XXIII. He perished in the seventy-third year of his age, and the seventh
month of his reign [669]. The senate, as soon as they could with safety,
ordered a statue to be erected for him upon the naval column, in that
part of the Forum where he (415) was slain. But Vespasian cancelled the
decree, upon a suspicion that he had sent assassins from Spain into
Judaea to murder him.

* * * * * *

GALBA was, for a private man, the most wealthy of any who had ever
aspired to the imperial dignity. He valued himself upon his being
descended from the family of the Servii, but still more upon his relation
to Quintus Catulus Capitolinus, celebrated for integrity and virtue. He
was likewise distantly related to Livia, the wife of Augustus; by whose
interest he was preferred from the station which he held in the palace,
to the dignity of consul; and who left him a great legacy at her death.
His parsimonious way of living, and his aversion to all superfluity or
excess, were construed into avarice as soon as he became emperor; whence
Plutarch observes, that the pride which he took in his temperance and
economy was unseasonable. While he endeavoured to reform the profusion
in the public expenditure, which prevailed in the reign of Nero, he ran
into the opposite extreme; and it is objected to him by some historians,
that he maintained not the imperial dignity in a degree consistent even
with decency. He was not sufficiently attentive either to his own
security or the tranquillity of the state, when he refused to pay the
soldiers the donative which he had promised them. This breach of faith
seems to be the only act in his life that affects his integrity; and it
contributed more to his ruin than even the odium which he incurred by the
open venality and rapaciousness of his favourites, particularly Vinius.