The soul of Otho was not
effeminate like his person. His confidential freedmen and slaves, who
enjoyed a license unknown in private families, brought the debaucheries of
Nero's court, its intrigues, its easy marriages, and the other indulgences
of despotic power, before a mind passionately fond of such things, dwelt
upon them as his if he dared to seize them, and reproached the inaction that
would leave them to others. The astrologers also urged him to action,
predicting from their observation of the heavens revolutions, and a year of
glory for Otho. This is a class of men, whom the powerful cannot trust, and
who deceive the aspiring, a
class which will always be proscribed in this country, and
yet always retained. Many of these men were attached to the secret councils
of Poppæa and were the vilest tools in the employ of the imperial
household. One of them, Ptolemæus, had attended Otho in
Spain, and had there foretold that his patron would
survive Nero. Gaining credit by the result, and arguing from his own
conjectures and from the common talk of those who compared Galba's age with
Otho's youth, he had persuaded the latter that he would be called to the
throne. Otho however received the prediction as the words of wisdom and the
intimation of destiny, with that inclination so natural to the human mind
readily to believe in the mysterious.
