Shownotes Transcript
Hi, Janina. Hi, Emma. How are you doing? I'm not too bad. It's a beautiful day. That's nice. I've got an ice cream to eat later. It is. It's all summery. That's also nice. Yep.
How are you doing? What a life you're living. It's warm in Belfast and I forget what it's like when it's warm and this confuses and frightens me. Yeah. I moved to Belfast to be warm. I moved to Belfast to be rained on 200 days a year and yeah, so I'm like a confused and frightened woman today. The sun is out and it's actually genuinely quite warm. Very, very frightening. But
But apart from that and writing a book, which has to be finished in a terrifyingly short amount of time. And, you know, when you get to the end of a brick project and you are like, I've somehow written all the words and there's still so many words. And what if?
the words are bad words. Are they good words? I've lost the ability to tell. Are they even words? Am I writing English? And you can't look at them. You can't read them. There's too many to read. There's too many of them. And I have, yeah, lost all perspective on what a good or bad word is at this stage. Yeah, but it's fine. I feel I haven't really left the house in like two days, actually. So I might have been going a bit weird.
Yeah. This is a familiar sounding state of affairs. I feel like the nearing the end of a first draft is the second most insane making part of writing a book. The first most being the copy edit, which truly makes me completely deranged. Yes, copy edit. Yeah.
Yeah. It's the part that I dread the most. And every time I do a copy edit, I swear I'm never going to write another book. When we were doing the copy edit for You Feel It Just Below the Ribs, I stayed up until four in the morning on it. And like Jamie came out to check that I was still there. He thought I died. He like woke up. He was like, Janina has not come to. Because normally I've got to be at like 10.30. I'm very early bedtime. He was like, she's died down there. She's died down there with her copy edit. Yeah.
I know it was just making me insane. Yeah, I understand that. And then I curse the copy editor violently for the week or whatever they spend on it, which is the worst week of my life every time. And then at the end I'm like, look, are you right about most of it? Yeah, probably.
Did I spell that four different ways? Yeah, I did. Do I appreciate your hard work and your effort in checking all of this shit? Yeah, I do. Do I also wish ill upon you very much?
And then I thank them. Yeah. But the experience of doing it is, I feel like it's not as bad with nonfiction because you do tend to worry slightly less about like specific word choice. Oh yeah. I get very, very worried about it. And I get very, I take things very personally. Like, do you really think this is it? It sounds better than the word version that I wrote. Yeah.
Which had rhythm to it and feeling. Excuse me. Yeah, I do. I take every correction or suggestion as a personal insult to me and my family.
Yeah. It is extremely bad. It's the worst. To be copy edited, but it probably ends up better at the end. And I do thank them for being able to spell when I have spelled things four different ways or given somebody a fully different name at some point. Yeah. Because details are not my strength. But anyway, this is not writers complain about the job that we simultaneously love and hate in equal measure. Yeah.
No, that's a different podcast. Maybe there will be a bonus episode where we just bitch about our jobs. All the best and worst things about writing. Best things, haven't put trousers on in two full days. Worst things, sometimes people tell you how to use a comma and you're like, how fucking dare you?
No, this is History is Sexy, where we talk about history and how sexy it is. Yes. And this time, there's a follow-up from the last episode. So last time I told you in great depth about what happened in the year 69 CE and a bit of the year
The first year of the four emperors. The first time that Romans realized that you could just like, you didn't need to have an emperor who was a member of the same family as the previous guy. It could just be any old guy. Yeah. Someone could just say that they wanted it. And that was it. That was it. Yeah. Sometimes they didn't even need to do that. Sometimes they just had to be hanging around in the wrong place at the wrong time. And the army would say that they were. Yeah. But.
This time we're going to go through the guys, the four of the emperors, and we're going to rank them and decide who we would like to be our emperor. Were we to be a member of the Praetorian Guard? Right.
Who would we support? Yeah. Yeah. And who would we totally stab? That's who we're imagining ourselves as. Yeah. If you have a question, a history question you would like to ask us for us to answer in this style...
You can do that at historyofsexy.com. I feel like we should try and say that up front more often. We should mention that, yeah. People don't like listening to the ends of podcasts. So we shouldn't make them do it. You can go there. And that's where you can ask us a question or send us a message or support us on Patreon if you want the occasional bonus episode and or sticker. Well, spoilers, there won't be a bonus episode until Emma's met her deadline. No.
You're lucky that I can sit up straight at the moment, but after that we'll watch a film. Yeah. So I invented four criteria. Yes. Loosely based on the Rex Factor criteria, because this is a question from someone who's simply called themselves Jay in a mysterious fashion. He said, Rex.
