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1The ancestors of Otho came from an old and illustrious family in the town of Ferentium and were descended from the princes of Etruria. His grandfather Marcus Salvius Otho, whose father was a Roman knight but whose mother was of lowly origin and perhaps not even free-born, became a senator through the influence of Livia Augusta, in whose house he was reared; but did not advance beyond the grade of praetor.
2His father Lucius Otho was of a distinguished family on his mother’s side, with many powerful connections, and was so beloved by Tiberius and so like him in appearance, that he was believed by many to be the emperor’s son. In the regular offices at Rome, the proconsulate of Africa, and several special military commands he conducted himself with extreme severity. In Illyricum he even had the courage to punish some soldiers with death, because in the rebellion of Camillus, repenting of their defection, they had killed their officers on the ground that they were the ringleaders in the revolt against Claudius; and they were executed in his presence before his headquarters, although he knew that they had been promoted to higher positions by Claudius because of that very act. 3By this deed, while he increased his reputation, he lost favour at court; but he speedily regained it by detecting the treachery of a Roman knight, whose slaves betrayed their master’s design of killing the emperor. For in consequence of this, the senate conferred a very unusual honour on him by setting up his statue in the Palace; and Claudius also enrolled him among the patricians, and after praising him in the highest terms, added these words: “a man of greater loyalty than I can even pray for in my own children.” By Albia Terentia, a woman of an illustrious line, he had two sons, Lucius Titianus and a younger called Marcus, who had the same surname as himself; also a daughter, whom he betrothed to Drusus, son of Germanicus, almost before she was of marriageable age.
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