69 AD: The Year of Four Emperors
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3. Plutarch sets Sabinus’ appointment as city prefect in mid-March, when Otho left Rome for the north. This is clearly an error, whether brought about by ignorance, or by a misunderstanding of the fact that Otho put his brother Titianus in charge of Rome then.
4. The chronology is difficult. These four issues, it is usually said, must have been minted before 9 March, because the emperor’s titles on the obverse do not include Pontifex Maximus (conferred formally on that date), whereas the official celebrations for the victory in Moesia were staged only on 1 March. But the mint need not have stopped striking these issues on 9 March in favor of designs styling Otho Pontifex Maximus as well. Since this title is sometimes present on, and sometimes absent from, Galba’s final bronze coinage, issued in the last few weeks of his life (C. H. V. Sutherland and R. A. G. Carson, The Roman Imperial Coinage, vol. 1 [London: Spink, 1984], 223), Otho’s practice may have been just as inconsistent.
5. See chapter 2, note 6.
6. This is the interpretation of G. E. F. Chilver, A Historical Commentary on Tacitus’ Histories I and II (Oxford: University Press, 1979), 138–39. As he says, Otho could not have heard from all the Balkan legions in 11 days, but there are parallels showing that he could within that time have sent messages to and received replies from the legionary legates in Pannonia, Vedius Aquila in charge of XIII Gemina at Poetovio (Ptuj), some 550 miles from Rome, and Antonius Primus, with VII Galbiana at Carnuntum, 700 miles away. As Tacitus states that Antonius supported Otho enthusiastically at first, he may have assured the emperor that the other legions would respond similarly.
7. The view that Otho began his preparations only around 1 March rests on calculations that work back from the dates at which the Balkan legions arrived in Italy, and on the assumption that these forces traveled at the normal march rate (15–20 miles a day). Since Tacitus states explicitly that the legions did not make all appropriate speed, the argument is specious. It is better to contend that Otho sent orders to the Balkan legions at the same time as he made all his other arrangements, in the second half of February.
8. The squadron stationed at Forum Julii almost certainly decamped when the governor of Narbonensis switched his allegiance from Otho to Vitellius. The marines may have made for Misenum or for northern Italy (otherwise unidentified marines show up there too).
9. What happened to the Othonians after Vitellius’ victory Tacitus does not report (see chapter 7). All we know is that Aemilius Pacensis was killed in the Vitellian attack on the Capitol in December 69 (chapter 10), and that Suedius Clemens survived into Vespasian’s reign (conclusion).
10. Once again, the problem is chronological. Tacitus gives us the most detailed account and, immediately after reporting the celebrations attending the victory over the Rhoxolani, he remarks that “meanwhile” the praetorian mutiny began. Since we know that those celebrations took place on 1 March, it is sometimes held that the mutiny must belong in March. But the account of the celebrations is only a postscript to the campaign, and that occurred in January or February. As Tacitus uses “meanwhile” casually elsewhere, it is better to set the mutiny between campaign and celebrations, in February.
11. As has always been recognized, the main problem lies in the senselessness of summoning the cohort from Ostia to Rome while its weaponry was being loaded on wagons for some other (unspecified) destination. Hence my suggestion that there was to be a parade of some kind in Rome. The further idea that the destination was Ostia depends on Suetonius’ cryptic reference to marines by whom “weaponry was to be loaded on ships and sent back.” The “back” in “sent back” (remitti) makes a kind of sense if the destination was Ostia, the port from which the cohort had been summoned.
12. Though Tacitus’ date is almost certainly confirmed by the evidence of inscriptions, Suetonius (Otho 8.3) sets the emperor’s departure from Rome up to ten days later, partly to blame Otho for ignoring religious rites that took place then, and partly to stress his rashness, by shortening to three weeks the time-lag between his leaving Rome and the decisive battle at Bedriacum.
Chapter 6
1. Most scholars identify Bedriacum with the modern village of Calvatone, but Wellesley argued repeatedly for Tornata, a village 2 miles further south. Since the Othonians marched only 19 or 20 miles once they had decided to give battle (below, note 8), even a difference of 2 miles plays havoc with attempts to fix the site of the battle.