Rex Factor Year of the Four Emperors. So the Rex Factor ones are Battliness, Subjectivity, Scandal, Longevity and Dynasty, not the program. And so the ones that I have chosen are, they're Roman ones. So they are from the perspective of your average Roman Praetorian guard, what kind of guy do you want ruling you? So we've got Virtus, depending on how specific you want to be about Latin pronunciation. I want to be not at all specific about Latin pronunciation because I barely understand it.
Okay. In that case, a vertus, which is manliness in war. So it is masculine virility, basically. It comes from the same root, really. How would they stand up next to Russell Crowe or Paul Miskell? Yes. In an arena. Exactly. And are they a wimpy little guy standing at the back or are they a cool guy holding a sword? Or if they're not...
specifically holding the sword, are they at least commanding a cool army to success and glory. Then we have beneficia, which is basically like Brinsex is. Beneficia is something that Roman men are expected to do, which is to give to their community and give to their friends and be generous and share their wealth, basically, to a certain extent, limited, but they're supposed to be generous. So this is their like...
generosity and to an extent kind of kindliness, but mostly how kind of generous they are. Then we have pietas, which is basically scandal. Like pietas is basically what it sounds like in English. It's piety. But it also is like, how good are they to their family? How good are they as a person? Are they a good guy?
essentially yeah where all of the good stories are sure and then the final score is imperium which is would i or you follow them into battle and risk everything to put them on the throne great okay i'm just uh noting these down thank you so that we can keep track of scores as we go oh you're good okay i reckon that we'll give them out of five so great and i'll i'll
I'll allow half scores. Sometimes you need a half score. I should be doing this in a spreadsheet so I can add it up, shouldn't I? Yeah, probably. All right. I don't know why I only just thought of that and didn't have this prepared. Yeah, it also didn't occur to me. This is why we are not Graham.
Well, to be fair, they've been doing it a long time. They've got this system locked down and we are just kind of making this up on the fly. All right. I would also say that Graham loves a spreadsheet. Although I've been told my reading spreadsheet is deeply weird and frightening because it does have a surprising amount of categories and some drop downs and changes color and some adding up. But
I didn't make it, Connor did. It is an impressive spreadsheet. I've seen this spreadsheet. There's a lot going on. There is a lot going on. I have updated it and added some bits, but it is quite intense. Okay. I have a spreadsheet ready to go. Ready to go. Okay. So we're going to go through and rank everybody out of five on all of the things and then say whether we would follow them into battle. Great. I'm going to do some dashes.
just a quick like warning at the beginning which is that three of these guys died very quickly and violently and one of these guys ruled for a decade and was deified and that duff all of the sources that we've got were written after those things happened and
And so they do tend to be a little bit skewed towards the one guy who's a god and less so towards the other guys who are very much not gods. But still, sources do have their kind of personal tastes and there is some kind of range. But they're very clear that one guy has far fewer flaws than the others for unspecified reasons. Yeah.
But they are all dead by the time all of the sources that we've got are written. So they're not at least writing during the reign of Vespasian, but nonetheless. Right. So they're not like actively trying to suck up to Vespasian as they write about the other three. No.
Or either of his children, because both of his sons also became emperor, but none of them are writing under those reigns anymore. Although several of them did experience it, but still. There is still a post hoc justification happening as to why three guys didn't manage to hang around and one did. So we begin.
With Sergius Solpicus Galba, who you may remember is the first guy to declare himself emperor just out of nowhere in the fields of Spain and decide that he was going to just say that he was the emperor and nobody was going to stop him. Yeah. After the first guy to try to rebel against Nero was brutally killed. No, he killed himself. He comes up dead.
during the reign of Augustus and Tiberius. He comes up because of the patronage of Livia. So Augustus' wife Livia is quite fond of him.
And he comes from a very, very ancient, very distinguished noble family who claimed descent from Jupiter, which is pretty good. It's pretty good. If you're going to be descended from a god, he's a pretty good one to pick. He's a tip-top one. Yeah. He is powerful and prominent enough that there's a great story that during the reign of Caligula, when Agrippina was looking for a new husband, she tried to seduce Caligula.
She tried to seduce him and his wife's mother had to like chase her off to the extent that she slapped her, which is pretty good. That's pretty good. Yeah. So his old family, he's rich. He is like, and his whole deal really is being like an old Republican guy. Mm-hmm.
He is governor of Aquitania, then consul, then governor of Germany. He seems to have done like broadly nothing during this time. He's very, very close friends with Claudius to the extent that when Claudius was going to invade Britain, Galba got
ill and Claudius delayed the invasion by a couple of weeks because he was so worried about Galba. Aw, that's so sweet. Just some buds, just some good bros. He was really concerned.
