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Rh nothing was to be expected, much to be dreaded from, this septuagenarian and worn-out martinet.

The populace were not less hostile to Galba. Next to the prætorians, they were the late emperor's warmest supporters. He was ever giving them good dinners and shows and spectacles: he did not keep himself shut up in the recesses of the palace: his hand was heavy on the senators, and the senators they hated: but he was the king of the people; and, being so, what mattered it to them if he had put to death his adoptive brother Britannicus, or that termagant his mother Agrippina, even if she were a daughter of their once much-loved Germanicus?

Nero's freedmen, again, were among Galba's foes. They indeed had been making hay while the sun shone; they had "soaked up the Cæsar's countenance, his rewards, his authorities." Now evil days had come: inquiries were being made into the modes by which they had become rich—demands were being issued for restitution of their gains. Galba needed what they had gleaned; and it was "but squeezing them and, sponges, you will be dry again." The inquiries and demands were alike vain, for the sponges were already dry; they had squandered abroad all that they had nefariously gotten. If Galba had any friends, they were in his own army, or in the senate. But, by an indiscreet though honest declaration that he was wont to "choose his soldiers, not to buy them," he had also disappointed and estranged his own partisans. To rely on the senate was to lean on a broken reed. The senatorial chiefs were none of them men of bold aspirations or vigorous resolutions.

Ill luck dogged the heels of Galba even before he