2. The prefect of the camp (praefectus castrorum) was on the same level as the legionary legate, but was not in the main chain of command, partly because his functions were administrative, partly because he was often a man who had risen from the ranks (it was the highest position a ranker could hold). But unlike Alfenus Varus (of whom more later), Gratus must have been an officer, since his brother Fronto was a tribune who had been cashiered from the cohorts of the watch by Galba (chapter 3).
3. Plutarch has Paulinus assert that the Othonians were outnumbered from the start, but Tacitus rightly makes their numerical inferiority a result of Otho’s taking a strong force to Brixellum with him after the meeting. See A. Passerini, “Le due battaglie presso Betriacum,” Studi di antichità classica offerti a Emanuele Ciaceri (Genoa, Rome, Naples, Citta di Castello, 1940), 178–248.
4. Paulinus had fought successfully against tribes in the Atlas Mountains in 42 (Pliny, Natural History 5.14; Dio 60.9.1). For his record in Britain in 61, the conquest of Mona (Anglesey), and the defeat of Boudicca, see Tacitus, Annals 14.29–39.
5. The three legions from Moesia, III Gallica, VII Claudia, and VIII Augusta, never arrived (see below, chapter 9). The whereabouts of the other two, VII Galbiana and XI Claudia, cannot be fixed. The latter’s advance guard may have turned up just after the battle, but VII Galbiana was perhaps held back by its commander, Antonius Primus (see, again, chapter 9). On the cavalry squadrons see below, note 11.
6. Plutarch’s naming Celsus rather than Paulinus may have been determined by his awareness that Celsus urged surrender immediately after the battle. He appears not to have seen that it weakened his case.
7. The statement that Otho shut his eyes “like somebody leaping off a cliff” seems to have struck a chord especially with the two German scholars who championed this interpretation, Friedrich Klingner and Heinrich Heubner. So it is worth noting that both began their research in the interwar period. During World War I, German government circles had observed repeatedly that this policy or that, above all the resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare in February 1917, represented “a leap in the dark.”
8. Much has been made of the disagreement between Tacitus and Plutarch on the distances the army marched on its last two days: Tacitus gives 4 miles for the first day and 16 for the second, Plutarch 6 and a quarter (50 stades) for the first and 12 and a half (100 stades) for the second. The total is much the same, 19 or 20 miles, as was pointed out over a century ago by L. Valmaggi (ed.), Cornelio Tacito: il libro secondo delle Storie (Turin: Ermanno Loescher, 1897), 72–73.
9. There is no basis for assertions that the Othonians’ aim was to cut lines of communication between Caecina and Valens and Vitellius beyond the Alps. There were no lines. As Titianus and Paulinus had recognized in the council of war, Caecina and Valens were on their own. There is no more to be said for the theory that the Othonians were trailing their coats to bring on an attack. Even if our sources overstate the chaos created in the Othonian ranks by the Vitellians’ response, the Othonians had clearly made no serious preparations for a battle.
10. It is usually said that they must have come from the cohorts brigaded with the gladiators on the southern bank of the Po opposite Cremona, because officers from there could easily have slipped across the river unnoticed. But by now this force should have been brought across the river. Still, this force did fight poorly in the battle, perhaps because its officers held it back. This may even be Plutarch’s justification for claiming that all the praetorians fought shamefully, fleeing the field before the enemy came to close quarters. Tacitus insists
that the praetorians in the center of the Othonian line fought long and hard.
11. Tacitus does not identify these cavalry units in his account of the battle, but in a speech he attributes to Antonius Primus early in Histories 3, he has him assert that one Pannonian and one Moesian squadron were responsible.
12. Since axes were never part of legionary or praetorian equipment, it has been held that the fight on the causeway took place between auxiliary units. But it is inconceivable that either side would have entrusted the center of their lines to auxiliaries. Otho’s praetorians at least could have grabbed axes from the baggage train with which they had been entangled.
Chapter 7
1. It is generally agreed that the battle fell on 15 April. What has been argued is whether Otho committed suicide at dawn on the first or the second day after the battle. Tacitus insists on the first day (16 April), before Otho learnt of the surrender at Bedriacum, and this is consistent with the accounts of Plutarch, Dio, and Josephus. The one ground for delaying his act until dawn on the second day (17 April) is Suetonius’ assertion that Titianus was present when Otho died (Otho 10.2). Since Titianus was involved in the surrender at Bedriacum (as Plutarch tells us), this has been used to argue that we must insert another day between battle and suicide, to give him time to reach Brixellum. Suetonius is probably wrong, however. He appears deliberately to have added every relative he can think of, actual or potential, to the roster of kinfolk the emperor tried to console before killing himself.