And so, but he recovered. He then went off to Africa to be governor of Africa. And then he was shuffled over to Hispania. And that is where he is. So when you're the governor of a place, you're basically in charge of everything. You're in charge of the army. You're in charge of all of the law. You're in charge of all of the building. Every fucking problem that is occurring in that province is your problem. But you also have legions and that's nice. Yeah.
He takes over the rebellion after Vindex dies. He declares himself emperor. And everyone's like, oh, sure, fine. I mean, he does seem pretty qualified. Like, he's run a lot of things. He knows what he's doing. Why not? He has an ancient family, which is very, very good. So he, in terms of kind of virtues, having an ancient family helps a lot because you've automatically got like a load of honor and people respect you like...
You've got a lot going on for you there. On the downside, he never really seems to have done any battling. He doesn't do any battles to become emperor. He just says that he's the emperor and Nero defeats himself by having a panic attack, essentially. Yeah. I feel like whoever was going to defeat Nero in whatever way, there was no glory in them. No.
No, there was absolutely no glory in defeating him. And he's emperor. He's like governor of a bunch of places. But during a time when they are specifically not expanding the empire. Right. So he's just a bureaucrat, mainly. He is a career politician who knows how to run things.
some way that is already established and doesn't really need anything doing to it. Exactly. Upper Germany is possibly the only place where he might have had to do anything, but none of the sources say that he actually did do anything. Like there's no, like...
Interesting. Like kind of up to Caligula, really. I guess there's always stuff happening in the German borders. But we're past the point where anybody is trying to expand. It's just kind of skirmishing. But he could, like there's potential there that he could have had to do something with some of the peoples on the edge of what is now like Switzerland and, sure, the Netherlands. But he doesn't. Yeah.
As far as we can tell, he does pissle. Great. And then all of the other places are just real safe places, really. Like Africa is fine. Hispania is set is like a very early place, like nothing's happening there. Aquitania is like Gaul, they're about as Roman as you can get without being born in Rome.
So he doesn't really, he has nothing going on in terms of like having had a glorious campaign. But notably, the people that rebel against him are largely the people that he, who have met him. Okay.
So like when the, it's the German legions that eventually refused to swear allegiance to him and they've met him and then it's Gaul that kind of joins in. Right. And so it seems very much that nobody is in, like if they've met him, they're not really interested in supporting him. So qualified on paper, but just...
The vibes are bad. No one wants to be around them. The vibes are bad. And it's largely because his thing is very much being an old school hard ass. Like he is very into discipline, strict adherence to the letter of the law and violent punishment for anybody who kind of tries to, you know,
you know adhere to the spirit of the law so unimaginative a boring man with no capacity for nuance exactly he has two times when he has
has to actually fight. He only fought one battle in his rebellion, which was against a bunch of enslaved sailors that Nero put together into a legion. And although Nero was already dead, they kind of quite bravely attempted to put up a bit of a land battle fight outside of Rome. And he just defeated them really brutally. And everybody thought it made him look like a bastard.
And then he decimated the survivors. So which is where you kill one in 10 at random, which again made him look like a bastard.
Yeah, yeah. It's not like a glorious victory. It's just pity and mean spirited. Tacitus says that there is no question that the loyalty of the troops could have been won with the slightest generosity on part of this stingy old man who was ruined by his old fashioned strictness and excessive severity qualities which we can no longer bear. Yeah, especially since he's just coming in. He's the new guy. He's not.
actually like meant to be the emperor you think you just yeah you try to you try to win with a little sweetness before you resort to
murdering a bunch of people. Yeah, you'd think so. I think that he thinks that what people want is like after the licentiousness of Nero, after the kind of softness of Claudius that they want, because what they say all the time is that, oh, we wish we had old Republican values. It's like people are like, oh, I wish it was the 50s when there was lead in the paint. Yeah.
And you could just run around and get murdered by a paedophile in the streets. And he thinks that they actually mean it, but they don't. They just mean we don't like this. Yeah. Yeah. Because no one actually knows. No one has done the research as much as he has. It's like the evangelical right bemoaning the fact that no one does what the Bible tells you anymore when the Bible tells you to like...
sacrifice a dove to cleanse yourself after you've had your period you know no one wants that no one wants it no one wants to do that there's a bit in the bible that says that you can use chicken blood to get rid of black mould and if that doesn't work burn down your house and I don't think that either of those work I don't think they do I mean burning down your house probably would work but then you've got a different problem it would dry right up yeah
But anyway, so that's his where to. His manliness and battliness and his kind of war leadership. Yeah. And I think it's pretty, pretty poor. He manages to do a revolt without even having a battle. Yeah. I think also the one time he does a fight, like it's not in a manly, that's not a manly way to do a fight. It's not. That's a pathetic way.
like scared craving way to do a fight. It is and then he like he does have this this reputation of being like very hard to people who didn't support him in like or insufficiently supported him which I think like taxing towns that didn't support him immediately in Spain that I think is yeah it doesn't make him look hard and manly and like strong it
It makes him look like a pathetic little weed who can't handle any kind of dissent or reality. No, there are chilling parallels to today with the pettiness and the intractability. I've got to give him one because he did...
