so much as a centurion or a tribune for themselves. Are you going to allow this precedent, and by your acquiescence make their crime your own? You will soon see this lawless spirit spreading to the troops abroad, and in time the treason will recoil on us and the war on you. Besides, innocence wins you as much as the murder of your emperor: you will get from us as large a bounty for your loyalty as you would from others for your crime.'
31The members of the Body Guard dispersed. The rest of the cohort paid some heed to his speech. Aimlessly, as happens in moments of confusion, they seized their standards, without as yet any fixed plan, and not, as was afterwards believed, to cloak their treachery. Marius Celsus had been dispatched to the picked detachments of the Illyrian army, which were quartered in the Vipsanian arcade,[1] while instructions had been given to two senior centurions,[2] Amullius Serenus and Domitius Sabinus, to summon the German troops from the Hall of Liberty. They distrusted the legion of marines, who had been alienated by Galba's
- ↑ These troops, having no head-quarters in Rome, were put up in a piazza built by M. Vipsanius Agrippa, and decorated with paintings of Neptune and of the Argonauts. Cp. ii. 93, where troops are quartered in collonades or temples.
- ↑ The term primipilaris denotes one who had been the centurion commanding the first maniple (pilani) of the first cohort of a legion. He was an officer of great importance, highly paid, and often admitted to the general's council. Otho's expedition to Narbonese Gaul (chap. 87) was commanded by two such 'senior centurions'.
