[64] The cohort on guard seem to have been in mufti, without
helmets and shields or their military cloaks, but armed with
swords and javelins.
helmets and shields or their military cloaks, but armed with
swords and javelins.
Tacitus
[59] See chap. 6.
[60] Nero was meditating an Ethiopian campaign when the revolt
of Vindex broke out. Cp. chap. 6.
[61] Probably the colours of the different maniples as
distinct from the standards of the cohorts.
[62] Cp. chap. 6.
[63] Freedmen who had curried favour with Nero. Polyclitus was
sent to inquire into Suetonius Paulinus' administration of
Britain after the revolt of Boadicea in A. D. 61. Vatinius was
a deformed cobbler from Beneventum who became a sort of court
buffoon, and acquired great wealth and bad influence.
[64] The cohort on guard seem to have been in mufti, without
helmets and shields or their military cloaks, but armed with
swords and javelins.
[65] The legionaries armed themselves with lances (_hastae_),
and the auxiliaries with javelins (_pila_).
[66] The word _basilica_ refers to the buildings round the
Forum, used for legal, financial, and commercial purposes.
Most of them had cloisters.
[67] The Parthian royal family: Vologaesus was king of
Parthia, and his brother Pacorus viceroy of Media Atropatene.
[68] Cp. chap. 29.
[69] Attached to the pole of the standard.
[70] An enclosed pond in the middle of the Forum, supposed to
be the spot where Curtius leapt on horseback into the chasm,
or by others the spot where a Sabine chieftain was engulfed in
the days of Romulus.
[71] The word here used usually means a veteran re-enlisted in
a special corps after his term had expired. It was also
applied at this time in a special sense to a corps of young
knights, who, without losing their status, acted as Galba's
special body-guard in the imperial palace. One of these may
have been the murderer.
OTHO ON THE THRONE
None of his murders pleased Otho so much as this. On Piso's head, 44
as on no other, they say, he gazed with insatiable eyes. This was
possibly the first moment at which he felt relieved of all anxiety,
and free to indulge his glee; or perhaps, in the case of Galba and of
Vinius, the recollection of his treason to the one and of his former
friendship with the other troubled even his unfeeling heart with
gloomy thoughts, whereas, Piso being an enemy and a rival, he
considered it a pious duty to gloat over his murder.
