GALBA. • 479 ble. Otho's aspect, on the other hand, did not fail to let many marks appear of his bitterness and anger at his disappointment ; since to have been the fii'st man thought of for it, and to have come to the very point of being chosen, and now to be put by, was in his feelings a sign of the displeasure and ill-will of Galba towards hiin. Tliia filled him with fears and apprehensions, and sent him home with a mind full of various passions, whilst he dreaded Piso, hated Galba, and was full of wrath and in- dignation against Vinius And the Chaldeans and sooth- sayers about him would not permit him to lay aside his hopes or quit his design, chiefly Ptolema3us, insisting much on a prediction he had made, that Nero should not mur- der Otho, but he himself should die first, and Otho suc- ceed as emperor ; for the first proving true, he thought he could not distrust the rest. But none perhaps stimulated him more than those that professed privately to pity his hard fate and compassionate him for being thus ungrate- fully dealt with by Galba; especially Nymphidius's and Tigellinus's creatures, who, being now cast off and reduced to low estate, were eager to put themselves upon him, exclaiming at the indignity he had sufl'ered, and provoking hun to revenge himself Amongst these were Veturius and Barbius, the one an optio, the other a tesserarius (these are men who have the duties of messengers and scouts * ), with whom Onoma- stus, one of Otho's freedmen, went to the camp, to tam2)er with the army, and brought over some with money, others with fair promises, which was no hard matter, they being already corrupted, and only wanting a fair pretence. It
- The ojoi/o was a sort of second this is the word which Plutarch
or s!<'*-centiirion ; the tesserarius means to explain in what follows, distributed the tessera or billets of as if the words " of the specida- the watchword. These two men tores " had dropped out of the text both belonged to the corps of spe- after tesserarius. eulatoms, and it almost seems that