2. Tacitus may not say explicitly that Otho could have won further battles, but no more does he say that Otho was bound to lose them. Like Plutarch and Suetonius, he allows the possibility that the tables could have been turned.
3. Even Plutarch does not reject this way of thinking. It forms the basis of the speech he credits to Celsus after the battle (chapter 6). But as he sees it, Otho did the right thing for the wrong reasons, out of weakness.
4. Tacitus’ stating that Otho “spent a quiet and—so it is said—a dreamless night” has caused perplexity. But nobody knew whether Otho dreamt, since he talked to nobody the following morning. And the detail stresses Otho’s calmness and firmness of purpose, separating this night from that following his assassination of Galba. Then, if we believe Suetonius and Dio-Xiphilinus, Otho had been tormented by nightmares.
5. Tacitus asserts that Blaesus’ generosity was unwelcome to Vitellius (because he could not reciprocate), and that while he accepted these gifts with fulsome thanks, he conceived a strong hatred for his benefactor. This is possible, but Tacitus is also preparing for the emperor’s being persuaded to kill Blaesus in October or November (below, chapter 10).
6. This elliptical reference to an all-night orgy is as close as Tacitus comes to the story in Suetonius (Vitellius 10.3), that Vitellius held an all-night festival (pervigilium) during his army’s passage of the Apennines.
7. As we have seen already, Valens supposedly had started out with 40,000 men, Caecina with 30,000, while Vitellius collected another 25,000. Although this gives a total significantly higher than 60,000, the discrepancy is explicable, once we make allowance for casualties in battles, forces told off to watch Othonian units, reserves sent back to their homelands, and men let go the service.
8. Otho had planned for Marius Celsus and Arrius Antoninus to be consuls for July to September. For October he had designated Valerius Marinus and Pedanius Costa; Vitellius disregarded Costa because he had been hostile to Nero, and he postponed the term of office for Marinus, originally one of Galba’s choices, writing him off as a nonentity. (Marinus would respond by decamping to Vespasian, a detail preserved by Pliny the Elder, because he made the sea journey from Puteoli to Alexandria in a record nine days.) For November and December, Otho had planned for Martius Macer to partner Quinctius Atticus.
9. Vitellius may have followed Augustus’ practice, and have assumed “the powers of a consul” without holding the office itself. In that case, Vitellius was a third consul (for life), with the power of veto—if the need arose—over any other senator who held the office, for whatever length of time he held it.
10. The pay for auxiliaries varied, and the rates are controversial. See, e.g., M. A. Speidel, “Roman army pay scales,” Journal of Roman Studies 82 (1992), 87–106, and R. Alston, “Roman military pay from Caesar to Diocletian,” ibid. 84 (1994), 113–23.
11. Though Tacitus’ account is tendentious, what has raised doubts about its accuracy is the ability of Flavius Sabinus to rally the urban cohorts against their emperor in December. See below, chapter 10, note 6.
12. For Caligula see Suetonius, Gaius 37.3 (Dio 59.2.6 gives the figures as 2,300 or 3,300 million and allows the emperor two years). For the shortfall Vespasian faced see Suetonius, Vespasian 16.3. All such figures must be treated with extreme caution (see W. Scheidel, “Finances, Figures and Fiction,” Classical Quarterly 46 [1996], 222–38), but the rumor is not incredible in and of itself.
13. In Pliny’s day (Natural History 3.66) there were 265 wards (vici), and unlikely as it may seem that gladiatorial shows could have been given in every one, Suetonius (Augustus 43.1) states that “sometimes Augustus gave games (ludos, not quite the same thing) in every ward.” Though it makes some difference to the chronology whether we set Vitellius’ birthday on 7 or 24 September (see chapter 4), my account has tried to allow for either possibility.
Chapter 8
1. The best discussion of Vespasian’s brother is by Kristine Gilmartin Wallace, “The Flavii Sabini in Tacitus,” Historia 36 (1987), 343–58.
