Brixellum

The camp of Otho’s army: a funeral pyre and tents, detail of the print “Otho” from the series “Roman Emperors on Horseback” (Collaert and Galle after Stradanus, late 16th century), Metropolitan Museum of Art. Otho killed himself at Brixellum in AD 69. An image related to this place, not a view from the period.

A small town on the Po, today Brescello. Before the first battle of Bedriacum, Otho’s advisers persuaded him not to risk himself in the field and to await the outcome here. Tacitus believes that day ruined his cause, because the emperor took a large part of the guard with him (Histories 2.33). The news of defeat reached Brixellum. Otho still had fresh cohorts, and the legions from the Danube were on their way, but he ended the war so that no more Romans would die. On April 16, AD 69, he took his own life. Suetonius’s father, a tribune of the Thirteenth Legion, served in this war and told his son about it. Plutarch saw a modest tomb here with the inscription “To the memory of Marcus Otho” (Otho 18). The place appears in the episode AD 69 I.

Sources

Image: Adriaen Collaert and Philips Galle after Jan van der Straet (Stradanus), late 16th c., Roman Emperors on Horseback, pl. 8, Metropolitan Museum of Art; Wikimedia Commons, CC0