24.2
On that day, shortly after dawn, Galba was sacrificing in the Palatium in the presence of his friends; and as soon as Umbricius, the officiating priest, had taken the entrails of the victim in his hands and inspected them, he declared not ambiguously, but in so many words, that there were signs of a great commotion, and that peril mixed with treachery hung over the emperor’s head. Thus the god all but delivered Otho over to arrest.
24.3
For Otho was standing behind Galba, and noted what was said and pointed out by Umbricius. But as he stood there in confusion and with a countenance changing to all sorts of colours through fear, Onomastus his freedman came up and told him that the builders were come and were waiting for him at his house. Now, this was a token that the time was at hand when Otho was to meet the soldiers.
24.4
With the remark, then, that he had bought an old house and wished to show its defects to the vendors, he went away, and passing through what was called the house of Tiberius, went down into the forum, to where a gilded column stood, at which all the roads that intersect Italy terminate.
25.1
Here, as we are told, the soldiers who first welcomed him and saluted him as emperor were no more than twenty-three. Therefore, although he was not sunken in spirit to match the weakness and effeminacy of his body, but was bold and adventurous in presence of danger, he began to be afraid.
25.2
The soldiers who were there, however, would not suffer him to desist, but surrounding his litter with their swords drawn, ordered it to be taken up, while Otho urged the bearers to hasten, saying to himself many times that he was a lost man. For he was overheard by some of the bystanders, and they were astonished rather than disturbed, owing to the small number of those who had ventured upon the deed. But as he was thus borne through the forum, he was met by as many more soldiers, and others again kept joining the party by threes and fours.
