One of the things that most caught my attention in 1981, when the attack against US President Ronald Reagan took place, was seeing how his bodyguards jumped on him to cover him from the shots with his bodies. Since then we have all seen similar scenes often in cinema and television; What most do not know is that in reality it is not something as new as it seems and in ancient Rome there was a similar case -substituting firearms for white ones, obviously- with the emperor Galba and a Praetorian guard called Sempronio Dense.
We are in the 1st century AD. It has been many decades since Rome left behind the republican period to become an empire; specifically since in the year 27 a.C. the Senate granted Octavio -by then already renamed Octaviano- the cognomen of Augustus, making him emperor. Henceforth, reaching the throne would be an obsession for many nobles and generals, which is curious considering that, statistically, it was buying a ticket to probable death. Thirty-seven assassinations confirmed this, not counting the civil wars caused by seizing power.
In the year 68, Nero had just returned from a trip to Greece when he learned that the governors of Gaul Lugdunense and Hispania Tarraconense, Gaius Julius Vindex and Servius Sulpicio Galba, had risen up against him claiming the republic. Vindex was defeated by the legions of Virginio Rufus in Germania, whose soldiers asked him to proclaim himself emperor. He refused but the situation was already heated and the new prefect of the Praetorian Guard, Ninfidio Sabino, supported Galba. The Senate deposed Nero, who ended up committing suicide, and Galba took his place.
He was a wealthy aristocrat who had a certain prestige for surviving Caligula and gaining Claudius' respect. Still, and despite receiving senatorial recognition, he ran into some unexpected opponents; among them was Publius Clodius Macron, proconsul of Africa and one of those who also rebelled against Nero. Galba had him assassinated, just as he did with Fonteyo Capitón, commander of Germania Inferior. Even Ninfidio Sabino was against him after the new emperor placed one of his Hispanic friends as second prefect, but he also ended up losing his life and Galba was able to focus on governing Rome.
However, managing him was clumsy. Already old and not very bright, he surrounded himself with bad advisers (Kovalyov describes them as "a bunch of useless" ) and between one and the other they wanted to solve the two main government problems with unpopular measures. To clean up finances, in need of urgent intervention, a strict austerity policy was applied that sowed discontent; to restore discipline in the army, it was decided to change the cadres of the Germanic legions with the same result. Both aspects fatally combined as he tried to show a position of strength, refusing to pay the Praetorians for his support and the Germanic legions the reward they demanded for defeating Vindex.
Faced with what they considered a stingy and ungrateful, the troops refused to renew their oath of allegiance and asked the Senate for another emperor, directing all eyes to General Aulus Vitellius. Galba, who was a widower and had no children - his two children had died - naively thought that everything would be solved with a successor and chose one of his younger but also more inexperienced advisers:Lucius Calpurnius Piso Licinianus, thirty-one years old. and belonging to one of the oldest families of the nobilitas Roman, retaliated by Nero. The adrogatio -adoption- took place in just ten days, in the Praetorian Guard camp.
That bet not only did not go well but it was counterproductive and meant the final sentence for the emperor, since the other great candidate to become heir was not satisfied with the decision and began to conspire. His name was Marco Salvio Otón and he was quite a character, perhaps to compensate for his ungainly physical appearance (bald, bowlegged and short, he tried to simulate it by grooming himself a lot, wearing a toupee, shaving and trying to have an impeccable appearance; «like a woman » , according to Suetonius). Otto, from a patrician family dating back to the Etruscans, had also suffered from Nero's repression, although not so much for political reasons as for sentimental ones, since his wife, the famous Poppaea, divorced him to become the emperor's mistress.
The thing is that Otho, who had helped Galba from his post as governor of Lusitania, did not get the prize he expected, so he began bribing Praetorians to get his support, even though he did not have as many resources as he did. other. On the morning of January 15, 69, just five days after Piso's official adoption, Otto turned up at the Praetorian camp, where amidst some confusion he was proclaimed Imperator . Immediately afterward, he led a detachment that went in search of Galba, who, aware of the events, was heading there to try to stop the coup, although another version says that Otón himself tricked him into going by assuring him that he had managed to restore the order.
