In January of the year a.d. 69, Marcus Salvius Otho, disappointed in his attempt to be named Galba's heir and successor, fomented revolt among the praetorian guard. Trading on the praetorians’ own discontent at not receiving the donative, he began to win over the soldiers’ favour. Tacitus relates that, when the attitude of the soldiers seemed ripe (haud dubiae iam in castris omnium mentes, Hist. 1.36.1),Footnote ² Otho himself came forth and began to implore them directly (nec deerat Otho protendens manus adorare uolgum, iacere oscula, et omnia seruiliter pro dominatione, Hist. 1.36.3); and after he accepted the oath of loyalty from the entire classicorum legio (Hist. 1.36.3), he felt ready to hold a speech encouraging the men to complete the deed by ousting Galba.

One of Otho's main tactics in this speech is to transfer the ambiguity of his own situation onto the soldiers. He says that he is uncertain whether he is approaching them as a priuatus or already as princeps, and then continues (Hist. 1.37.1): uestrum quoque nomen in incerto erit, donec dubitabitur, imperatorem populi Romani in castris an hostem habeatis. He further emphasizes that their fates are now joined irrevocably to his (adeo manifestum est neque perire nos neque saluos esse nisi una posse, Hist. 1.37.2), and proceeds by relating at length the crimes of Galba's brief tenure. The speech, as presented by Tacitus, then concludes with a sententia that is intended to suppress moral doubts and spur the men to immediate action (Hist. 1.38.2): nullus cunctationis locus est in eo consilio, quod non potest laudari nisi peractum. What matters now is the practical success of the coup; moral reflection can—indeed must—wait.

The text then narrates the tumult that these words stirred up (Hist. 1.38.3):Footnote ³

The final word here, however, gives pause: why should soldiers, however morally good, be ‘grieving’ (OLD s.v. maereo 1) or, stranger still, ‘mourning’ (OLD s.v. 2) at this moment—right as the crisis is coming to a head? Moreover, in order for their attitude to be an incitamentum to the pessimi, any grief they felt must have been evident, visibly or audibly; but the image of hardened soldiers weeping in the midst of this tumult is surprising. Soldiers of course may grieve, especially when unwelcome news is brought to them: quod ubi auditum uulgatumque, maerere socii, fremere legiones (Hist. 2.28.1). But in this case, while many are rushing confusedly to arms, it seems very odd (not to mention foolish) that others would be standing there weeping or grieving.

It would be natural, however, for them still to have serious doubts as to how to act. A small change to the text yields a picture that is at once more psychologically apt, and gives the historian's closing epigram much more antithetical point:

‘The greatest incitement for the worst men was that good men were hesitating’—the indecision of the good bolsters the resolve of the bad. This change, moreover, brings the narrator's clausular epigram in line with the sententia that had closed Otho's speech (nullus cunctationis locus est in eo consilio, quod non potest laudari nisi peractum): Otho's clinically amoral generalization has had its hoped-for effect, and on the men it was intended to. Tacitus evidently was fascinated by this aspect of crowd mentality—namely, the way that mere consensus or resolve is required, and that moral doubts are to be stifled when hesitation could be fatal. The Tacitean narrator emphasizes this dynamic again (passing from sententia and epigram to plain description)Footnote ⁴ during the final scene of Galba's death (Hist. 1.41.1): eo signo manifesta in Othonem omnium militum studia, desertum fuga populi forum, destricta aduersus dubitantes tela—those who hesitate are no longer simply a spur to the bad men, as at 1.38.3; now, with success near, they are compelled to consent to the coup by threat of physical force. The next lines describe Galba's last words and murder.Footnote ⁵

As far as linguistic usage is concerned, most instances of the verb haereo are physical (OLD s.v. 1–8), but the intellectual or moral sense is well attested and unobjectionable: see the examples at OLD s.v. 9 ‘to be at a loss, to be stuck in difficulties’, and at TLL s.v. IV.B.1, which glosses this sense with ‘haeret animus dubitantis, difficultate inveniendi impediti, trepidantis’. If the text I have proposed for Hist. 1.38.3 is right, the physical inaction of the good men and their moral indecision are both to be felt (the former makes evident the latter). Tacitus himself not infrequently makes use of haereo and its compounds (adhaereo, adhaeresco, cohaereo), as well as the frequentative haesito and the noun haesitatio.Footnote ⁶ A somewhat similar passage to ours, in which physical motionless and uncertainty are combined, is at Hist. 3.26.1: quorum aspectu haesere uictores, incertis ducibus quid iuberent. For a passage that emphasizes uncertainty, see Ann. 6.21.2: ille positus siderum ac spatia dimensus, haerere primo, dein pauescere, et quantum introspiceret magis ac magis trepidus admirationis ac metus, postremo exclamat ambiguum sibi ac prope ultimum discrimen instare.

