[32] i.e. the emperor’s
finance agent in the province of
Belgica.
[33] Cp. chap. 6.
[34] A gold signet-ring was the
sign of a free-born Roman
knight. Its grant to freedmen was an
innovation of which
Tacitus disapproved.
[35] Tacitus here follows the story
told by Suetonius in his
life of Otho. In the Annals,
xiii. 45, 46, Tacitus gives in
detail a more probable version. It is
more likely that Poppaea
used Otho as a stepping-stone to Nero’s
favour than that Otho,
as Suetonius quotes, ‘committed adultery
with his own wife.’
[36] See chap. 5, note 10.
[37] One of the three Commissioners
of Public Revenue
appointed by Nero in A.D. 62 (Ann.,
xv. 18).
[38] Lucius Calpurnius Piso Frugi
Licinianus was the son of M.
Licinius Crassus Frugi, and adopted son of
L. Calpurnius Piso
Frugi. His mother, Scribonia, was a
descendant of Pompey.
[39] Adoption from one family into
another needed in old days
the sanction of the Comitia Curiata.
When that assembly became
obsolete, the priests summoned a formal meeting
of thirty
lictors, and their sanction of an act of
adoption was still
called lex curiata. Galba was
now Pontifex maximus.
[40] Galba belonged to the Gens
Sulpicia, and was connected
through his mother, Mummia, with Q. Lutatius
Catulus, who had
led the senatorial party in the first half
of the last
century.
[41] i.e. Galba’s
great-grandfather had fought for Caesar
against Piso’s ancestor, Pompey.
[42] The children of Julia and
Agrippa.
[43] Crassus Scribonianus, cp.
chap. 47, and iv. 39.
[44] i.e. co-optation, employed
in former days to raise a
special contingent for emergencies.
GALBA’S MEASURES OF PRECAUTION
Reports of the German rebellion grew daily more insistent
and the public was always ready to believe any news,
provided it was bad. Accordingly the senate decided
that a commission must be sent to the army in Germany.
It was discussed in private whether Piso should go
himself to add dignity to the commission, since he
could carry the authority of the emperor, while the
others represented the senate. It was also proposed
to send Laco, the prefect of the Guards, but he objected.
The senate had allowed Galba to nominate the commissioners
and he showed the most miserable indecision, now nominating
members, now excusing them, now making exchanges,
yielding always to pressure from people who wanted
to go or to stay at home according as they were determined
by their hopes or their fears. The next question
was 20 one of finance. After investigating
all possible sources it seemed most reasonable to
recover the revenue from those quarters where the
cause of the deficit lay. Nero had squandered
