Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.5, 1865).djvu/465

 GALBA. 457 pared the Macedonian army to the Cyclops after his eye was out, seeing their many disorderly and unsteady mo- tions. But the calamities of the Roman government might be likened to the motions of the giants that as- sailed heaven, convulsed as it was, and distracted, and from every side recoiling, as it were, upon itself, not so much by the ambition of those who were proclaimed emperors, as by the covetousuess and license of the sol- diery, who drove commander after commander out, like nails one upon another. Dionysius, in raillery, said of the Pheraean* who en- joyed the government of Thessaly only ten months, that he had been a tragedy-king, but the Caesars' house in Rome, the Palatium, received in a shorter space of time no less than four emperors, passing, as it were, across the stage, and one making room for another to enter. This was the only satisfaction of the distressed, that they needed not require any other justice on their oj)- pressors, seeing them thus murder each other, and first of all, and that most justly, the one that ensnared them first, and taught them to expect such happy results from a change of emperors, sullying a good work by the pay he gave for its being done, and turning revolt against Nero into nothing better than treason. For, as already related,^ Nymphidius Sabinus, captain of the guards, together with Tigellinus,J after Nero's cir- cumstances were now desperate, and it was perceived that he designed to fly into Egypt, persuaded the troops to declare Galba emperor, as if Nero had been already the text, Alexander, according to were tiie two prefects of the prie- some, but more probably Lyeo- torian guards, whose camp was phron, was the tyrant of Pherie in in the city, and who were the Thessaly who is referred to. household troops of the emperor. t This seems to refer to a lost biography of Nero.
 * The name has fallen out of J Nymphidius and Tigellinus