[37] One of the three Commissioners of Public Revenue appointed by Nero in a.d. 62 (Ann., xv. 18).
[38] Lucius Calpurnius Piso Frugi Licinianus was the son of M. Licinius Crassus Frugi, and adopted son of L. Calpurnius Piso Frugi. His mother, Scribonia, was a descendant of Pompey.
[39] Adoption from one family into another needed in old days the sanction of the Comitia Curiata. When that assembly became obsolete, the priests summoned a formal meeting of thirty lictors, and their sanction of an act of adoption was still called lex curiata. Galba was now Pontifex maximus.
[40] Galba belonged to the Gens Sulpicia, and was connected through his mother, Mummia, with Q. Lutatius Catulus, who had led the senatorial party in the first half of the last century.
[41] i.e. Galba's great-grandfather had fought for Caesar against Piso's ancestor, Pompey.
[42] The children of Julia and Agrippa.
[43] Crassus Scribonianus, cp. chap. [47], and iv. [39].
[44] i.e. co-optation, employed in former days to raise a special contingent for emergencies.
Galba's Measures of Precaution
Reports of the German rebellion grew daily more insistent and the public was always ready to believe any news, provided it was bad. Accordingly the senate decided that a commission must be sent to the army in Germany. It was discussed in private whether Piso should go himself to add dignity to the commission, since he could carry the authority of the emperor, while the others represented the senate. It was also proposed to send Laco, the prefect of the Guards, but he objected. The senate had allowed Galba to nominate the commissioners and he showed the most miserable indecision, now nominating members, now excusing them, now making exchanges, yielding always to pressure from people who wanted to go or to stay at home according as they were determined by their hopes or their fears. 20The next question was one of finance. After investigating all possible sources it seemed most reasonable to recover the revenue from those quarters where the cause of the deficit lay. Nero had squandered in lavish presents two thousand two hundred million sesterces.[45] Galba gave instructions that these monies should be recovered from the individual recipients, leaving each a tithe of their original gift. However, in each case there was scarcely a tenth part left, for these worthless spendthrifts had run through Nero's money as freely as they had squandered their own: they had no real property or capital left, nothing but the apparatus of their luxury. Thirty of the knights were entrusted with the duty of recovering the money. This commission, for which there was no precedent, proved vastly unpopular owing to the scope of its authority, and the large number of the victims. Every quarter seemed beset with sales and brokers and lawsuits. And yet lively satisfaction was caused by the discovery that the beneficiaries of Nero's bounty were as poor as the victims of his greed.