The name’s Servius Sulpicius Galba, but you can call me Galba for short. I was born near Terracina. I was the first ruler out of the Year of the Four Emperors. According to many people I wasn’t the greatest, but I think I did quite well. I guess me and the people just didn’t see eye to eye.
My main purpose was to restore some of our state finances. Now I tried my best and did what I thought was right, but to many I was a horrible leader. The way I saw it was I didn’t think that I had to pay the praetorians, and so what if it was promised to them by my name. I didn’t think that these soldiers, these brave men, should be bribed for their services. I don’t see how people thought of me as cruel just because I put major taxes on the ones who didn’t like me. I thought that if they wanted to stop paying so much money, that they should just like me and it would all be better.
Being an Emperor is an enormous amount of work, having to deal with so many different situations throughout the day, and dealing with so many different cases. I found it much easier to not even deal with trials, and just send them the death penalty if I felt it was needed. Then you got all the people wanting to be a citizen. I decided to ignore them because they could find somewhere else to live. And the town, yuck! I was just so disgusted with it and often shared my, as some would say, “mean” opinion with the citizens.
After all I did for my people, saving them the time of not dealing with worthless peasants and using their money to help our town look better, they decided to betray me. Two people didn’t want to be loyal to me so they decided to knock over my beautiful statues, and then they protested for a new Emperor. They hurt my feelings quite a bit, and then they decided to claim the governor of the Province the new Emperor. I never realized how unpopular I was with my people until now.
M Salvius Otho was one of my early supporters, but in the end he betrayed me. I guess because Pisco was chosen over him that he set out to the praetorians, and they adopted him as their emperor. So I, the infamous Galba, set out to meet these rebels, but my feebleness got to me so I was carried. On my way to meet them I was attacked by Otho’s army and decapitated. I guess I was a real negative effect on Rome because my decapitated head was paraded around, mocked, and then bought like some kind of toy! Just because I killed your master for no reason, doesn’t mean that you can buy my head to set it where I killed him, so rude!
No comments:
Post a Comment