He's the first technically soldier emperor. Are we going... I did invent that. Are we including a zero? Is it possible to have a zero or is one the lowest you can get? I think it's possible to have a zero. Okay. Yeah. Then in that case, I would agree with the one. I think he gets the automatic in, you know?
Yeah. He does invent a whole thing. Yeah. Well, he does invent a whole thing, and that's pretty... Maybe I want to give him a two then. Oh, really? Oh, okay. I mean, it escalates a lot. So maybe... No, I'm giving him a one. Okay. So if you give him one, I give him a two, and so he has a three? A three out of five. A three out of ten. That's reasonable, I suppose. Three. Yeah. Yeah.
I don't think he's going to score very well on the next one. He does not score well on the next one. He's incredibly strict, incredibly old fashioned and notorious for being cruel, overly severe to everybody. The first thing he does is he refuses to pay any rewards or the Donatio, which soldiers have now come to very much expect and had.
been promised for supporting his bed to be emperor. That's such a dumb thing to do. Like you're not only like for any emperor, anyone in charge, you only stay in charge if you have power behind you.
Like you don't want to upset the military. And he's like, we're three down now whereby that has happened. Like it's definitely a thing that you pay some money to the soldiers to reward them for not killing you. But instead he said he levied troops he didn't buy them. So meaning I take money from them. I don't buy... This...
upset them enormously. There are lots of stories of him being very cheap, including there is a story about him tipping a flute player with five denarii from his own pocket. And this is a very contextual way, because five denarii is not a small amount of money. It's a very good amount of money. But he's the emperor and he has billions of money. And
And taking money from your own pocket is seen as being like really stingy. Right, because it's just what you're carrying around with you. Exactly. And I think that he thinks it's going to be a very like modest gesture, but actually everyone's like, what a prick. Yeah.
He made people who had received gifts from Nero pay them back. And if they had bought stuff with the money that he gave them, then he made them take... He took that stuff. So he took their statues and their houses and clothes and stuff, which did not endear him. No, he's just asking to be hated by everyone. Yeah. He heavily taxed cities in Spain and Gaul who hesitated in supporting them.
He immediately put to death anyone who had sided with Nero and with a guy called Nymphidius, who for about 20 minutes tried to stop him being emperor. Nymphidius is a pretty good name. Yeah, it is. And then when he was hearing court cases, because he's emperor for about eight months, when he's hearing court cases, he's just insanely severe. Really, to a degree that makes people...
unhappy. So he cut off the hands of a dishonest moneylender and nailed them to his own counter. Crucified a citizen for poisoning his ward. When the man invoked the law and declared he was a Roman citizen, Galba pretended to lighten his punishment by ordering that his cross be higher than the rest.
Good, good. Yeah. It's going to be a zero on this one, right? Yes. Basically, Daioh basically says that
some people thought that they're refusing to play the Donato and taking back the gifts were actually very strong good behaviour then he says he seemed too great to be a subject so long as he was a subject and all would have agreed that he was equal to the Imperial office if he had never held it which is damning with faint praise I think and
But basically, the only nice thing that I could find was that there were some German troops who he dismissed who were
were like part of the German bodyguard and they had become ill from being in Rome and he paid for them to be looked after rather than just like abandoned on the streets. And as a result, they attempted to come to his aid when he was being murdered in the forum. But because they were unfamiliar with Rome, they got lost in the back streets and didn't make it in time. LAUGHTER
That's beautiful. So there's like five guys who liked him. Yeah. So five guys he got like a nurse for because I guess they were really his employees. They were ill. And they were ill. And so they tried. But all in all, I think that's very poor. Yeah. Like a real... It doesn't even, you know...
try and put up an arch or anything. People love an arch. If he'd chucked up an arch in some games, then everybody would have been very happy. I mean, he could get a one for throwing a nurse towards a handful of people, but I don't think it's enough. I think he sucks. I think it's zero. I think he sucks. Yeah. Zero. Absolute zero for Beneficia. So zero out of ten. Phew.
