AD 69 I: You Don’t Buy Soldiers

AD 69 I: You Don’t Buy Soldiers (An old man from Hispania refuses the Guard its money, and Nero’s friend pays for the throne. Seven chapters on the first half of the Year of the Four Emperors, with decisions to make and films.) — lesson 10 of the course: 7 parts, about 21 min of reading.

AD 69 begins with a question that Tacitus called the secret of power: can an emperor be made somewhere other than Rome? Galba, a seventy-year-old governor of Hispania, rebels against Nero but insists on being called merely the legate of the Senate and the people. In Rome he refuses the Guard the money promised in his name, adopts Piso on the day of a storm and dies in the Forum beside the Lacus Curtius. Otho, Nero’s friend and Poppaea’s husband, buys the Praetorians, rules for ninety days and, after the defeat at Bedriacum, ends the civil war himself at Brixellum. The episode opens the second season of the series about the emperors of Rome.

Films

• Who Gave You the Order? — Rome, January 15, AD 69: that morning Emperor Galba makes a sacrifice on the Palatine while a mutiny breaks out in the Guard’s camp. The film ends before anything happens.
• Four Armies, One Throne — January first, AD 69: whoever has an army can have the throne. The Rhine, the East and the Danube against the emperor in Rome.
• Bedriacum: Wait or Strike? — Spring, AD 69: Vitellius’s armies come down from the Alps, and at Bedriacum Otho must decide: wait for the legions from the Danube or strike at once.
• The Last Night at Brixellum — Brixellum on the Po, April, AD 69: Otho still has an army, but he decides to end the civil war.

Articles

• Who Gave You the Order? — AD 69 I: You Don’t Buy Soldiers — Tacitus admires this answer. The old man can barely stay upright in his litter, a crowd is shouting all around him, and even now he guards a single principle.
• Legate of the Senate and the People — AD 69 I: You Don’t Buy Soldiers — Spring, AD 68. New Carthage, present-day Cartagena.
• You Don’t Buy Soldiers — AD 69 I: You Don’t Buy Soldiers — Galba’s journey to Rome is slow and bloody. On the way two high officials, accused of favoring Nymphidius and Nero, are put to death without trial.
• Rain on Adoption Day — AD 69 I: You Don’t Buy Soldiers — A few days after New Year’s, letters from Belgica reach Rome. The legions of Upper Germany have broken their oath and demand a different emperor.
• The Fifteenth of January — AD 69 I: You Don’t Buy Soldiers — Otho says it outright: he cannot stay on his feet unless he becomes emperor. It makes no difference whether he falls at the hand of an enemy in battle or at the hands of creditors in the Forum.
• Ninety Days — AD 69 I: You Don’t Buy Soldiers — You know him. In the episode about Nero we asked: remember this Otho.
• Better One for All — AD 69 I: You Don’t Buy Soldiers — How do we know what happened at Brixellum? This time not only from books.