GALEA. 473 money-making on that of Vinius. And thus the mass of the people began to look with dislike upon the govern- ment. The soldiers were kept on a while in expectation of the promised donative, supposing that if they did not receive the full, yet they should have at least as much as Nero gave them. But when Galba, on hearing they began to complain, declared greatly, and like a general, that he was used to enlist and not to buy his soldiers, when they heard of this, they conceived an implacable hatred against him ; for he did not seem to defraud them merely himself in their present expectations, but to give an ill precedent, and instruct his successors to do the like. This heart-burning, however, was as yet at Eome a thing undeclared, and a certain respect for Galba's per- sonal presence somewhat retarded their motions, and took off their edge, and their having no obvious occasion for beginning a revolution curbed and kept under, more or less, their resentments. But those forces that had been formerly under Virginius, and now were under Flaccus in Gennany, valuing themselves much upon the battle they had fought with Vindex, and finding now no advan- tage of it, grew very refractory and intractable towards their officers: and Flaccus they wholly disregarded, being incapacitated in body by unintermitted gout, and, besides, a man of little experience in affiiirs. So at one of their festivals, when it was customary for the officers of the army to wish all health and happiness to the emperor, the common soldiers began to murmur loudl}', and on their officers persisting in the ceremony, responded with the words, ^'If he deserves it." When some similar insolence was committed by the legions under Vitellius,'-' frequent letters -nith the infor- • The uniform reading is Tigel- mauded no troops of any kind linus, who cannot have been men- now ; he was no longer pr«torian tioned in this place. He com- prefect ; and Plutarch is clearly