Awful. Okay, pietas. Okay, pietas. So he's quite, in his life as a private citizen, there's no real scandal, particularly. He has no children, which people find to be weird. And he has a wife, but...
she dies and then he never remarries. And it seems that, or at least the rumor is, that he preferred sex with men than women. And he specifically, and this is kind of scandalous to Romans, he specifically preferred sex with big, burly adult men rather than small children. He liked a beer. He liked a big, burly man who could consent. So this is very much a
a Roman scandal situation, he seems to have been largely quite fine with the fact that he liked sex with big burly men. Yeah. And the Romans found this to be
profoundly untrustworthy. But I think that's fine. I think that's fine. I think it's also like it's more fine given the circumstances. Like the fact that he was like, no, this is what I'm into and I'm not going to, you know, fuck a slave boy just because that's what everyone else thinks is normal. I think that's very good, actually. Not going to be peer pressured into pederasty. Yeah. But the problem that he does have that is genuine kind of
kind of failure on his part is that he has these a couple of friends one is a freedman called Aikales and then he has these two Spanish guys who are his friends who he basically just lets do whatever
whatever they want. So with other people who he doesn't know, he's very, very stern and he's very, very strict with people who aren't his friends. But with his friends, he is very, very flexible and he will just let them do whatever they like. So they kind of run wild through the city and they're picking up all of the money that's coming back into the treasury. In particular, one massive problem that occurs is that
Vinius, this guy called Titus Vinius, is friends with the only survivor from Nero's reign. This is a guy called Tidulainus, who everybody hates. He is the face of everything that everyone hates about Nero. And the one thing that people really want, the one guy that they would really like him to kill is Tidulainus.
And he won't do it because Tigellinus and Vinnius are friends. And so he is protected. And this is a huge problem. Because this, to everybody, shows a great... Like, basically a rolling over to his friends when he wouldn't roll over to even, like, give some decent money to a flute player. And he's crucified a Roman citizen. So...
This is his main problem. Also, he makes Aecellus an equestrian. So he kind of lifts him up out of being a freedman. So he's formerly enslaved. And so he's supposed to bear the stain of slavery forever. And he makes him a freedman. So he has no real virtues. Like he has no real like good sides to his personality. Apart from being like all right to his friends. Apart from being, but if you're his friend, he'll be very nice to you. Yeah. Yeah.
Which isn't nothing, you know? I mean, it's good to have friends and to know that I feel the vibe that's given by the sources, I would say, is less that he's good to his friends and more like he has absolutely no ability to say no to them. Okay, so there are just a couple of people who are very good at walking all over him.
Yeah. And he will be like, in order to make up for the fact that everybody can walk or like his friends, these people can walk all over him and he'll be like super mean to everybody else. Right. And be like, I'm a big scary man and I'm going to have my old fashioned virtues except to you. I can never say no to you. Yeah. I am. I do think I'm going to give him one just for sleeping with adults.
I think that's something we should recognise and reward. I do recognise and reward that. And okay, I'll give him one as well. I think that's fair. So that's a two out of ten. That's a two ten. Which lifts us to would you, would you...
Follow him into battle, Janina. Would you want him to be your emperor? No, I don't think so. No. You get nothing out of Galbraith, honestly, except that he's descended from Jupiter. Yeah, he seems more or less capable of running things, but not in a way where anyone has any fun.
And nobody has any fun. Everybody's just kind of scared all the time. He's the sort of person that you can picture because you've seen him in so many Victorian things where there's just a real stern patriarch who everyone hates. Yeah. You know, rules with an iron fist because he believes in the letter of the law and he can't. He has no ability to understand anything.
in any way that's not black and white. Yeah, there's only good or bad and nothing else. Yeah. No, rubbish. I'm not following women to battle. I'm glad he's dead.
Glad he had his head cut off. Okay. Next up, Marcus Salvius Otho, who is a bit of a nightmare man, to be honest, in his younger years. He comes from a good family, a good provincial family. They're from the town of Ferentium. He's born during the reign of Tiberius. His dad was like a...
kind of proper patriarch as well, who was big friends with Tiberius and Otho was his youngest son. So there were kind of no real expectations on the youngest son. And it seems that he had a bit of a rambunctious youth, shall we say. Specifically, he, in his teenage years, spent his evenings roaming around town, putting homeless people and disabled people in blankets and then rolling them around. Yeah.
