consul-elect, who had remained Galba's faithful
friend to the last. They were as much offended at his efficiency and
honesty as if these had been criminal qualities. What they wanted was
obviously to find a first excuse for plunder and murder and the
destruction of all decent citizens. But Otho had as yet no influence
to prevent crimes: he could only order them. So he simulated anger,
giving instructions for Celsus' arrest, and by promising that he
should meet with a worse penalty, thus rescued him from immediate
death.

The will of the soldiers was now henceforward supreme. The 46
Praetorian Guards chose their own prefects, Plotius Firmus, a man who
had risen from the ranks to the post of Chief of Police,[74] and
joined Otho's side before Galba's fall, and Licinius Proculus, an
intimate friend of Otho, and therefore suspected of furthering his
plans. They made Flavius Sabinus[75] prefect of the city, therein
following Nero's choice, under whom Sabinus had held that post;
besides, most of them had an eye to the fact that he was Vespasian's
brother. An urgent demand arose that the customary fees to centurions
for granting furlough should be abolished, for they constituted a sort
of annual tax upon the common soldier. The result had been that a
quarter of each company could go off on leave or lounge idly about the
barracks, so long as they paid the centurion his fee, nor was there
any one to control either the amount of this impost or the means by
which the soldiers raised the money: highway robbery or menial service
was the usual resort whereby they purchased leisure. Then, again, a
soldier who had money was savagely burdened with work until he should
buy exemption. Thus he soon became impoverished and enervated by
idleness, and returned to his company no longer a man of means and
energy but penniless and lazy. So the process went on. One after
another they became deteriorated by poverty and lax discipline,
rushing blindly into quarrels and mutiny, and, as a last resource,
into civil war. Otho was afraid of alienating the centurions by his
concessions to the rank and file, and promised to pay the annual
furlough-fees out of his private purse. This was indubitably a sound
reform, which good emperors have since established as a regular custom
in the army. The prefect Laco he pretended to banish to an island, but
on his arrival he was stabbed by a reservist[76] whom Otho had
previously dispatched for that purp