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. They graciously leave the choice to the Senate and the people. In Rome no one yet knows that a day later Cologne had proclaimed Vitellius emperor.

From the mutiny the old man draws a strange conclusion: the army despises him not for his age but for having no children. So he must be given a son. Rome has been talking about a successor for months. Now he has to choose.

Lucius Calpurnius Piso Licinianus is thirty years old and bears one of the most brilliant names in Rome: he is a descendant of Pompey and Crassus. He is a man of the old stamp. Those who judged him fairly called him stern; the ill-disposed called him gloomy.

Tacitus puts a speech to Piso into Galba’s mouth. One sentence sounds like a program: “Augustus looked for a successor in his own house. I look for one in the state.” It is a noble thought, and the first of its kind since the empire began. But the Guard has no ear for talk of the state. The Guard waits for money.

On January 10, AD 69, a storm rages over Rome. Thunder, lightning, downpour. By ancient custom such a day dissolves every assembly. Galba goes to the Praetorians’ camp anyway. No one has even remembered to set up his chair on the platform.

He announces the adoption with imperial brevity. He invokes Augustus. He admits openly that two legions on the Rhine have mutinied. He adds not a word of flattery and not a word about money. The tribunes and centurions murmur some reply; the rest stay silent. The slightest generosity from that stingy old man would have been enough, Tacitus will write. What ruined him was an old-fashioned rigidity and severity, “which we can no longer endure.”

Otho stands in the crowd. Anger and bitterness show on his face.

Otho has debts — according to Plutarch, of two hundred million sesterces. And five days.