Page:Tacitus; (IA tacituswilliam00donnrich).pdf/119

Rh prologue to a tragic drama of the deepest dye, and prepares us for scenes of crime and calamity following one another in rapid succession.

"I am entering," writes Tacitus, "on the history of a period rich in disasters, frightful in its wars, torn by civil strife, and even in peace full of horrors. Four emperors perished by the sword. There were three civil wars: there were more with foreign enemies: there were often wars that had both characters at once. Now, too, Italy was prostrated by disasters either entirely novel, or that recurred only after a long succession of ages. Cities in Campania's richest plains were swallowed up and overwhelmed—Rome wasted by conflagrations, its oldest temples consumed, and the Capitol itself fired by the hands of citizens. Never, surely, did more terrible calamities of the Roman people, or evidence more conclusive, prove that the gods take no thought for our happiness, but only for our punishment."

In the election of a Cæsar the senate might affect to confirm the choice of the soldiers; but it was the soldiers, or at least the terror of them, who really invested with the purple robe Servius Galba. He was chosen by the Spanish legions, to whom the example had been set by those of Gaul, who had put forward as Nero's successor Vindex and Virginius Rufus. The one perished in the attempt to become Cæsar; the other, with courageous moderation, refused to be placed on that proud but perilous eminence. In their selection of Galba the soldiers to all appearance did wisely and well, for he had passed through many grades of both military and civil offices with much credit to himself. He reigned long enough and unfortunately enough to