The usage, then, is Tacitean; and the substitution of haerebant for maerebant at Hist. 1.38.3 gives a sharper epigram, depicts a situation that is more likely in the immediate context, and engages with a social-psychological issue that Tacitus was intensely and repeatedly concerned with in this section of the Historiae.

Palaeographically, too, the slip from an original haerebant to an erroneous maerebant seems very simple, whether the mistake occurred while copying from a manuscript in minuscule (boni hae- read as boni mae-) or in capitals (BONI HAE- read as BONI MAE-).Footnote ⁷ The mistake could have been purely visual, but there are also reasons to suggest that an erroneous maerebant was likely to arise from an original haerebant. In general, Tacitus is fairly fond of the verb maereo and its cognates, and it is possible that the frequency with which they occur in his text could have led an inattentive scribe to substitute the more common root (maer-) for the less common one (haer-). Although the two verbs are used with roughly equal frequency (haereo 13x against maereo 14x, not counting Hist. 1.38.3 itself), the nouns are greatly imbalanced in favour of the root maer- (haesitatio 3x against maeror 10x and maestitia 14x); and, against zero examples in Tacitus of adjectives from the root haer- (for example haesitabundus), the adjective maestus occurs 29x throughout his works.Footnote ⁸ The nearest example of either root earlier on in the first book of the Historiae is indeed the noun maestitia at Hist. 1.18.3. There, Tacitus relates that, when Galba presented the young Piso as his adoptive heir in a speech to the soldiers, the notable lack of mention of a donative created ill will among the men: tribuni tamen centurionesque et proximi militum grata auditu respondent: per ceteros maestitia ac silentium, tamquam usurpatam etiam in pace donatiui necessitatem bello perdidissent. This use of maestitia is quite apt, describing as it does the general discontent of the men. Perhaps its presence here helped along the scribal slip a few pages later that resulted in maerebant from an original haerebant; after all, both are passages in which soldiers’ attitudes are being described, even if the action taking place in each is very different.

Before closing, one last issue must be addressed, and that is the possibility that the collocation boni maerebant is in some way owed to Cicero—for if Tacitus can be shown to be alluding to, or making use of, a specific literary antecedent, then the transmitted text should not be modified. In their commentaries, both HeubnerFootnote ⁹ and DamonFootnote ¹⁰ point to passages from Cicero as parallels for the expression boni maerebant (Pis. 26 and Dom. 26, as well as Dom. 129, where the verb is instead lugeo). Heubner simply cites the references, whereas Damon comments briefly: ‘quod boni maerebant: a Ciceronian querela … but in a military context’. But Damon's qualification is telling: in the Ciceronian passages from In Pisonem and De domo sua, a very different situation is being described from what we find in Tac. Hist. 1.38.3. When Cicero speaks of ‘the mourning of the good men’, he is in fact describing a specific act of political theatre which occurred in 58 b.c., when Piso was consul and Clodius had proposed the bill that would eventually force Cicero into exile. At that time, some members of the Senate, in opposition to Clodius’ machinations, had appealed to Gabinius, Piso's colleague in the consulship; but when this failed to achieve any result, they went into mourning and donned funeral garb on Cicero's behalf.Footnote ¹¹ It is this act which Cicero refers to in the passages cited by Heubner and Damon (Dom. 26, lugente senatu, maerentibus bonis omnibus; Pis. 26, numerandus est ille annus denique in re publica, cum obmutuisset senatus, iudicia conticuissent, maererent boni, … ?). And within the In Pisonem, an even more explicit description of this same action and the specific way in which it unfolded is given earlier (Pis. 17, addressed to Piso himself): cum senatus luctum ac dolorem suum uestis mutatione declarandum censuisset, cum uideres maerere rem publicam amplissimi ordinis luctu, o noster misericors, quid facis? (The consuls later ordered the Senate to return to normal dress, as Cicero relates at Pis. 18: edicere est ausus cum illo suo pari, … ut senatus contra quam ipse censuisset ad uestitum rediret.)

Such a calculated act of political theatre, complete with donning of funeral garb, stands in stark contrast with the depiction of a confused rush to arms in Tac. Hist. 1.38.3; and it is hard to see exactly why Tacitus would be thinking specifically of those passages in Cicero that have been adduced as parallels for the expression boni maerebant. Therefore, unless a strong counter-argument can be made for Tacitus’ alluding to Cicero, the similarities between the latter's language and the transmitted text at Hist. 1.38.3 should not be pressed, especially if a better reading can be so easily restored.