Otho was then acknowledged as emperor by Rome and the East, while the
hardy legions of Germany thought themselves entitled to choose for
themselves. They set up their own general, Vitellius. The two legions in
Egypt sided with the four legions in Syria under Mucianus, and the
three legions which, under Vespasian, were carrying on the memorable
war against the Jews; and all took the oaths to Otho. We find no
hieroglyphical inscriptions during this short reign of a few weeks, but
there are many Alexandrian coins to prove the truth of the historian;
and some of them, like those of Galba, bear the unlooked-for word
_freedom_. In the few weeks which then passed between the news of Otho's
death and of Vespasian being raised to the purple in Syria, Vitellius
was acknowledged in Egypt; and the Alexandrian mint struck a few coins
in his name with the figure of Victory. But as soon as the legions of
Egypt heard that the Syrian army had made choice of another emperor,
they withdrew their allegiance from Vitellius, and promised it to his
Syrian rival.

Vespasian was at Caesarea, in command of the army employed in the Jewish
war, when the news reached him that Otho was dead, and that Vitellius
had been raised to the purple by the German legions, and acknowledged
at Rome; and, without wasting more time in refusing the honour than was
necessary to prove that his soldiers were in earnest in offering it, he
allowed himself to be proclaimed emperor, as the successor of Otho.
He would not, however, then risk a march upon Rome, but he sent to
Alexandria to tell Tiberius Alexander, the governor of Egypt, what he
had done; he ordered him to claim in his name the allegiance of that
great province, and added that he should soon be there himself. The two
Roman legions in Egypt much preferred the choice of the Eastern to
that of the Western army, and the Alexandrians, who had only just
acknowledged Vitellius, readily took the oath to be faithful to
Vespasian. This made it less necessary for him to hasten thither, and he
only reached Alexandria in time to hear that Vitellius had been murdered
after a reign of eight months, and that he himself had been acknowledged
as emperor by Rome and the Western legions. His Egyptian coins in the
first year of his reign, by the word _peace_, point to the end of the
civil war.

When Vespasian entered Alexandria, he was met by the philosophers and
magistrates in great pomp. The philosophers, indeed, in a cit