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112 tunate, cannot justly be found fault with. Piso Licinianus came of an illustrious family on both sides. By the better sort in Rome he was respected, if not beloved; but his aspect and deportment savoured too much of the strictness of a primitive age. By the profligate and the frivolous he was called morose and sullen. This appointment necessarily crushed the hopes and aroused the wrath of Otho, who now began to intrigue in earnest against Galba.

All this time a storm was brewing in the north far more dangerous to the emperor, and far more disastrous to Rome and Italy, than Otho's plot. The very day on which Galba put on the consular robe—January 1, 69 —the legions of Upper Germany, when summoned to take the military oath to that emperor, tore down his images, demanded that the oath should run in the name of the senate and people, and that some other successor to Nero should be appointed. Aulus Vitellius had recently been sent by Galba as consular legate to Lower Germany, and on the very next day after this mutiny broke out, he was greeted in the camp at Cologne by the legions of Germany, or their delegates, as Imperator.

The news of this movement in Germany hurried on the adoption. It was conferred with dignity by Galba, it was received with becoming modesty and reverence by Piso, and with plausible and perhaps sincere expressions of his desire to fulfil the important duties imposed on him. Galba conducted him to the prætorian camp, but as he did not promise a donative, his speech to the soldiers aggravated his former unpopularity. The way was now prepared for Otho. To the disappointed guards a notorious prodigal was