No More Learning

For it is not in blank despair, but with my army clamouring for
battle, that I determine to save my country from the last calamities.
I have won enough fame for myself and ennoblement for my posterity;
for, after the line of the Julians, Claudians, Servians,[320] I have
been the first to bring the principate into a new family. So rouse
yourself and go on with your life. Never forget that Otho was your
uncle, yet keep your remembrance within bounds. '


After this he made them all retire and rested for a while. But his 49
last reflections were interrupted by a sudden disturbance and the news
of a mutinous outbreak among the troops. They were threatening to kill
all those who were leaving, and turned with especial violence against
Verginius,[321] whose house was in a state of siege. Otho rebuked the
ringleaders and returned, consenting to receive the adieux of those
who were going, until it was time for them to depart in safety. As the
day deepened into evening he quenched his thirst with a drink of iced
water. Two daggers were brought to him and, after trying them both, he
put one under his pillow. Being assured on inquiry that his friends
had started, he spent a peaceful night, not, it is said, without
sleep. At break of day[322] he fell upon his dagger. Hearing his dying
groan, his slaves and freedmen entered with Plotius Firmus, the
Prefect of the Guards, and found a single wound in his breast. The
funeral was hurried forward out of respect for his own earnest
entreaties, for he had been afraid his head might be cut off and
subjected to outrage. The Guard carried the body, sounding his praises
with tears in their eyes, and covering his hands and wounded breast
with kisses.
Some of the soldiers killed themselves beside the pyre,
not because they had harmed Vitellius or feared reprisals, but from
love of their emperor, and to follow his noble example. Similar
suicides became common afterwards at Bedriacum and Placentia, and in
other encampments. [323] An inconspicuous tomb was built for Otho, as
being less likely to be disturbed: and thus he ended his life in his
thirty-seventh year.

Otho came originally from the borough of Ferentium. [324] His 50
father had been consul and his grandfather praetor. His mother's
family was inferior, but not without distinction. [325] His boyhood and
youth were such as we have seen. By his two great acts,[326] one most
criminal and the other heroic, he earned in equal measure the praise
and the reprobation of posterity. It would certainly be beneath the
dignity of my task to collect fabulous rumours for the amusement of my
readers, but there are certain popular traditions which I cannot
venture to contradict. On the day of the battle of Bedriacum,
according to the account of the local peasants, a strange bird
appeared in a much-frequented grove near Regium Lepidum. [327] There it
sat, unterrified and unmoved, either by the crowds of people or by the
birds which fluttered round it, until the moment at which Otho killed
himself. Then it vanished. A calculation of the time showed that the
prodigy's appearance and disappearance coincided with the beginning of
the battle[328] and Otho's death.

At his funeral the rage and grief of the soldiers broke out into 51
another mutiny. This time there was no one to control them. They
turned to Verginius and begged him with threats now to accept the
principate, now to head a deputation to Caecina and Valens.