Histories 1.6

1Titus Vinius and Cornelius Laco, the one the worst of mortals, the other the most slothful, were ruining the feeble old man, loading him with the hatred their crimes aroused and with the contempt their sloth aroused. 1Galba's march was slow and bloody, Cingonius Varro, consul-elect, and Petronius Turpilianus, an ex-consul, having been put to death: the former as an associate of Nymphidius, the latter as Nero's general, they had perished unheard and undefended, and so like innocent men. 1His entry into the city, with so many thousands of unarmed soldiers butchered, was ill-omened, and alarming even to those who had done the killing. 1With a Spanish legion brought in, and the one Nero had enrolled from the fleet remaining, the city was full of an unaccustomed army; 1there were also many detachments from Germany, Britain and Illyricum, which the same Nero had picked and sent ahead to the Caspian Gates and the war he was preparing against the Albani, and had then recalled to crush Vindex's uprising: vast material for revolution, not inclined in favour of any one man, but ready for whoever dared.