1On the eighteenth day before the Kalends of February, as Galba was sacrificing before the temple of Apollo, the soothsayer Umbricius declares the entrails ominous and foretells imminent treachery and an enemy within the house, while Otho listened (for he had been standing next to him) and interpreted it, on the contrary, as a good sign and favourable to his own designs. 1Not long afterwards the freedman Onomastus announces that the architect and the contractors were waiting for him, which had been agreed as the signal that the soldiers were now gathering and the conspiracy was ready. 1Otho, when people asked why he was leaving, pretended that he was buying some properties which he distrusted because of their age and must therefore inspect first, and leaning on his freedman goes through the house of Tiberius into the Velabrum, and from there to the golden milestone below the temple of Saturn.
1There twenty-three of the bodyguard hail him as emperor, and, alarmed as he was by the small number of those hailing him, they place him hastily in a chair and carry him off with drawn swords; 1about as many soldiers join them on the way, some through complicity, most from amazement, some with shouts and swords, some in silence, intending to take their courage from the outcome.