Bedriacum, a town near the river Po, in which forty thousand men are said to have perished. He still, however, possessed ample means for prolonging the contest; but despairing of final success, and willing, we may hope, to spare the fruitless effusion of blood, he determined to die by his own hand. After settling his affairs with the utmost calmness and deliberation, he stabbed himself, April 15th, a.d. 69, at the age of thirty-seven. His death caused the deepest grief among his adherents, and it is even said that many of his soldiers put an end to their own lives, as being resolved not to survive him. It is certain that a warm and general sentiment of admiration was excited among the Romans by what, in their estimation, was a truly heroic end. The passage in which Tacitus has described the last hours of Otho is one of the finest in his narrative.—G.
OTHO: the name of four emperors of Germany who flourished
in the middle ages, between the years 936 and 1218:—
Otho I., surnamed The Great, the son of Henry the Fowler,
and the first German after Charles the Fat who assumed the
title of emperor of the West, was born in 912, and elected king
of Germany in 936 at Aix-la-Chapelle. He engaged in war
with the Huns and Hungarians, whose progress westward he
effectually stopped. He made Bohemia his tributary, constrained
the duke of Bavaria and other vassals to render him due feudal
obedience, and distributed nearly the whole of central Europe into
fiefs to be held under his suzerainty. He subdued a revolt of the
barons who had obtained the aid of Louis of France, and afterwards
strove in vain to deliver Louis himself from the captivity
in which he was held by the great Count Hugh his subject,
946. In a conflict with the Danes he strengthened the frontiers
of Schleswig, and in 951 overcame Boleslas, the revolted duke of
Bohemia. But his most memorable achievement was the rescue
of Adelaide, the widowed queen of Italy, from the power of
Berenger II., which he accomplished by crossing the Alps with
a large army, and having relieved Canoza where the lady was
besieged, celebrated his nuptials with her within its towers. He
then advanced to Pavia, where he was crowned with his bride.
For ten years longer Berenger was allowed to reign in Italy as a
feudatory; but his oppressions raised a great cry against him,
and in 961 Otho again crossed the Alps with an army, assumed
the iron crown at Milan, and hastening to Rome was consecrated
Emperor of the West by Pope John XII. From this time to that
of Maximilian I., in 1508, no sovereign of Germany assumed the
title of emperor until he had been formally crowned by the pope.
During the ten years which preceded this event, insurrection,
fomented by Otho's eldest son Ludolph and by his brother
Conrad, raged throughout Germany. During the ten years which
followed, Italy, and especially Rome, was the scene of vain
revolts against the authority of this great emperor. In both
countries he fully established his power, not without the exercise
of severity. He deposed Pope John, and nominated Leo VIII.,
and when the Romans set up a republican government he
marched an army to the city, and hanged several of the senators.
He died at Minsleben in Thuringia on the 3d September, 973,
and was buried at Magdeburg, a city he had fortified and
greatly embellished.
Otho II., surnamed Rufus or The Red, the son of Otho the
Great by Adelaide his second wife, was born in 955, and on the
death of his father had to contest the crown with Henry of
Bavaria, his cousin. Him he defeated in battle, captured and
sent into exile, then advanced into France to punish Lothaire,
who had attempted to take advantage of Otho's troubles. After
desolating Champagne, he was defeated on his return at the
passage of the Aisne. Called to Rome by the efforts which the
citizens made to obtain independence, he treated them with
treacherous cruelty. Claiming Calabria and Apulia in right of
his wife Theophania, daughter of the Greek emperor Nicephorus
Phocas, he encountered the Greeks and Saracens in battle at
Basentello in 982, and was defeated through the treachery of
the Beneventins. He escaped from captivity by jumping from
a vessel into the sea, and swimming to land. Reassembling his
forces, he revenged himself on the Beneventins by sacking their
town, and returning to Rome, died there of vexation on the 7th
December, 983.
