Following an ancient custom, the tribe of the Lingones had made a 54 present of a pair of silver hands[102] to the legions as a symbol of hospitality.  Assuming an appearance of squalid misery, their envoys made the round of the officers’ quarters and the soldiers’ tents complaining of their own wrongs and of the rewards lavished on neighbouring tribes.  Finding the soldiers ready to listen, they made inflammatory allusions to the army itself, its dangers and humiliation.  Mutiny was almost ripe, when Hordeonius Flaccus ordered the envoys to withdraw, and, in order to secure the secrecy of their departure, gave instructions to them to leave the camp by night.  This gave rise to an alarming rumour.  Many declared that the envoys had been killed, and that, if they did not look out for themselves, the leading spirits among the soldiers, who had complained of the present state of things, would be murdered in the dark, while their comrades knew nothing about it.  So the legions formed a secret compact.  The auxiliaries were also taken into the plot, although at first they had been distrusted, because their infantry and cavalry had been posted in camp all round the legion’s quarters as though an attack on them were meditated.  However, they soon showed themselves the keener conspirators.  Disloyalty is a better bond for war than it ever proves in peace.

In Lower Germany, however, the legions on the first of January 55 swore the usual oath of allegiance to Galba, though with much hesitation.  Few voices were heard even in the front ranks; the rest were silent, each waiting for his neighbour to take some bold step.  Human nature is always ready to follow where it hates to lead.  However, the feelings of the legions varied.  The First and Fifth[103] were already mutinous enough to throw a few stones at Galba’s statue.  The Fifteenth and Sixteenth[104] dared not venture beyond muttered threats, but they were watching to see the outbreak begin.  In Upper Germany, on the other hand, on the very same day, the Fourth and the Twenty-second legions, who were quartered together,[105] smashed their statues of Galba to atoms.  The Fourth took the lead, the Twenty-second at first holding back, but eventually making common cause with them.  They did not want it to be thought that they were shaking off their allegiance to the empire, so in taking the oath they invoked the long obsolete names of the Senate and People of Rome.  None of the officers made any movement for Galba, and indeed some of them, as happens in such outbreaks, headed the rebellion.  However, nobody made any kind of set speech or mounted the platform, for there was no one as yet with whom to curry favour.

The ex-consul Hordeonius Flaccus stood by and watched their 56 treachery.  He had not the courage to check the storm or even to rally the waverers and encourage the faithful.  Sluggish and cowardly, it was mere indolence that kept him loyal.  Four centurions of the Twenty-second legion, Nonius Receptus, Donatius Valens, Romilius Marcellus, and Calpurnius Repentinus, who tried to protect Galba’s statues, were swept away by the rush of the soldiers and put under arrest.  No one retained any respect for their former oath of allegiance, or even remembered it; and, as happens in mutinies, they were all on the side of the majority.