camp and proclaimed him emperor. In this emergency Galba lost his presence of mind; he might still have found safety in the spontaneous rising of the people against the soldiery, a mutual jealousy having long existed between these two classes, which might have changed the aspect of affairs, but time was lost, and Otho, at the head of his battalions, with colours flying and martial music, with measured step and naked weapons, marched onwards. At the sight of the advancing columns the standard bearer of the solitary cohort which still surrounded Galba, tore the "emperor's" image from his spearhead, and the "soldiers" decided for Otho. The bystanders fled, the aged emperor was thrown out of his litter by his attendants, his enemies swarmed round him, and with repeated stabs and gashes soon put an end to his sufferings, A.D. 69. Lastly, the noble Piso was attacked; protected for a moment by the devotion of a single centurion, whose fidelity was the only bright spot in this day of horrors, he made his way to the temple of Vesta, but, dragged forth by the orders of Otho, he was soon dispatched.

Galba was a fine specimen of the soldier-nobles of his time, quite the finest class of Roman citizens. Long removed from daily intercourse with their more frivolous peers in the city, they escaped the worst elements of society at home, and retained some of the purity, together with the vigour, of the heroes of the republic.

OTHO.

Otho was soon aware that he, in his turn, must fight if he would retain his newly acquired honours. On one side the populace greeted him under the name of Otho-Nero, as if they anticipated a renewal of Nero's reign; on the other, messengers arrived in quick succession bringing accounts of sedition in Gaul, and the threatening attitude assumed by Vitellius at the head of the armies of the Rhine. The best and wisest citizens of Rome looked to Vespasian, then commanding in Palestine, whose vigour and discretion pointed him out as the fittest man to save the state.

Aulus Vitellius was descended from one of the most illustrious families of Rome, and was brought up in the vicious court of Tiberius, at Capræa; his character was unfavourably known at Rome; he was now in his fifty-fifth year, therefore seventeen years older than his rival Otho. Taking advantage of his command of the army of Lower Germany, to which he had been chosen by Galba, he acquiesced in the suggestions of two of his

generals, Valens and Cocina, to put himself at the head of a general insurrection, and was proclaimed emperor by the Germanic legions. A military revolution had commenced, and Vitellius was the emperor of the army, and with the main body of his forces he prepared to march southwards in three divisions. Valens advanced through Gaul and crossed Mons Genevra, in the Cottian Alps. Cocina marched through the country of the Helvetii, and over the great St. Bernard, the Pennine Pass. The main body, under Vitellius, was to follow.

The news of the advance of the invaders had reached Vespasian in Palestine, and Mucianus, another general, in Syria. They announced their adhesion, and that of their legions, to the choice of the capital. Thus the legions throughout the whole Roman world stood to arms.

Otho marched at the head of his troops in all haste to meet Vitellius. Three considerable battles were fought in the space of three days, in which Otho and the Romans had the advantage. The forces of Valens and Cocina, which had acted separately, now joined, and a general engagement was resolved on. Otho's forces were partially overthrown at a village near Cremona, in Lombardy; he refused to sanction a renewal of the contest, retired to his tent and slept for some hours. "At break of day he drew forth a dagger he had placed under his pillow, and placing it to his heart, threw his weight upon it. Otho lay dead with a single wound." The soldiers offered the empire to Virginius, but he again refused it. When the death of Otho was known at Rome, Flavius Sabinus, the brother of Vespasian, pressed the soldiers in the city to swear to Vitellius. The name was received with acclamations, thanks were voted to the Germanic legions, then having done all in their power to conciliate, they awaited the arrival of their new ruler with anxiety (A.D. 69).

VITELLIUS.

Vitellius was with difficulty persuaded from entering Rome as an armed conqueror, but he harangued the people and senate in the strain of a foreign conqueror rather than a citizen. Valens and Cocina were soon found to be the real governors of the empire. The chief appointments were made by them, whilst they encouraged Vitellius to pass his days in feasting and indulgence.

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When Vitellius was making his entry into Rome the army Syria was proclaiming Vespasian emperor, and though buried in slothful enjoyment, the new emperor resolved to make an effort

to defend his empire. The first army that entered Italy with hostile intentions was met by Cocina near Cremona, when, instead of giving battle, he declared for Vespasian; but his soldiers, imprisoning their general, attacked Antoninus Primus without a leader. After engaging for some time, the Vitellians suddenly took to flight with heavy loss.

In the meanwhile Vitellius, "burying himself in the shade of his gardens," like those slothful brutes which, if you give them food, lie still and slumber, neither collected arms nor showed himself in public. At length, awakened by his reverses, he offered to resign the empire, but was prevented by his soldiers.

Sabinus, the brother of Vespasian, anxious to spare the effusion of blood, himself fell a sacrifice. Domitian, a younger son of Vespasian, escaped. The Gauls and German cohorts who attacked Sabinus with fury, as a favourer of Vespasian, and burnt the Capitol, in which he had sought refuge, to ashes, determined to defend the city against Antoninus Primus, who had now arrived at the gates. The army within went out to meet the besiegers, but were beaten back with much slaughter. The Vitellian troops took shelter at last in the prætorian camp, but their assailants bursting in upon them put every man to the sword.

