standing before the door, mixing prayers and menaces in vain, and demanding back again what was entrusted to his keeping. His pretended marriage, therefore, being dissolved, he was sent lieutenant into Lusitania. This treatment of him was thought sufficiently severe, because harsher proceedings might have brought the whole farce to light, which, notwithstanding, at last came out, and was published to the world in the following distich:—
Cur Otho mentitus sit, quaeritis, exul honore?
Uxoris moechus caeperat esse suae.
You ask why Otho’s banish’d? Know, the cause
Comes not within the verge of vulgar laws.
Against all rules of fashionable life,
The rogue had dared to sleep with his own wife.
He governed the province in quality of quaestor for ten years, with singular moderation and justice.
IV. As soon as an opportunity of revenge offered, he readily joined in Galba’s enterprises, and at the same time conceived hopes of obtaining the imperial dignity for himself. To this he was much encouraged by the state of the times, but still more by the assurances given him by Seleucus, the astrologer, who, having formerly told him that he would certainly out-live Nero, came to him at that juncture unexpectedly, promising him