Servius Sulpicius Galba ( consul 144 BC ) Servius Sulpicius Galba was a consul of Rome in 144 BC . Macedonia . He served as tribune of the soldiers in the second legion in Macedonia , under Lucius Aemilius Paullus Macedonicus , to whom he was personally hostile . After the conquest of Perseus in 167 BC , when Aemilius had returned to Rome , Galba endeavoured to prevent a triumph being conferred upon the former ; he did not succeed , although his efforts created considerable sensation . Hispania . He was praetor in 151 BC , and received Hispania ( the Iberian Peninsula , comprising modern Spain and Portugal ) as his province , where a war was carried on against the Celtiberia ns . On his arrival there he hastened to the relief of some Roman subjects who were hard pressed by the Lusitania ns . Galba succeeded so far as to put the enemy to flight ; but as , with his exhausted and undisciplined army , he was incautious in their pursuit , the Lusitanians turned round , and a fierce contest ensued , in which 7000 Romans fell . Galba then collected the remnants of his army and his allies , and took up his winter - quarters at Conistorgis . Lusitania . In the spring of 150 BC , he again marched into Lusitania , and ravaged the country . The Lusitanians sent an embassy to him , declaring that they repented of having violated the treaty which they had concluded with Atilius , and promised henceforth to observe it faithfully . The mode in which Galba acted on that occasion is one of the most infamous and atrocious acts of treachery and cruelty that occur in history . He received the ambassadors kindly , and lamented that circumstances , especially the poverty of their country , should have induced them to revolt against the Romans . He promised them fertile lands if they would remain faithful allies of Rome . He induced them , for this purpose , to , leave their homes , and assemble in three hosts , with their women and children , in the three places which he fixed upon , land in which he himself would inform each host what territory they were to occupy . When they were assembled in the manner he had prescribed , he went to the first body , commanded them to surrender their arms , surrounded them with a ditch , and then sent his armed soldiers into the place , who forthwith massacred them all . In the same manner he treated the second and third hosts . Very few of the Lusitanians escaped from the bloody scene ; but among the survivors was Viriathus , destined one day to be the avenger of the wrong done to his countrymen . Appian states that Galba , although he was very wealthy , was extremely niggardly , and that he did not even scruple to lie or perjure himself , provided he could thereby gain pecuniary advantages . In the following year when he had returned to Rome , the tribune , Lucius Scribonius Libo , brought a charge against him for the outrage he had committed on the Lusitanians ; and Cato the Elder , then 85 years old , attacked him most unsparingly in the assembly of the people . Galba , although a man of great oratorical power himself , had nothing to say in his own justification ; but bribery , and the fact of his bringing his own children and the orphan child of a relative before the people , and imploring mercy , procured his acquittal . Consul . Notwithstanding this occurrence , he was afterwards made consul for the year 144 BC , with Lucius Aurelius Cotta . The two consuls disputed in the senate as to which of them was to undertake the command against Viriathus in Hispania . Great dissension prevailed also in the senate , but it was resolved in the end , that neither should be sent to Hispania , and that Quintus Fabius Maximus Aemilianus , the consul of the year before , should continue to command the army in Hispania .