1No murder, it is said, did Otho greet with greater joy, no head did he survey with such insatiable eyes, whether because his mind, then for the first time relieved of all anxiety, had begun to have leisure for rejoicing, or because the memory of majesty in Galba and of friendship in Titus Vinius had troubled his spirit, pitiless as it was, with a gloomy picture, whereas he believed it right and lawful to rejoice in the murder of Piso, an enemy and rival. 1The heads, fixed on poles, were carried among the standards of the cohorts beside the eagle of the legion, while those who had killed, those who had been present, those who truly and those who falsely boasted of it as a fine and memorable deed, vied in displaying their bloodstained hands.
1More than a hundred and twenty petitions from men demanding a reward for some notable service on that day Vitellius later found, and he ordered them all to be hunted down and put to death, not in honour of Galba, but by the custom handed down among emperors, as a safeguard for the present and vengeance for the future.