Otho III., son of the preceding, was a boy when he succeeded
to his father's throne. During his minority the Romans
had raised to temporary power the consul Crescentius, who made
and unmade popes at his pleasure. In 996 Otho nominated as
pope a relative, Gregory V., whom Crescentius rejected. To
punish this audacity Otho marched to Rome, and after a desperate
resistance dragged Crescentius from the mole of Hadrian
(since called the Tower of Crescentius), and had him put to
death on the scaffold. The consul's widow planned and executed
a deep scheme of vengeance. First bewitching the youthful
emperor by her charms, she poisoned him either by perfumed
gloves or a medicated potion. Otho died without children in
the twenty-second year of his age, 1002.
Otho IV., Emperor of Germany, was the son of Henry the
Lion, duke of Bavaria, and of Matilda of England, daughter
of our Henry II. He was born about 1175. He passed some
time at the court of his uncle Richard Coeur de Lion, whom he
assisted in his wars with Philippe-Auguste. On the death of
the emperor, Henry VI., in 1197, Otho was adopted by the
Guelph party as a candidate for the imperial crown, in opposition
to the Suabian Philip, who was the choice of the Ghibelines.
The struggle for supremacy lasted eight years, and Philip had
but just achieved a triumph over his rival when he was assassinated
in 1208, and Otho unanimously chosen emperor, was
crowned in 1209. It was natural to expect that there would
be peace and amity between a Guelph emperor and the pope, but
so fundamentally opposed were the principles of a powerful civil
government and an infallible spiritual authority that the strange
spectacle was seen of a pope. Innocent III., setting up a Ghibeline
emperor to oppose the Guelph whom he had recently crowned.
Otho anticipated the pontiff's projects by invading Naples in
1210, and was nearly wresting the sceptre from the hands of
the young king of priests as he called Frederic II., when he
was summoned to Germany by a dangerous insurrection. Frederic
followed him, carrying the war into the imperial states. Otho
marching to attack the pope's ally, Philippe-Auguste, was utterly
routed at the celebrated battle of Bouvines, from which he
narrowly escaped with his life, leaving all his treasure behind
him (1214). The remaining four years of his life he spent in
retirement in the duchy of Brunswick, submitting to the severest
penance, from a conviction that his misfortunes were due to the
wrath of heaven at his opposition to the pope. He thus obtained
absolution from Pope Honorius IV., and release from the ban of
excommunication which had been pronounced against him. He
died at Hartzburg, 12th May, 1218.—R. H.
OTHO or OTTO of Friesingen, son of Leopold, margrave of Austria, was born in the 12th century. He entered a Cistercian abbey at Morimond, of which he became abbot; and Conrad III., his half-brother, made him bishop of Friesingen. He went with Conrad to the Holy Land. He is known by a General History terminating in 1146, and a history of the Emperor Frederick I. The General History, in seven books, was continued by Blasius as far as the year 1210, and is useful, although defective and in some parts fabulous. The last three books especially contain original matter. It has been several times printed. Otho, who died in 1258, also wrote of the end of the world.—B. H. C.
OTRANTO. See Fouché.
OTTLEY, William Young, a celebrated writer on art, was born in 1771. He was educated for a painter, and went to Italy to complete his studies. There he copied pictures and drawings; but produced few if any original works. Eventually he devoted himself to collecting works of art, especially early drawings and engravings, and acquired a high reputation as a connoisseur. On his return to England he continued these pursuits, and devoted much time to the study of the history of art. In 1808 appeared the first part of his "Italian School of Design: being a series of Facsimiles of original drawings by the most eminent painters and sculptors in Italy; with Biographical Notices of the artists, and observations on their works"—a splendid and costly work, of which the second part was published in 1812, and the concluding part in 1823. In 1816 appeared his most important work, "An Inquiry into the Origin and Early History of Engraving upon Copper and upon Wood," 2 vols. 4to; and this was followed by "Engravings of the Marquis of Stafford's Collection of Pictures," 4 vols., folio, 1818; a "Series of Plates, engraved after the paintings of the most eminent masters of the early Florentine school," folio, 1826; a "Collection of one hundred and twenty-nine Facsimiles of Scarce Prints by the Early Masters of the Italian, German, and Flemish schools," 4to, 1828; and other works of a less costly and important character. Mr. Ottley was much employed in the formation of collections of works of art, such as Sir Thomas Lawrence's famous collection of drawings, and in the purchase of separate pictures.
