Galba | Page 8

put to death. At last, after some time, his steward Argius buried it, with
the rest of his body, in his own gardens near the Aurelian Way.
XXI. In person he was of a good size, bald before, with blue eyes, and
an aquiline nose; and his hands and feet were so distorted with the gout,
that he could neither wear a shoe, nor turn over the leaves of a book, or
so much as hold it. He had likewise an excrescence in his right side,
which hung down to that degree, that it was with difficulty kept up by a
bandage.
XXII. He is reported to have been a great eater, and usually took his
breakfast in the winter-time before day. At supper, he fed very heartily,
giving the fragments which were left, by handfuls, to be distributed
amongst the attendants. In his lust, he was more inclined to the male
sex, and such of them too as were old. It is said of him, that in Spain,
when Icelus, an old catamite of his, brought him the news of Nero's
death, he not only kissed him lovingly before company, but begged of
him to remove all impediments, and then took him aside into a private
apartment.
XXIII. He perished in the seventy-third year of his age, and the seventh
month of his reign [669]. The senate, as soon as they could with safety,

ordered a statue to be erected for him upon the naval column, in that
part of the Forum where he (415) was slain. But Vespasian cancelled
the decree, upon a suspicion that he had sent assassins from Spain into
Judaea to murder him.
* * * * * *
GALBA was, for a private man, the most wealthy of any who had ever
aspired to the imperial dignity. He valued himself upon his being
descended from the family of the Servii, but still more upon his relation
to Quintus Catulus Capitolinus, celebrated for integrity and virtue. He
was likewise distantly related to Livia, the wife of Augustus; by whose
interest he was preferred from the station which he held in the palace,
to the dignity of consul; and who left him a great legacy at her death.
His parsimonious way of living, and his aversion to all superfluity or
excess, were construed into avarice as soon as he became emperor;
whence Plutarch observes, that the pride which he took in his
temperance and economy was unseasonable. While he endeavoured to
reform the profusion in the public expenditure, which prevailed in the
reign of Nero, he ran into the opposite extreme; and it is objected to
him by some historians, that he maintained not the imperial dignity in a
degree consistent even with decency. He was not sufficiently attentive
either to his own security or the tranquillity of the state, when he
refused to pay the soldiers the donative which he had promised them.
This breach of faith seems to be the only act in his life that affects his
integrity; and it contributed more to his ruin than even the odium which
he incurred by the open venality and rapaciousness of his favourites,
particularly Vinius.
FOOTNOTES:

[639] Veii; see the note, NERO, c. xxxix.
[640] The conventional term for what is most commonly known as,
"The Laurel, meed of mighty conquerors, And poets sage,"--Spenser's
Faerie Queen.
is retained throughout the translation. But the tree or shrub which had
this distinction among the ancients, the Laurus nobilis of botany, the
Daphne of the Greeks, is the bay-tree, indigenous in Italy, Greece, and
the East, and introduced into England about 1562. Our laurel is a plant
of a very different tribe, the Prunes lauro-cerasus, a native of the

Levant and the Crimea, acclimated in England at a later period than the
bay.
[641] The Temple of the Caesars is generally supposed to be that
dedicated by Julius Caesar to Venus genitrix, from whom the Julian
family pretended to derive their descent. See JULIUS, c. lxi.;
AUGUSTUS, c. ci.
[642] A.U.C. 821.
[643] The Atrium, or Aula, was the court or hall of a house, the
entrance to which was by the principal door. It appears to have been a
large oblong square, surrounded with covered or arched galleries. Three
sides of the Atrium were supported by pillars, which, in later times,
were marble. The side opposite to the gate was called Tablinum; and
the other two sides, Alae. The Tablinum contained books, and the
records of what each member of the family had done in his magistracy.
In the Atrium the nuptial couch was erected; and here the mistress of
the family, with her maid-servants, wrought at spinning and weaving,
which, in the time of the ancient Romans, was their principal
employment.
[644] He was consul with L.