Otho was considered one of the most reckless young hangers-on of Roman emperor Nero, which is really saying something, since Nero was rumored to dip capture Christians in oil and set them on fire at night in his garden just for a little extra lighting.
It probably shouldn’t surprise you then that when Otho introduced Nero to his wife Poppaea, she and the emperor immediately began a torrid love affair and began plotting against Otho. Poppaea then convinced Nero to effectively banish Otho by making him the governor of a faraway province nobody gave a shit about, Lusitania. Unlucky for Nero, though, was the fact that Lusitania neighbored Hispania Tarraconensis, which was governed by fellow Nero-hater and revolutionary, Galba.
So Galba and Otho got together and decided to head to Rome to overthrow Nero, which really went well for the two newly minted buds. Now that Nero was out of the picture, Galba was finally emperor in 68 CE, but he was getting up there in age, so Otho just sat back biding his time for seven months, playing it cool and paying his respects to Galba like a nefarious boss. And then one day he finally pools together enough money from his couch cushions to buy the services of twenty-three mercenaries of the Praetorian Guard. Overthrowing emperors was apparently the easiest possible thing you could do in Rome, because that’s really all it took for Otho to get Galba killed. Of course, Galba sounds like he was a real dick who stiffed the Praetorian guards (A country’s leader refusing to pay for services rendered? Ridiculous!), and everyone was pretty nostalgic for Nero’s Christian burnings in the first place. In other words, no one batted an eyelash when Galba bit the dust.
Anywho, Otho slid right into being the emperor in January of the Year of the Four Emperors, but he unknowingly inherited a nasty revolution that was brewing in Germany, where numerous legions were consolidating their support around Vitellius. Long story short, Otho’s forces really got their asses kicked in battle, and rather than regroup to fight another day, Otho just decided to check out and commit suicide after ruling for only three months.
Vitellius didn’t fare much better, driving the imperial treasury close to bankruptcy through a series of banquets and parades and then murdering anyone who dared to ask, “Hey, where did all our money go?” The third emperor in the Year of the Four Emperors enjoyed a fairly prolific killing spree, murdering regular citizens and political rivals alike, until he was eventually assassinated himself by Vespasian in December.
This happened in 69 CE.
Nice.
