the emperor, and then hastily excusing himself on the score of private business hurried from the Palatine to meet his accomplices. By them he was escorted to the praetorian camp, where, after a few moments of surprise and indecision, he was saluted imperator. With an imposing force he returned to the Forum, and at the foot of the Capitol encountered Galba, who, alarmed by vague rumours of treachery, was making his way through a dense crowd of wondering citizens towards the barracks of the guard. The cohort on duty at the Palatine, which had accompanied the emperor, instantly deserted him; Galba, Piso and others were brutally murdered by the praetorians. The brief struggle over, Otho returned in triumph to the camp, and on the same day was duly invested by the senators with the name of Augustus, the tribunician power and the other dignities belonging to the principate. Otho had owed his success, not only to the resentment felt by the praetorian guards at Galba’s well-meant attempts to curtail their privileges in the interests of discipline, but also largely to the attachment felt in Rome for the memory of Nero; and his first acts as emperor showed that he was not unmindful of the fact. He accepted, or appeared to accept, the cognomen of Nero conferred upon him by the shouts of the populace, whom his comparative youth and the effeminacy of his appearance reminded of their lost favourite. Nero’s statues were again set up, his freedmen and household officers reinstalled, and the intended completion of the Golden House announced. At the same time the fears of the more sober and respectable citizens were allayed by Otho’s liberal professions of his intention to govern equitably, and by his judicious clemency towards Marius Celsus, consul-designate, a devoted adherent of Galba.
But any further development of Otho’s policy was checked by the news which reached Rome shortly after his accession, that the army in Germany had declared for Vitellius, the commander of the legions on the lower Rhine, and was already advancing upon Italy. After in vain attempting to conciliate Vitellius by the offer of a share in the empire, Otho, with unexpected vigour, prepared for war. From the remoter provinces, which had acquiesced in his accession, little help was to be expected; but the legions of Dalmatia, Pannonia and Moesia were eager in his cause, the praetorian cohorts were in themselves a formidable force and an efficient fleet gave him the mastery of the Italian seas. The fleet was at once despatched to secure Liguria, and on the 14th of March Otho, undismayed by omens and prodigies, started northwards at the head of his troops in the hopes of preventing the entry of the Vitellian troops into Italy. But for this he was too late, and all that could be done was to throw troops into Placentia and hold the line of the Po. Otho’s advanced guard successfully defended Placentia against Alienus Caecina, and compelled that general to fall back on Cremona. But the arrival of Fabius Valens altered the aspect of affairs. The Vitellian commanders now resolved to bring on a decisive battle, and their designs were assisted by the divided and irresolute counsels which prevailed in Otho’s camp. The more experienced officers urged the importance of avoiding a battle, until at least the legions from Dalmatia had arrived. But the rashness of the emperor’s brother Titianus and of Proculus, prefect of the praetorian guards, added to Otho’s feverish impatience, overruled all opposition, and an immediate advance was decided upon, Otho himself remaining behind with a considerable reserve force at Brixellum, on the southern bank of the Po. When this decision was taken the Othonian forces had already crossed the Po and were encamped at Bedriacum (or Betriacum), a small village on the Via Postumia, and on the route by which the legions from Dalmatia would naturally arrive. Leaving a strong detachment to hold the camp at Bedriacum, the Othonian forces advanced along the Via Postumia in the direction of Cremona. At a short distance from that city they unexpectedly encountered the Vitellian troops. The Othonians, though taken at a disadvantage, fought desperately, but were finally forced to fall back in disorder upon their camp at Bedriacum. Thither on the next day the victorious Vitellians followed them, but only to come to terms at once with their disheartened enemy, and to be welcomed into the camp as friends. More unexpected still was the effect produced at Brixellum by the news of the battle. Otho was still in command of a formidable force—the Dalmatian legions had already reached Aquileia; and the spirit of his soldiers and their officers was unbroken. But he was resolved to accept the verdict of the battle which his own impatience had hastened. In a dignified speech he bade farewell to those about him, and then retiring to rest slept soundly for some hours. Early in the morning he stabbed himself to the heart with a dagger which he had concealed under his pillow, and died as his attendants entered the tent. His funeral was celebrated at once, as he had wished, and not a few of his soldiers followed their master’s example by killing themselves at his pyre. A plain tomb was erected in his honour at Brixellum, with the simple inscription “Diis Manibus Marci Othonis.” At the time of his death (the 15th of April 69) he was in his thirty-eighth year, and had reigned just three months. In all his life nothing became him so well as his manner of leaving it; but the fortitude he then showed, even if it was not merely the courage of despair, cannot blind us to the fact that he was little better than a reckless and vicious spendthrift, who was not the less dangerous because his fiercer passions were concealed beneath an affectation of effeminate dandyism. (H. F. P.)