Vitellius, on the taking of the city, had escaped to a residence possessed by his wife on the Aventine, but impelled by some strange impulse to return to his palace, he was found half concealed behind a curtain and dragged forth. The soldiers pricked him with their swords to urge him onwards, and kept his head erect with a sword placed under his chin, that he might witness the destruction of his statues, and gaze upon the spot where Galba was slain; at length, covered with mud and filth, he was dispatched with many wounds (A.D. 69), and his body thrown into the Tiber.

CHAPTER XLII.

FLAVIUS VESPASIan (a.d. 70).

By consent both of the senate and the army Vespasian was declared emperor, and after some months of delay at Alexandria, in Egypt, he set out for Rome, leaving his son Titus in command of the army that was to lay siege to Jerusalem. He continued his route, and was received at Rome with the greatest demon

strations of joy by all the inhabitants. The new emperor was a man of active habits and simple tastes; grandson of one of Pompey's centurions, he had neither royal nor noble lineage to recommend him, but he had the talent, whilst upholding discipline, to have gained the affection of his army, and by that was he raised to the imperial purple.

REVOLT OF THE BATAVIANS.

At this period there arose formidable revolts both in the northwest and the south-east of the wide-spread dominions of Rome, and just at a moment when Rome had need of all her energies at home, she found herself menaced with disaffection and revolt abroad. Civilis, chief of the Batavi, having in the later days of Nero been cast into a dungeon, in Italy, whilst his brother had been beheaded for some act of insubordination, thought the time had come to throw off the foreign yoke. During the struggle between Galba and Vitellius the strength of the Roman legions was drained off into Italy. The moment for revolt was therefore well chosen, and Civilis sought to form a German sovereignty at Colonia. After humiliating the Roman arms on the Rhine, during the disorders of the empire between the death of Vitellius and the accession of Vespasian, the Batavian chief trimmed his ruddy locks (which he had sworn not to cut until he had taken vengeance and rid his country of their foreign rulers), having successfully overthrown the Roman power along the whole banks of the Rhine.

The Flavian generals had not recovered from the anxieties and fatigues of the war in Italy, when they were appalled by the news of the loss of their legions and the revolt of the provinces. By a fortunate oversight of the Gauls, they neglected to seize the passes of the Alps, and guard the gates of Upper Germany. The Romans, acting with an energy that even at this distance of time strikes us with admiration and wonder, scaled the precipices of the great St. Bernard, whilst another body of their legions crossed the Graian Mountains into the heart of Gaul. The avenging army gained success after success: Civilis was defeated, the Romans occupied his island of Batavia, and the revolt was crushed. The leaders of this uprising of the Gaulish and Germanic people were all men attached to the Roman armies, and trained in their camps. The Gaulish independence and nationality had already been absorbed between the eras of Cæsar and Vespasian. by the spirit of assimilation to Rome; and though the

empire of Rome was still to be won and lost by Gaulish hands, they were the hands of trained auxiliaries, with all the feelings and even the title of Romans.

INSURRECTIONS IN JUDEA.

The mildness with which the emperors, following the policy of Julius Cæsar, had treated the Jewish people, had not secured against disturbance within the frontiers of Palestine, or the attempts of its princes to arm in anticipation of revolt.

On the death of Agrippa, his children were detained at Rome, Judæa was annexed to the Roman empire, and the public revenues of the country assigned to the imperial treasury. The priests and nobles conspired; the rabble broke out into open sedition, ready to follow any leader who promised them independence and victory. The Galileans, inhabitants of a tract of heath and mountain, always unruly, and perpetually in feud with the people of Samaria, whom they accused of subserviency to the foreigners, rose with increased fury after one of their chiefs, Eleazer, had been routed by a Samaritan force under a Roman leader. The Sanhedrims in Jerusalem exhorted them to submit; but the Roman prefect of Syria had to bring the mass of his forces to stamp out by bloodshed the desperate resistance of the Galileans. During the long reign of Felix, governor of the whole territory of the Jewish people, the wish for independence was unabated, but no extensive outbreak is mentioned.

The young Herod Agrippa had been given by Claudius, before his death, the tetrarchy of some districts beyond Jordan. The Romans employed Agrippa as a spy upon the Jews, as, from the palace of the Herods, which overlooked the Temple, the tetrarch could observe all that passed in that mart of intrigue and business. The zealots, or faction for independence, heightened the walls of their sanctuary to shut out his view, and the rancour was so bitter that insurrection became inevitable, as a means of getting rid of the king and all the partisans of Rome.

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Secret assassins were employed to exterminate the chief supporters of the foreign government, and no precautions availed to protect the objects of these sinister agents of this secret society, or men of the dagger." Some of the chief people of Jerusalem now begged the Roman governor, Florus, to send in a military force to the city. The populace was excited to madness. Agrippa harangued them in favour of his patrons in