The meeting took place in the Forum but it was not exactly a battle. Tacitus recounts that the passers-by fled before what was coming, taking refuge in the basilicas and temples, while the signifer from the cohort escorting the emperor he tore from the standard and threw the effigy of the emperor to the ground. It was the signal for desertion, with which Galba, who was accompanied by Pisón and some collaborators, remained defenseless in the square, at the height of Lake Curcio (a kind of sacred well where, according to mythology, the homonymous character immolated by Rome following the design of an oracle). In the midst of the chaos, he even fell from the sedan chair that was carrying him and dozens of men rushed the group ready to finish him off.
This is where Sempronio Denso appears, of whom hardly anything is known other than his charge and the heroic end he had. Densus was a centurion of the Praetorian Guard and had been assigned by Galba to escort Piso. When the others fled, he stayed at his post doing his duty and honoring other historical Romans who also knew how to rise to the difficult circumstances they had to live through, such as Horacio Cocles defending the Sublicio bridge alone to give time his soldiers to destroy it and prevent the Etruscan army from reaching Rome, or Mucius Scaevola, who voluntarily burned his hand in the flames of a brazier to show the Etruscan king Porsenna the determination of the Romans not to surrender.
The account of what happened varies a bit depending on the author who narrates it, so that we do not know the order of the deaths of Galba and Denso. Suetonius does not even mention the latter. Plutarch provides the fact that the centurion was single and had never received any special favor from Galba, guiding himself in those dramatic moments only by his oath of loyalty. He says that he first exhorted the assassins to lay down their arms and then, his words being useless, he met them sword in hand until his legs were wounded and he could no longer stand, whereupon they slew the emperor. Q>
Tacitus doesn't tell us anything about Denso's life either, after all a socially minor character in that episode. He himself says that there are several versions "according to the hatred or admiration that each one had for him" to the emperor, so that in one Galba he would have begged for mercy and time to collect the gold that he had promised the troops, while in another he would make a show of cold blood challenging his neck to his assassins. He also speculates with the names of several soldiers as possible perpetrators of his death, although the truth is that Galba's corpse was sewn with knives by almost everyone and was practically torn to pieces.
Then it was the turn of one of his faithful, the consul Tito Vinio, and finally Tacitus reviews the courageous performance of Sempronio Denso, who wielding a simple pugio (an auxiliary dagger used by legionnaires but whose use was also widespread outside the army) contained the attackers giving Piso time to take refuge in the Temple of Vesta. The hiding place was of no use to him because he was chased there by two soldiers named Sulpicio Floro and Estayo Murco, who dragged him out slitting his throat while his partners in crime exultantly displayed the emperor's head on a pike.
Finally, Cassius Dio is quite frugal and limits himself to saying, like Tacitus, that Galba was the first to fall and that only the centurion Sempronius Densus defended him until he could not continue and was killed trying to cover the ground with his body. of the emperor. Just like the bodyguards he mentioned at the beginning. Cassius concludes that he cites that man's name because he is worthy of being remembered.
The heads of the victims were paraded on spikes by the criminals in the midst of the general revelry but it seems that, despite being the main beneficiary, Otón did not welcome that orgy of blood with signs of joy; After all, Galba and Titus Vinius had been friends of his, so he only showed satisfaction at the end of Piso. Tacitus says that some one hundred and twenty people claimed a reward from him, claiming responsibility for the deaths without imagining that they would all be executed shortly.
Because Otto barely held power for three months before Aulus Vitellius, a mediocre military man but who had the support of the Germanic legions -which at that point did and undid as he pleased-, overthrew him after a quick campaign. Otto committed suicide and the new emperor got rid of all those who constituted a danger by expeditious methods, which included the dissolution of the Praetorian Guard reorganizing it with people he trusted. However, Vitellius was, according to Kovalyov, "a complete nullity and his career was due more than anything to the influences his father enjoyed during the reign of Claudius" , so he also lasted little on the throne:eight months later, in December, he was defeated by Vespasian and assassinated by his troops, who would become the fourth emperor in the same year.