longer seen as merely a dissident sect within Judaism, the innocent scapegoats. Understandably, men steeled themselves to the perils of conspiring to remove a ruler who had strayed
so far from the Augustan path. But in 65 a plot to replace him with the noble and popular Calpurnius Piso was uncovered, and Piso and the others involved or implicated (they
included Seneca himself and his nephew, the poet Lucan) were executed. A legacy of suspicion and apprehension led to further deaths, most notably those of Gaius Petronius, 'the
arbiter of elegance', and the prominent Stoics, Thrasea Paetus and Barea Soranus. When in the next year the great general Corbulo, mirror of Rome's ancient military virtues and
victories, was ordered to take his own life, who could feel safe? An increasingly insecure Nero had committed the cardinal sin of unsettling his own ruling class and army
commanders.
The Year of the Four Emperors
It was a descendant of an enfranchised princely house of Aquitania, Julius Vindex, the legate of Gallia Lugdunensis, whose inhabitants had, like those of Spain, suffered heavily from
Nero's recent exactions, who raised the standard of rebellion in March 68 against an Emperor who had suddenly and sulkily to be summoned back to Rome from an 'artistic tour' of
Greece. Vindex had appealed for support to other legates, without much response; but in Spain the seventy-one-year-old Servius Sulpicius Galba, the sole direct descendant of a
Republican noble house-apart from Nero himself-holding high office, agreed to accept the headship of the movement and styled himself 'Legate of the Senate and People'. In Africa
Clodius Macer threw off his allegiance. Even so, had the legions and their commanders been firmly and competently handled, Vindex and Galba must have been overwhelmed. A
mysterious collision, perhaps unintended by their commanders, at Besancon between Vindex's ill-trained Gallic levies and the crack legions from Upper Germany saw the insurgents
scattered like chaff: Vindex took his own life, and Galba meditated imitating him when he heard the appalling news. But Nero's house of cards was tumbling down, and few retained
any confidence in him. Verginius Rufus marched his legions back to Germany, waiting on events; Tigellinus turned his coat and suborned the praetorian guard. Before other help
could arrive, Nero panicked and ran, and committed suicide. On 9 June 68 the Julio-Claudian line died with him.
Against all the odds, Galba had succeeded. But his power-base was perilously narrow: he had not won a war, he had marched through an open and undefended gate. His urgent need
was to consolidate his position; but a combination of short-sighted ineptness and stiff-necked disciplinarianism and parsimony served him ill. His choice of a lightweight young
noble, Piso, as his successor added nothing but the empty lustre of an historic name, and antagonized the energetic and ambitious Marcus Salvius Otho. The victorious German
legions were neglected and unrewarded, the Gallic tribes opposed to Vindex alienated, the praetorians denied their expected donative. Throughout the Empire those who had
remained loyal to Nero urgently needed a reassurance which they did not receive. Aulus Vitellius, sent by Galba to take command in Lower Germany, was saluted as Emperor by his
troops on 2 January 69, and the legions of Upper Germany promptly followed suit. At Rome and on the Danube, Otho's intrigues bore fruit, and he was himself hailed as Emperor a
fortnight later. Galba and Piso were murdered, and with them died the last pretensions of the old nobility. The advance elements of Vitellius' forces under Caecina and Valens won a
bloody victory over Otho's army at Bedriacum near Cremona, and Otho took his own life on 16 April. But 'the long year' was far from over.
Over a century earlier, the refugees from Pompey's beaten army at Pharsalus had included a centurion or re-enlisted veteran called Titus Flavius Petro, who made his way back home
to Sabine Reate where he spent the rest of his life in the humble calling of a collector of moneys due to bankers and auctioneers. His son spent most of his life as an agent of the
customs-farmers of the province of Asia, and later became a money-lender in a small way in Switzerland. Of his two sons, the elder, Flavius Sabinus, reached the consulship and the
command in Moesia before becoming Prefect of the City in the latter years of Nero; the younger, Flavius Vespasianus, after brilliantly commanding the left wing of the Claudian
invasion of Britain, was also a consul and a governor of Africa before Nero appointed him in 67 to a special command to suppress the Jewish rebellion. Both brothers may stand as
exceptional examples of the sort of opportunities which were opened to able, ambitious, but sensible 'new men' under the new system. Cut off by space and time from the rapidly
changing pattern of events to their west, Vespasian and Gaius Licinius Mucianus, the legate of Syria, composed earlier disagreements and along with Tiberius Julius Alexander, an
apostate Jew who was currently Prefect of Egypt, put together a powerful coalition of military, logistic, and financial strength and high experience, which also offered a second
chance to all those who had 'backed a wrong horse' previously. Mucianus set off through Asia Minor and the Balkans, while Vespasian headed for Alexandria, where he was saluted
as Emperor on 1 July.