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.
Just outside the city, five kilometers from the gates according to Plutarch, a crowd of sailors blocks his way. Nero had made them legionaries. Now they demand an eagle and standards, that is, confirmation that they are a real legion. Galba tells them to wait, and when they keep shouting, he sends cavalry against them. Dio reports that seven thousand men died and the survivors were later decimated. Tacitus speaks only of “thousands of unarmed men.” Before this, people had laughed at the feeble old man. Now Rome trembles.
Then the Praetorians come to collect what is theirs.
The soldiers concluded that Galba was not merely cheating them but laying down a rule for all future emperors. Plutarch writes that from that moment they hated him.
Had he conducted the rest of his reign in the spirit of that one sentence, he might have been a great emperor. But his other deeds did not match it. The old man does not rule alone. In the palace three men never leave his side; Rome nicknames them his tutors. Suetonius bluntly calls them robbers, each with a different vice.
Nero gave away 2.2 billion sesterces in gifts. Galba wants them back. All the recipients, actors and athletes included, must return the gifts except for one tenth. A special commission of equestrians oversees it. When a recipient has already squandered everything, things are taken from those who bought something from him. Rome is abuzz with auctions.
In return, the people want the blood of Nero’s men. They get some of it. The men are paraded through the whole city in chains and then executed. Among them is Locusta, the poisoner you know from season one. Tigellinus, the most hated of Nero’s prefects, survives. At the spectacles the crowd calls for his head, and Galba issues an edict scolding the people for cruelty. Tigellinus had bought off Vinius.
The emperor’s stinginess becomes a subject of jokes. The story went that when the flute player Canus played for him at dinner, Galba took five denarii out of his own purse. In the theater the actors begin a well-known song, “Here comes Onesimus from the farm.” The whole audience finishes it in chorus and repeats it several times, with gestures. Everyone knows who is meant. Once a ruler becomes unpopular, Tacitus will write, all his deeds, good and bad, turn against him.
On January 1, the legions on the Rhine are to swear their annual oath of loyalty to the emperor. Not all of them will.