I thought that was going to be heartwarming for a moment, but it turned out to be not great. Not great. Not ideal behavior. He kind of grew out of that, but he decided that he would like to be friends with Nero. So he charms his way into Nero's court by having an affair with one of Nero's freed women, who is like an older woman. And then through that manages to meet Nero and hang out with him. And Nero eventually gets Nero...
gets Otho to marry Poppaea Sabina so that they can have an affair until Otho fell in love with her, at which point he got sent to Lusitania as governor to get him out of the way. Yeah, you don't want to go around falling in love with your own wife. No. He spends 10 years in Lusitania where he governs very well.
as far as anybody can tell. He only joins the rebellion to get revenge on Nero. He wins everybody's kind of love because he's charming and very generous. And then he sort of semi-accidentally raises the Praetorians against Galba, overthrows him and declares himself emperor. Goes to war instantaneously and dies pretty quickly afterwards because he takes his own life. Sure. So...
his virtues his manly battliness he up until the point that he becomes emperor he has basically nothing he's kind of a playboy he's in Lusitania Lusitania is Portugal nothing going on there it's a very safe secure happy little place and has been for generations so he has nothing really to do there but when he gets
I don't know if you remember last time, but he becomes emperor because he's not chosen as Gabba's successor. And he stomps off to the Praetorians and is like, ugh. And they're like, do you want to be emperor? And he's like, mm. And then they make him emperor, basically, because he has sort of charmed them with his personality, which seems to be a pretty charming personality. But he gets into this war, which he tries to avoid, and he has four battles. He wins...
three of those four battles. Uh-huh. He has Suetonius Paulinus on his side. Now, Suetonius Paulinus is famous in the Roman Empire and famous still to an extent amongst a small amount of people today because he is the guy who defeated Boudicca. Sure.
So he was, after Boudicca destroyed a legion and stormed her way around southern England, he's the one who finally killed him. And he has supported Otho, which is nice. Otho's nice. Yes. So he wins...
three good battles, none of which are decisive. And he insists upon having a decisive battle as soon as possible because he doesn't want the water dragon, basically. So he does kind of force a battle before he was necessarily ready for it, which he loses. But he loses that not badly, depending on who you ask here, possibly because of treachery. Because after...
Otho dies, Suetonius Paulinus goes over to Vitellius who wins and says, oh, yeah, remember that battle that you won? Well, I won it for you actually because I deliberately hesitated in going in, in taking my troops in because actually I wanted you to win because it looked like I was fighting for Otho but actually... That's so slimy. I was so on your side the whole time, girl. Yeah.
And so depending on whether you believe him, that he hesitated and therefore basically stabbed Otho in the back, or whether he just kind of fucked up and then managed to turn it to his...
to his own advantage. Either way, he did get away with it. But that's one of the reasons potentially why he lost the battle. The other reason he potentially lost the battle is that he was too inexperienced in commanding armies to know how to wait until he had a better position, which is also very possible. He
has a very cool moment before the war really kicks off when he is in Rome and he is having a dinner with some senators in the palace and there is a...
a kind of a riot that occurs due to a miscommunication basically and a load of soldiers end up storming the palace and burst into the dining room kind of swords aloft and no one is clear on whether they're there to kill Otho or whether they're there to kill the senators or who what they are there for and Otho stands up and
stands on a couch sends all of the senators out and all of their families and gives a speech in which he manages to very cleverly I think praise their zeal in trying to protect him from whatever they were protecting him from and thank
thank you so much for coming and protecting me. And I'm so impressed by how much you like really care about your jobs and this, but everything is fine. Thank you so much. Everybody can go home. I'm going to give you like praise for being good and like very cleverly managed us to completely diffuse the situation and put down what might have been a mutiny with everybody still with their egos intact, basically. And everybody, it kind of,
Yeah. And it kind of, nobody is even like gets a paper cut and everybody goes home happy. The Senate is safe and happy. They've been protected. The Praetorians are like, do you remember what we were fighting about? No, nor do I. But this guy seems chill as hell. But I quite like him. Dio.
who is writing in about the 230s, hates Otho violently. And so he portrays this as him being very low class and standing on a couch and like that's his problem with it. But everybody else is like, look, he put down a mutiny with words alone. That's pretty good. It's very, very good.
