galba’s grandfather was invoking sacrificial 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.82 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.
He had already dreamed that the Goddess Fortune visited him to announce 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 private chapel to Fortune; worshipping her with monthly sacrifices and an annual vigil.
Even as a young man he faithfully observed the national custom, already obsolescent, of summoning his household slaves twice a day to wish him good-morning and good-night, one after the other.
5. Galba was a conscientious student of public affairs, and particularly skilled in law. He took marriage seriously but, on losing his wife Livia 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 in front of a whole bevy of married women.
Galba always behaved most graciously to Livia Augusta, who showed him considerable favour while she lived, and then left him half a million gold pieces, the largest bequest of all. But, because the amount was expressed in figures, not words, Tiberius, as her executor, reduced it to a mere 5,000; and Galba never handled even that modest sum.
6. He won his first public appointment while still under age. As praetor in charge of the Floral Games 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 Caligula’s orders Galba replaced Gaetulicus as Governor-general of Greater Germany. The day after taking up his command he put a stop to manual applause at a religious festival, by posting a notice to the effect that ‘hands will be kept inside uniform 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 sharply checked a barbarian raid into Gaul. Altogether, he and his army made so favourable an impression when Caligula 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 doubling for twenty miles, shield on shoulder, beside the Emperor’s chariot, while continuing to direct manoeuvres.
7. Although strongly urged to proclaim himself Emperor after Caligula’s murder, Galba held back, thus earning Claudius’s 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, 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 peck of surplus wheat for a gold piece, he forbade all ranks to feed the fellow when his stores were exhausted; and 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 blindfold 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, and was elected both to the Fellowship of the Fifteen,83 and to the Titian and Augustan Guilds. But from then onwards, 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 10,000 gold pieces. At last, while living at Fundi, he was offered the governorship of Tarragonian Spain; where, soon after his arrival, as he sacrificed in a temple, the incense-carrying acolyte 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 ruled Tarragonian 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 money-changer 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 with: ‘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 New Carthage when news reached him of the revolt in Celtic Gaul. It came in the form of an appeal for help sent by the Roman Governor-general of Aquitaine, which was followed by another from Gaius Julius Vindex asking, would he 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; and took heart from certain very favourable signs and portents especially the predictions of a nobly-born girl which (according to Juppiter’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.