1It happened by chance that the killings of Clodius Macer and Fonteius Capito were reported together. 1Macer, who was undoubtedly stirring up trouble in Africa, had been killed by the procurator Trebonius Garutianus on Galba's orders; Capito, in Germany, when he was attempting similar things, by Cornelius Aquinus and Fabius Valens, commanders of legions, before they were ordered. 1There were those who believed that Capito, though foul and stained with avarice and lust, had nevertheless refrained from thoughts of revolution, but that a charge and a plot had been deliberately concocted by the legates who were urging him to war, after they had failed to drive him to it, and that Galba, from fickleness of character or so as not to look too deeply, had approved what had been done, however it was done, since it could not be changed.
1Both killings, however, were badly received, and for an emperor once hated, his deeds, good or bad, brought equal odium. 1Everything was for sale, the freedmen all-powerful, the slaves' hands greedy for sudden gains and in haste, as with an old master; and the new court had the same evils as the old, just as grievous, but not equally excused. 1Galba's very age was an object of ridicule and disgust to men used to Nero's youth, who compared emperors, as the crowd does, by their looks and physical grace.