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28 of the Household. The governor at that date was Tiberius Alexander, himself a native of Egypt. Africa and its legions, now that Clodius Macer had been executed, were ready to put up with any ruler after their experience of a petty master. The two Mauretanias, Raetia, Noricum, Thrace, and the other provinces governed by procurators had their sympathies determined by the neighbourhood of troops, and always caught their likes or dislikes from the strongest army. The ungarrisoned provinces, and chief amongst these Italy, were destined to be the prize of war, and lay at the mercy of any master. Such was the state of the Roman world when Servius Galba, consul for the second time, and Titus Vinius his colleague, inaugurated the year which was to be their last, and almost the last for the commonwealth of Rome.

A few days after the first of January a dispatch arrived from Belgica, in which Pompeius Propinquus, the imperial agent, announced that the legions of