2. Suetonius, Titus 2. The metoposcopus “read” the forehead of his victim. In the East the art was held in high esteem (Plutarch, Sulla 5.9), but not in Rome (Juvenal, Satire 6.582–84). This detail may help explain why Suetonius reports that the man was brought in by Claudius’ freedman Narcissus.
3. Many discussions misstate Vespasian’s position and powers, or sidestep the problem. As was recognized by P. Le Roux, “Galba et Tarraco: à propos de Suétone, Galba, XII, 1,” Pallas 31 (1984), 115–16, Vespasian’s province at first was almost certainly “the war against the Jews.”
4. For Josephus’ prediction see Bellum Judaicum 3.400–408. It is mentioned also by Suetonius, Vespasian 5.6, and Dio-Xiphilinus 66.1.4.
5. A legionary legateship could be regarded as a substitute for a praetorship anyway (cf. Tacitus, Annals 14.28.1), and Caecina had already been appointed a legionary legate by Galba without holding a praetorship.
6. To these reflections Tacitus adds one more clause: “but if Vespasian were to take over the state, those preparing for war would have to forget about prior insults.” It may look as if Tacitus has anticipated events here, since Vespasian’s decision to take on the winner of the struggle was made in Titus’ absence (see below). The thought could still have occurred to Titus independently, as a logical extrapolation from his awareness of his father’s unhappiness with Galba, and his own realization that Otho and Vitellius had weaker claims to the throne than the man they displaced.
Chapter 9
1. Tacitus says, not that Antonius wrote to Otho, only that he was believed to have done so. The second half of the sentence, a statement that “Antonius was of no use in the Othonian war,” is more problematic, but it likely means that he took no part in the war.
2. For Fuscus’ character see the discussion of Galba’s partisans in chapter 4.
3. The government itself seems to have overlooked this backwater. A recently discovered military diploma of 8 September 79 shows that Sextilius was still procurator of Noricum ten years later.
4. Demosthenes’ attack on Epipolae during the Athenian siege of Syracuse is the first large-scale night battle reported by a major historian, Thucydides (see W. K. Pritchett, The Greek State at War, Part II [Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1974], 162–71). So it is often held that he was the model for Tacitus’ narrative. But Thucydides’ account could have been refracted through Livy’s lost version of a night action between Pompey
and Mithridates of Pontus in 66 B.C. The surviving accounts (Plutarch, Pompey 32.4–7; Dio 36.49.6–8) offer the same clichés about the darkness, passwords, and so on.
5. Tacitus too has women from Cremona taking out food to the Vitellians, but he gives no hint that the latter shared it with the Flavians, probably because he sets the snippet in a different context.
6. See E. W. Marsden, Greek and Roman Artillery: Historical Development (Oxford: University Press, 1969), 86–98 and 187, for the ranges achievable with such weaponry and the soldiers’ action respectively.
Chapter 10
1. As Caecina Tuscus was the son of Nero’s nurse (Suetonius, Nero 35.5), he was of freedman origin, and no kin to Aulus Caecina. Made prefect of Egypt in September 63, he held the post perhaps until 66. Suetonius and Dio (63.18.1) report that he was exiled for bathing in baths built for Nero’s intended visit to the country. He must have been recalled to Rome by Galba or Otho.
2. To “feast one’s eyes” was a proverbial expression in Latin too, and to do so on the suffering or death of others was the mark of the consummate villain. But even if a cliché, it accords not only with the comments Vitellius made at Bedriacum and over Otho’s tomb, but also (if we accept Tacitus’ account) with his brother’s having stressed that Blaesus was doing the same to him. Suetonius also attributes the remark to the emperor (Vitellius 14.2), but he sets it in a chapter full of wild allegations, and places it at the execution of a knight who had dunned Vitellius for debts he had run up before 69. There is no reason to believe this, when Dio states explicitly that Vitellius spared the lives of all his creditors, albeit in return for the cancellation of his debts.
3. The story is suspect, since it rests on two common themes. First, the tale of a spy’s being granted the chance to inspect enemy dispositions goes back to Herodotus (of Xerxes), and reappears often in Roman history. Second, so far as concerns Agrestis, Suetonius, Otho 10.1 declares that his father spoke of a similar incident involving a ranker after Bedriacum, and that story reappears in Dio-Xiphilinus 64.11.1–2 and 14.2, albeit told of a cavalryman (see above, chapter 7).