1The next concern was money; 1and as they searched everywhere, it seemed most just to recover it from the place where the cause of the shortage lay. 1Nero had poured out two thousand two hundred million sesterces in gifts: Galba ordered each recipient to be summoned, a tenth part of the gift being left with each of them. 1But they barely had a tenth part left, having squandered others' money with the same extravagance as their own, since the most rapacious and dissolute of them had no lands or capital left but only the instruments of their vices. 1Thirty Roman knights were put in charge of the collection, a new kind of office and burdensome through its intrigue and numbers: everywhere the auction spear and the purchaser, and the city restless with lawsuits.
1And yet there was great rejoicing that those to whom Nero had given were as poor as those from whom he had taken. 1In those days tribunes were dismissed: from the praetorian guard Antonius Taurus and Antonius Naso, from the urban cohorts Aemilius Pacensis, from the watch Julius Fronto. 1This was no remedy for the rest, but the beginning of fear, as though they were being driven out one by one through cunning and intimidation, since all were suspected.