And then, obviously, he takes his own life in order to prevent the bloodshed of any more Romans. He says, I can't do this anymore. You know, my reign is not worth this. I hate civil war. I won't do it. And even Dio, who thinks he's a prick, has to say, like, the manner of his death was extremely honourable and extremely madly and extremely cool. It's noble as shit, that death. Like, you can't...
can't argue with it. You cannot take it away from him. The only downside really is that he is never at the front lines of any of his battles and for the last one another reason that he is given potentially for him failing is that he specifically leaves like the field of war so the night before he goes and says like I leave this to you Sir Antonius Paulinus and my other generals I don't know I'm going back to this
this other town and let me know what happens basically which is quite demoralizing for some of his soldiers but they do love him quite a lot yeah and so I think for somebody who has very limited experience in war and
He's actually very good with the soldiers and they do love him. And Suetonius, the author, not the Paulinus, his dad fought with Otho and he says that his dad always spoke very highly of him. So, yeah, I
I like him. Yeah, that's some good... There's got to be a three or a four, you know. That's very good. It's very good stuff. It is. I might give him a 3.5. Ooh, ooh, doing decimals. I'm going half points. I might also do a 3.5, so he's going to get a seven altogether. I think seven out of ten is good. I think that if nothing else...
Like, he gets a full point for the manner of death. The manner of death is incredible. The defusing the swordsman is very good. And yeah, just like semi-successfully doing some battles when you've no training or experience. It's pretty good. Yeah, I think it's pretty good. And knowing who to trust, I think, is good as well. Yeah. Like, Paulinus is super famous. Having come from nothing and having the respect of the men, you know, it's... Yeah. It's...
It's good. It is good. Yeah. Especially, we'll get to the Pietas bit, but especially from what he comes from. Yeah. Like, because he's called feminine a lot. Let's just put it that way. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Okay, so Beneficia has kind of generosity and moderation. So for 10 years, all we have on Lusitania is for 10 years, Otho governed Lusitania with moderation and integrity. Okay. Which personally I like. Yeah. My take on Otho is that he is a...
This is not very good for you, but he's a Titus character. So Titus is Vespasian's first oldest son, notoriously like a massive prick when he's young, who is like rowdy and causes trouble and kind of gets into all kinds of scrapes and has a long running affair with Berenice, the princess of Judea.
But as soon as he becomes emperor or as soon as he is put in a position of responsibility, like he turns all that off and immediately becomes like, yeah, he just becomes sensible man. He's a proper Prince Hal character. Prince Hal the King Henry. Yeah. Yes. And that seems to be what Otho is like when he has got nothing to live up to. He rolls around and is a bit of a brick, but make him governor of Lusitania. He steps up. He does it. He is a good guy. And like,
any quarrel with that because why shouldn't you be just having a fun time when you've got nothing new you have no responsibility having a fun time for yeah I would be I would love to be rocking around just serving my own pleasure I don't begrudge anyone that I mean it's not great to like roll people around on the street no put them in a blanket and roll them around but it could have been worse it's so much worse
In terms of, like, he seems to have generally been quite kind. He doesn't have the time to do anything enormously generous because he is emperor for such a short period of time. But he does...
He does repay all of the stuff that Galba stole, doesn't he? So all of that money goes back out again. Yes. So all of the confiscated property that was taken away, he gives back. He is kind of notorious. As soon as he arrives in Rome, he is super generous with everybody when he thinks that he's going to be the successor, particularly. He gives gifts everywhere.
He lavishes people with praise. He always speaks with kindness, is something that Plutarch says about it. And he makes sure that this is very much a... In context, it sounds terrible. He gave the heads of Piso and Galba back to their families. No, but this is a different time and you want to be able to bury your heads.
Like he could have done terrible things to them, but he didn't. Yeah. And I think that perhaps, again, like the thing that really is key is that he kills himself in order to not lose any more Roman lives. Yeah, that's really big. And I don't think there's anything more generous than that. Yeah. Yeah, I think it's good. And like, obviously, he didn't have a lot of time to, you know, be throwing out largesse.
for all and sundry but like he does also pay the donatio so he does give all of the soldiers money yeah that they're owed and the soldiers love him and like lose their minds when he is like when he dies yeah yeah it's good i think it's a four yeah i'm going four as well yeah okay so eight for beneficia very good kicking galba's ass
Okay. So, Pyotas. What we have really is a before emperor and after emperor situation. Yeah. Whereby a lot of what is said about him is kind of innuendo-y. And a lot of it is like, oh, everybody was very afraid of his luxury and everybody was very afraid of him. But no specifics are ever given. Right. Particularly. Yeah.
Except he basically, the vibe is that people says in innuendo a lot is that he's very effeminate, very extravagant and luxurious and overly interested in how he looks. And Suetonius says that, and Brace Yourself 6 is pretty shocking, he's shaved every day. He's a metrosexual. He's a metrosexual. We're an eyeliner. But yeah, so like...
All of this comes from before Emperor, really. But he does seduce an elderly woman and then marry Poppea in order to cover up Nero's adultery, which is not great. Although elderly, she's probably 35. Like...
