ir infantry and cavalry had been posted in
camp all round the legion's quarters as though an attack on them were
meditated. However, they soon showed themselves the keener
conspirators. Disloyalty is a better bond for war than it ever proves
in peace.

In Lower Germany, however, the legions on the first of January 55
swore the usual oath of allegiance to Galba, though with much
hesitation. Few voices were heard even in the front ranks; the rest
were silent, each waiting for his neighbour to take some bold step.
Human nature is always ready to follow where it hates to lead.
However, the feelings of the legions varied. The First and Fifth[103]
were already mutinous enough to throw a few stones at Galba's statue.
The Fifteenth and Sixteenth[104] dared not venture beyond muttered
threats, but they were watching to see the outbreak begin. In Upper
Germany, on the other hand, on the very same day, the Fourth and the
Twenty-second legions, who were quartered together,[105] smashed their
statues of Galba to atoms. The Fourth took the lead, the
Twenty-second at first holding back, but eventually making common
cause with them. They did not want it to be thought that they were
shaking off their allegiance to the empire, so in taking the oath they
invoked the long obsolete names of the Senate and People of Rome. None
of the officers made any movement for Galba, and indeed some of them,
as happens in such outbreaks, headed the rebellion. However, nobody
made any kind of set speech or mounted the platform, for there was no
one as yet with whom to curry favour.

The ex-consul Hordeonius Flaccus stood by and watched their 56
treachery. He had not the courage to check the storm or even to rally
the waverers and encourage the faithful. Sluggish and cowardly, it was
mere indolence that kept him loyal. Four centurions of the
Twenty-second legion, Nonius Receptus, Donatius Valens, Romilius
Marcellus, and Calpurnius Repentinus, who tried to protect Galba's
statues, were swept away by the rush of the soldiers and put under
arrest. No one retained any respect for their former oath of
allegiance, or even remembered it; and, as happens in mutinies, they
were all on the side of the majority.

On the night of the first of January a standard-bearer of the Fourth
legion came to Cologne,[106] and brought the news to Vitellius at his
dinner that the Fourth and Twenty-second legions had broken down
Galba's statues and sworn all