of Hispalis and Emerita[1] he enrolled new families of settlers, granted the franchise to the whole community of the Lingones,[2] and made over certain Moorish towns as a gift to the province of Baetica. Cappadocia and Africa were also granted new privileges, as showy as they were short-lived. All these grants are excused by the exigences of the moment and the impending crisis, but he even found time to remember his old amours and passed a measure through the senate restoring Poppaea's statues.[3] He is believed also to have thought of celebrating Nero's memory as a means of attracting public sympathy. Some persons actually erected statues of Nero, and there were times when the populace and the soldiers, by way of enhancing his fame and dignity, saluted him as Nero Otho. However, he refused to commit himself. He was ashamed to accept the title, yet afraid to forbid its use.
79While the whole of Rome was intent upon the civil war, foreign affairs were neglected. Consequently a Sarmatian tribe called the Rhoxolani,[4] who had cut up two cohorts of auxiliaries in the previous winter,
- ↑ Seville and Merida.
- ↑ As the rest of this sentence refers to Spain and Portugal it has been proposed to read for Lingones Lusones, a Celtiberian tribe round the sources of the Tagus. The Lingones were devoted to the cause of Vitellius. (See chap. 53, &c.)
- ↑ They had been thrown down by the populace, when Nero, after divorcing Antonia, was shamed—or frightened—into taking her back. (Cp. chap. 13.)
- ↑ They lived between the Dnieper and the Don, to the north of the Sea of Azov.
