o far his conduct deserved
approbation, and was such as to afford hope of his becoming an excellent
prince, had he not managed his other affairs in a way more corresponding
with his own disposition, and his former manner of life, than to the
imperial dignity. For, having begun his march, he rode through every
city in his route in a triumphal procession; and sailed down the rivers
in ships, fitted out with the greatest elegance, and decorated with
various kinds of crowns, amidst the most extravagant entertainments.
Such was the want of discipline, and the licentiousness both in his
family and army, that, not satisfied with the provision every where made
for them at the public expense, they committed every kind of robbery and
insult upon the inhabitants, setting slaves at liberty as they pleased;
and if any dared to make resistance, they dealt blows and abuse,
frequently wounds, and sometimes slaughter amongst them. When he reached
the plains on which the battles (434) were fought [708], some of those
around him being offended at the smell of the carcases which lay rotting
upon the ground, he had the audacity to encourage them by a most
detestable remark, "That a dead enemy smelt not amiss, especially if he
were a fellow-citizen." To qualify, however, the offensiveness of the
stench, he quaffed in public a goblet of wine, and with equal vanity and
insolence distributed a large quantity of it among his troops. On his
observing a stone with an inscription upon it to the memory of Otho, he
said, "It was a mausoleum good enough for such a prince." He also sent
the poniard, with which Otho killed himself, to the colony of Agrippina
[709], to be dedicated to Mars. Upon the Appenine hills he celebrated a
Bacchanalian feast.

XI. At last he entered the City with trumpets sounding, in his general's
cloak, and girded with his sword, amidst a display of standards and
banners; his attendants being all in the military habit, and the arms of
the soldiers unsheathed. Acting more and more in open violation of all
laws, both divine and human, he assumed the office of Pontifex Maximus,
upon the day of the defeat at the Allia [710]; ordered the magistrates to
be elected for ten years of office; and made himself consul for life. To
put it out of all doubt what model he intended to follow in his
government of the empire, he made his offerings to the shade of Nero in
the midst of the Campus Martius, and with a full assembly of the publ