the secret; but, as had often happened, and was often to happen again, they were too powerful for their officers. The condensed phrase of the historian alone conveys the pith and marrow of the plot. "Two common soldiers" (mānipulares) "engaged to transfer the empire of the Roman people—and they did transfer it."
Otho meanwhile had bought the imperial guards. He attended at Galba's supper-table, gave handsome presents to the cohort on duty, and consoled the disappointed among the soldiers with gifts of land or money. The unconscious emperor, busy with his sacrifice, was really importuning the gods of an empire that was now another's. Piso harangued the troops: but the appeal of a stoical Cæsar was addressed to deaf ears: the greater number of his hearers at once dispersed; the few who remained faithful to the two Cæsars were feeble or wavering; the populace and the slaves clamoured with discordant shouts for Otho's death and the destruction of the conspirators. But what could a few domestic servants, a few frightened knights and senators, and an unarmed rabble, do against the prætorians, now advancing on the city? It was to little purpose that Galba's friends stood by him when he himself was undecided, when his ministers were wrangling with each other, and when every moment brought the conspirators nearer. The murder of Galba can only be described in the words of Tacitus—at least in those of his ablest English translators.[1]
"Galba was hurried to and fro with every movement of the surging crowd;" the feeble old man, attended
- ↑ Church and Brodribb.
