XVIII. After the remains of Otho were buried they erected over him a tomb which could offend no one either by its size or by the pomp of its inscription. When I was at Brixellum I myself saw a small monument on which was written in the Latin language “In memory of Marcus Otho.”
Otho died in his thirty-seventh year, after a reign of three months. Many good men, though they blamed his life, yet could not refrain from admiring his death; for though his life had been no better than that of Nero, his end was a far nobler one. When he was dead, Pollio, one of the two prefects, offended the soldiers by requiring them at once to swear fealty to Vitellius. Some of the senators were still left in Brixellum; and the soldiers, hearing of this, let them go with the exception of Virginius Rufus, whom they greatly embarrassed by coming to his house under arms, and bidding him either take the command of them or at any rate act as ambassador on their behalf. Virginius, who had refused the crown when it was offered him by a victorious army, thought that it would be the act of a madman to accept it from a beaten one. He feared, also, to go as an ambassador to the Germans, who thought that in time past he had forced them to do many things against their will. Accordingly, he escaped from his house by a back door; and the soldiers, when they discovered that he was gone, took the oaths to the new emperor. They were pardoned by him, and were sent to serve with the troops under the command of Cæcina.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] More properly Mandyria. This battle was fought in August B.C. 338, the same day as that of Chæronea. “Not long before the battle of Chæronea, the Tarentines found themselves so hard pressed the Messapians, that they sent to Sparta, their mother city, to entreat assistance. The Spartan king, Archidamus, son of Agesilaus, perhaps ashamed of the nullity of his country since the Sacred War, complied with their prayer, and sailed at the head of a mercenary force to Italy. How long his operations there lasted we do not know; but they ended by his being defeated and killed, near the time of the battle of Chæronea. B.C. 338.”—Grote, ‘History of Greece,’ part ii. chap, xcvii.
[2] See vol. ii., Life of Lysander, chap. xxx.
[3] See vol. ii., Life of Pyrrhus, chap. xxvi.
[4] See vol. i., Life of Lykurgus, chap, viii.
[5] Cf. note, vol. ii., Life of Lucullus, chap, xxxvi.
[6] Probably the celebrated temple of Poseidon at Tænarus. [Cape Matapan.]