Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.5, 1865).djvu/513

 OTHO. 505 proaching enemy ; but having raised a funeral pile, and attired the body, they bore it thither, arrayed in their arms, those among them greatly exulting, who succeeded in getting first under the bier and becoming its bearers. Of the others, some threw themselves down before the body and kissed his wound, others grasped his hand, and others that were at a distance knelt down to do him obeisance. There were some who, after putting their torches to the pile, slew themselves, though they had not, so far as appeared, either any particular obliga- tions to the dead, or reason to apprehend ill usage from the victor. Simply it would seem, no king, legal or ille- gal, had ever been possessed with so extreme and vehe- ment a passion to command others, as was that of these men to obey Otho. Nor did their love of him cease with his death ; it survived and changed erelong into a mor- tal hatred to his successor, as will be shown in its proper place. They placed the remains of Otho in the earth, and raised over them a monument which neither by its size nor the pomp of its inscription might excite hostility.* I myself have seen it, at Brixillum ; a plain structure, and the epitaph only this : To the memory of Marcus Otho. He died in his thirty-eighth yeai', after a short reign of about three months, his death being as much ap- plauded as his lile was censured ; for if he lived not bet- ter than Nero, he died more nobly. The soldiers were displeased with Pollio, one of their two prefects,f who Tacitus calls it. The inscription Probably Pollio is a mistake or has been corrected on conjecture corruption, and Plotius or Procu- from Memory to Manes (daimosi lus should be the name. The words instead of delosei), so that it is at the end of the preceding para- supposed to have stood Dus Ma- graph seem to refer to a continu- NiBUS Marci Othonis. atiou of the series, a life of Vitet t The two prefects were Plotius lius.
 * " Modicum et mansurum " Firmus and Licinius Proculus.