See Tacitus, Histories, i. 12-50, 71-90, ii. 11-51; Lives by Suetonius and Plutarch; Dio Cassius lxiv.; Merivale, History of the Romans under the Empire, ch. 56: H. Schiller, Geschichte der römischen Kaiserzeit (1883); L. Paul, “Kaiser M. Salvius Otho” in Rhein. Mus. lvii. (1902); W. A. Spooner, On the Characters of Galba, Otho, and Vitellius, in Introd. to his edition (1891) of the Histories of Tacitus; B. W. Henderson, Civil War and Rebellion in the Roman Empire, A.D. 69–70 (1908).
OTIS, HARRISON GRAY (1765–1848), American politician,
was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on the 8th of October 1765.
He was a nephew of James Otis, and the son of Samuel Allyne
Otis (1740–1814), who was a member of the Confederation
Congress in 1787–1788 and secretary of the United States
Senate from its first session in 1789 until his death. Young Otis
graduated from Harvard College in 1783, was admitted to the
bar in 1786, and soon became prominent as a Federalist in
politics. He served in the Massachusetts House of Representatives
in 1796–1797, in the National House of Representatives
in 1797–1801, as district-attorney for Massachusetts in
1801, as speaker of the state House of Representatives in 1803–1805,
as a member of the state Senate from 1805 to 1811, and as
president of that body in 1805–1806 and 1808–1811, as a member
of the United States Senate from 1817 to 1822, and as mayor of
Boston in 1829–1832. He was strongly opposed to the War of
1812, and was a leader in the movement culminating in the
Hartford Convention, which he defended in a series of open
letters published in 1824, and in his inaugural address as mayor
of Boston. A man of refinement and education, a member of an
influential family, a popular social leader and an eloquent
speaker—at the age of twenty-three he was chosen by the town
authorities of Boston to deliver the Independence Day oration—Otis
yet lacked conspicuous ability as a statesman. He died in
Boston on the 28th of October 1848.
OTIS, JAMES (1725–1783), American patriot, was born at West Barnstable, Massachusetts, on the 5th of February 1725. He was the eldest son of James Otis (1702–1778), fourth in descent from John Otis (1581–1657), a native of Barnstaple, Devon, and one of the first settlers (in 1635) of Hingham, Mass. The elder James Otis was elected to the provincial General Court in 1758, was its speaker in 1760–1762, and was chief justice of the Court of Common Pleas from 1764 until 1776; he was a prominent patriot in the colony of Massachusetts. The son graduated at Harvard in 1743; and after studying law in the office of Jeremiah Gridley (1702–1767), a well-known lawyer with Whig sympathies, rose to great distinction at the bar, practising first at Plymouth and after 1750 at Boston. In 1760 he published Rudiments of Latin Prosody, a book of authority in its time. He wrote a similar treatise upon Greek prosody; but this was never published, because, as he said, there was not a font of Greek letters in the country, nor, if there were, a printer who could have set them up. Soon after the accession of George III. to the throne of England in 1760, the British government
