I confess to having framed my last letter in such a way as to irritate Tacitus. The sympathy expressed for Sporus will infuriate him indeed. He hates everything that smacks of degeneracy, and talks sometimes as if poor things like Sporus are responsible for their unhappy condition. It's too ridiculous. Actually, for all his gifts, his History will suffer from his lack of imagination. He can never put himself in another's place.
Still, enough of Nero; a wretched tawdry fellow when all is said and done. One last comment is appropriate and I must remember to pass it on to Tacitus in my next letter: Nero was a liar to the last, claiming that he died an artist. The trouble was he was never an artist, he was merely artistic. Now for Galba. How much shall I tell him?
Quite a lot, because Galba has always been by way of being a hero of my friend Tacitus. In later years, when we were together in the Senate, I have heard him speak of Galba's nobility and of the great service he did the State before he won the imperial crown. He has even said that, given the chance, and better fortune, Galba would have made a great Emperor, being at heart a Republican and a respecter of the Senate. He was extremely displeased when I remarked that everyone would have thought Galba capable of Empire – if he had never been Emperor.
All the same, though he disliked what I said, he couldn't deny its truth. I even saw him make a note of my words. It will be amusing if he repeats them in his History. Not, of course, that I care how much he steals from me. The more he steals the better his History, and I have no desire for literary renown. What would I do with it here?
Galba then: just the sort of jerk Tacitus would admire. Galba was immensely proud of his ancestry: so proud that he embellished it and, on a public inscription, traced it back to Jupiter on his father's side and to Pasiphae, wife of King Minos of Crete, on his mother's. I have never had patience with such nonsense. His great-grandfather was one of Caesar's murderers, joining the conspiracy because he had been passed over for the consulship… The future Emperor's grandfather wrote a huge unreadable work of history, but I can't recall the subject. And his father was a hunchback. The story went round that when he was first with his future wife – I think her name was Achaica and she was descended from that Lucius Memmius who disgracefully sacked Corinth, destroying much of historical and artistic interest – he stripped to the waist, revealing his hump and declaring that he would never hide anything from her. If he kept this vow he was unique among husbands…
The future Emperor was born some ten years before the death of Augustus. He had an elder brother who became a bankrupt and cut his throat because Tiberius denied him a provincial command which he didn't deserve, but had hoped to use to mend his fortunes by screwing the provincials in the fine old Republican fashion, as practised by that arch-hypocrite Marcus Brutus. Galba liked to put it about that when he was a small boy the Emperor Augustus had prophesied a great future for him, even that he would eventually be Emperor himself. This was fanciful; everyone knows that Augustus was determined to keep the succession in his own family and, in any case, always carefully described himself as Princeps, not Emperor, a title which (he said) had a purely military association.
There were signs that Galba was destined for great things, all the same. When his grandfather, the historian, was sacrificing one day, an eagle swooped down and snatched the entrails from his hands, carrying them off to an oak tree well laden with acorns. The hunchback said this portended great honour for the family. The historian was more sceptical: 'Yes,' he reputedly said, 'on the day a mule foals!' Later Galba let it be known that a mule had foaled the day he heard of the Gallic rebellion led by Vindex, and decided this gave him a chance to aim for Empire himself. This story was widely believed – such is credulity.
Somebody also once told Tiberius that Galba would eventually be Emperor, when an old man. 'That doesn't worry me a bit,' the real Emperor replied.
All this is by the way and I've no doubt Tacitus already knows these stories and will repeat them if it suits him.
One reason why my friend so admires Galba is that he saw him as an exemplar of old-fashioned Republican virtue. For instance, he was delighted to learn that Galba followed the old practice of summoning all his household slaves, morning and evening, to say good-day and good-night to him. A perfectly pointless exercise, if you ask me.
Galba toadied up to the Augusta, Livia, when he was a young man and I believe she left him something in her will. Some say it was to please her that, when he was aedile in charge of the Games, he introduced the novelty of elephants walking a tightrope. That's ridiculous; Livia Augusta was never amused by such nonsenses.
He had a long career of public service, and didn't do badly, but never so well as to arouse the jealousy of emperors. That he survived both Gaius Caligula and Nero is to my mind evidence of his essential mediocrity. But he liked to pose as a disciplinarian of the old school. For instance, when he was Governor in Spain he crucified a Roman citizen who was said to have poisoned his ward, even though the evidence was provided by people who had an interest in the man's conviction. He didn't respond to pleas that it was wrong to crucify a citizen, except by commanding the cross to be taller than other crosses and white-washed to make it still more conspicuous.
Galba married only once. He disliked his wife, who was also named Livia, as I recall, and ignored his sons, showing no emotion when they died young. But, hypocrite that he was, he gave the love he had borne his dead wife as the reason why he never married again. Actually, he had no taste for women, nor indeed for boys, but only for mature men. Since everyone despises the man who, though an adult, takes the part of the woman in bed, he concealed this taste as best he could till he became Emperor. Then he was so excited when news was brought him of Nero's death that he seized hold of his freedman Icelus, a handsome swarthy brute, slobbered kisses over him, and told him to undress at once and pleasure him. I wonder what Tacitus will make of that story. Nothing, I dare say.