Because Nero and Otho at the time that this occurs are about 20-odd. They're like in their early 20s. So when they say elderly, I think we could probably take that with a very serious pinch of salt. Yeah, probably. Also, I'm just not going to quibble too hard with sex with adults. No. Adult women. Yeah. Who I have no reason to assume she wasn't also into it. Yeah. He's a handsome young man. He cares too much how he looks.
It's basically like there's just a lot of him being a huge spender, that he likes gold things. There's a story about him having a house which has gold and silver pipes that blast expensive perfume into all of the rooms. Love that. Which sounds bizarre, but sure. This all sounds very Nero, basically. He just entered Glade. Yeah. Yeah, like super expensive Glade.
He allegedly took a bribe from an imperial man, an imperial enslaved man, in order to give him a stewardship. So the enslaved guy paid him a million sesterces in order to get a job, basically. But I'm going to tell you now that way more of that is going to come up with Vespasian, so that one doesn't hurt my feelings that much. And obviously the beating up poor people thing when he was a teenager. Yeah, which is not great.
But on the pros, we have Seneca liked him. So Seneca is a Stoic who is a bit of a dick, but he protected him. And the reason that he gets sent to Lusitania is because Seneca talks Nero out of killing him and is like, no, come on. He has legitimately zero scandal in Lusitania. Like as soon as he becomes emperor, like governor there, he stops being...
Like, all of this comes from the period in which he is either a teenager or friends with Nero. Yeah. As soon as he gets away from Nero. He's being lads out on the town and then he gets a job and he knuckles down. Yeah. As soon as he becomes emperor. Now, Tacitus describes all of this as though it was fakery. Like, he was pretending and that he would have come to, like, reveal his true character. But I think this feels like Prince Hal. As soon as he became emperor, he put a...
Yes. So he put aside all pleasures and became moderate and forgiving. He pardoned people who had sided with Galba and made friends for life. He was generous with priesthoods and consulships to old and young men alike. So basically he gave priesthoods and consulships out to people that deserved them. He didn't disparage Nero's memory to keep the people happy.
And he gave new families and new constitutions to various provinces, which basically means that he sent out citizens and sorted out problems with various provinces. So he actually managed to get some stuff done in four months of reigning. It's like 90-odd days that he is the emperor. So he still managed to get some stuff done. And then, obviously, the Honourable and Brave Suicide. And his final...
thing is that he says he wants to be buried in Gaul where he died and he only wants his tomb to stay to Marcus Otho. So it doesn't have any like fancy schmancy stuff on it. It's very simple. He's not like the emperor who lists my good deeds. None of that. Yes. So basically he is... There's a lot of stuff in Suetonius that are kind of specifics but they all come from Nero's reign and then there's a lot of like
People like Daioh saying, believe it or not, everybody was more terrified of Otho's extravagance than they were of Vitellius's cruelty. But without really giving any specifics on what that was. And I think it is just association with Nero. Yeah.
That he spent like a member of Nero's court because he was a member of Nero's court. But as soon as he became emperor, I think he saw his life out, pulled his socks up. Not even before he became emperor, but when he became... As soon as he became governor, yeah. And Seneca saw something in him and I think that that is...
Yeah. I don't think I can, like, it is going to cost him that he rolled 100 people and slaves around. That's not great. But I think it's a three for me. I'm going to give him a four. Okay. Seven.
I think that had he had more time, he would have been a good emperor. I think that he could have been a Titus-y kind of guy. Yeah, I think he would have done a good job. I think it's a shame he died. It is a shame he died. For which I'm going to take, would you follow him into battle? Would you risk everything for him? I think I would, you know?
I mean, I think I wish too. I think he'd be a nice guy to hang out with. And I think he'd be, you know, you'd stick by him. Yeah. Same. Yeah. And I think that he would be, yeah, a good guy. He never seems like, you know, he doesn't go out of his way to be emperor really either. Which I think is important. Okay. That is the first two of our four emperors. And we've already been talking for ages. So I'm going to stop it there and leave people in suspense. Yeah.
And on the glory of Otho, next week we will see whether Vitellius or the divine Vespasian can live up to my now beloved Otho. I love him. I love him so much. Well, you've still got two more to go, Janina. Maybe you'll be well into Vitellius. We don't know. I mean, it's possible. If people want to ask us questions, Janina, where can they go?
They can go to history60.com, which is also where they can buy merch or support us on Patreon or Ko-fi and all of that. See the show notes and whatnot. Yes. So if you would like to ask a question or get us to have highly subjective opinions on rulers from the age of world, then that is the place to go. If you would like to get a sticker, then you can support us on Patreon at £5 level or above. And until next time, bye Janina. Bye Janina.
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