Vitellius

“ Vitellius is aware that he has no chance, and has been consulting with our cousin in the Temple of Concord yonder, and they have nearly settled between them that Vespasian is to assume the purple without further opposition. Vitellius will retire to some country villa on a handsome annuity. That will prevent more bloodshed and confiscation, and all that sort of thing. It is always advisable to avoid unpleasantnesses if possible. There, child, there are quite a bevy of gods already at table. ”

“ Vitellius, by being a parasite of all the emperors from Tiberius to Nero inclusively, had risen to a high military rank, by which, with a spirit of enterprise, and large promises to the soldiery, it was not difficult to snatch the reins of government, while they were yet fluctuating in the hands of Otho. ”

“ By this let posterity judge of Otho. Vitellius is welcome to his brother, his wife, his children. I need neither revenge nor consolation. Others may have held the throne for a longer time, but no one can have left it with such fortitude. Shall I suffer so large a portion of the youth of Rome and so many noble armies to be again laid low and to be lost to the State? Let this thought go with me, that you were willing to die for me. But live, and let us no longer delay, lest I interfere with your safety, you with my firmness. To say too much about one's end is a mark of cowardice. ”

“ For Vitellius's men marched up to the walls, and upbraided Otho's upon the ramparts, calling them players, dancers, idle spectators of Pythian and Olympic games, but novices in the art of war, who never so much as looked on at a battle; mean souls, that triumphed in the beheading of Galba, an old man unarmed, but had no desire to look real enemies in the face. ”

“ It was said that Vitellius expressed a brutal pleasure at the spectacle. He called for bowls of wine—he circulated them freely among his suite and soldiers—he declared that "the corpse of an enemy smells always well, particularly that of a fellow-citizen." We will now leave him in Rome, where he was of course greeted by the shouts of the populace, the flattery of the upper classes, and innumerable applications for places and favours. Well had Tiberius said of his Roman subjects, that they were "born to be slaves." ”

“ A terrible battle was fought beneath its walls and through its streets, during which the beautiful capitol, the pride of the city, was laid in ashes. The troops of Vespasian were triumphant, and the opposing ranks were utterly crushed. Vitellius, as cowardly as he was infamous, hid in the cabin of a slave. He was dragged forth, and paraded through the streets, with his hands bound behind him, and with a rope round his neck. After enduring hours of ignominy, derision, and torture, he was beaten to death by the clubs of the soldiers. ”

“ Of the Roman Emperors, almost every one of whom perpetrated the most barbarous atrocities, Vitellius seems to have been the only one who cruelly exercised his power from the outset. Most of the other emperors, sprung up into fiends in the hot-bed of arbitrary power. If they had not been plied with its fiery stimulants, but had lived under the legal restraints of other men, instead of going to the grave under the curses of their generation, multitudes might have called them blessed. ”

“ I should believe that these came respectively from the flatterers and detractors of the emperor, were it not for a difference of opinion about the standing of the family at a considerably earlier date. We have a book of Quintus Elgoius addressed to Quintus Vitellius, quaestor of the Deified Augustus, in which it was written that the Vitellii were sprung from Faunus, king of the Aborigines, and Vitellia, who was worshipped as a goddess in many places ”

“ This delay saved not only Vespasian's party but Rome as well. Had he marched on the city while his men were fresh from their victory, with the flush of success added to their natural intrepidity, there would have been a tremendous struggle, which must have involved the city's destruction. Lucius Vitellius, too, for all his evil repute, was a man of action. Good men owe their power to their virtues; but he was one of that worst sort whose vices are their only virtue. ”

“ Truly it shows Rome's greatness and misfortune, that she endured Otho and Vitellius both in the same year, and suffered humiliation of every kind at the hands of men like Vinius and Fabius,444 Icelus and Asiaticus, until at last they gave way to Mucianus and Marcellus—a change of men but not of manners.
96The first news of rebellion which reached Vitellius came from Aponius Saturninus,445 who, before himself going over to Vespasian's side, wrote to announce the desertion of the Third legion. But a sudden crisis makes a man nervous: Aponius did not tell the whole story. ”

“ So the city was being pillaged, and the men were some fighting, some fleeing, some actually plundering and murdering by themselves in order that they might be taken for the invaders and so preserve their lives. Vitellius in dread put on a ragged, dirty, little tunic and concealed himself in an obscure alcove where dogs were kept, intending to run off during the night to Tarracina and join his brother. But the soldiers found him after a short search, for he could not long be sure of remaining hid, seeing that he had been emperor. ”

“ Otho, who had been the husband of Poppæa Sabina, was the next emperor; but his reign lasted less than four months, and his only praiseworthy act is the noble manner in which he died. Then came the brief and shameful reign of Vitellius. Rome needed only to come under the rule of a glutton to have exhibited by turn upon her throne a monstrous example of every form of vice to which human nature can become addicted. ”

“ Affairs were in this state at Jerusalem, and Vespasian having subdued almost every contiguous place, returned to Cæsarea to await the result of the civil commotions in the capital, when news was brought him that Vitellius had assumed the imperial purple at Rome. This intelligence excited great indignation among Vespasian's officers and soldiers, who assembled in large companies, and declared that they would never submit to be governed by the cruel and licentious Vitellius, and that they had as much right to elect an Emperor as the troops who were dwelling idly at Rome. ”

“ A freedman of the imperial court,367 Hilarus by name, had given evidence against him, alleging that, when Cluvius heard of the rival claims of Otho and Vitellius, he had endeavoured to set up an independent authority of his own in Spain, and to this end had issued passports with no emperor's name at the head.368 Certain phrases in his speeches were also construed as damaging to Vitellius and as a bid for his own popularity. However, Cluvius' influence carried the day, and Vitellius even had his own freedman punished. ”

“ But no, Vitellius had returned to the palace, the very stronghold of imperial majesty. From there he had launched a column of armed men, who had strewn with innocent dead the most crowded quarter of Rome, and even laid violent hands upon the Capitol. As for Sabinus himself, the messenger was to say, he was only a civilian, a mere member of the senate. While the issue was being decided between Vespasian and Vitellius by the engagement of legions, the capture of towns, the capitulation of cohorts; even when the provinces of Spain, of Germany, of Britain, had risen in revolt ”

“ Vitellius was fond of luxury and licentiousness and cared for nothing else human or divine. He had always been the kind of man that would spend his time in taverns and gaming houses, over dancers and charioteers. Incalculable were the sums he spent on such pursuits, and the consequence was that he had many creditors. Now, when he attained to so great authority, his wantonness only increased, and his expenditures went on most of the day and night alike. ”

“ Moreover many a gentleman would have found it hard to act thus, seeing so fair a treat spread out before his eyes.
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’Tis not only in our own day men have esteemed the beauty of fine legs and pretty feet (for ’tis one and the same thing) ; but in the time of the old Romans likewise we do read how Lucius Vitellius, father of the Emperor Vitellius, being very sore smit with love for Messalina and desiring to be in favour with her husband by her means, did one day beseech her to do him the honour of granting him a boon. ”

“ Vitellius has but a few cohorts, and they are alarmed by gloomy tidings from every quarter. The feelings of the people are easily swayed, and, if you put yourself at their head, there will soon be the same flatteries ready for Vespasian. Vitellius even in prosperity was unequal to his position, and he is proportionately unnerved by disaster. The merit of having finished the war will belong to him who may have possessed himself of the capital. It would well become Sabinus to keep the Empire for his brother, and Vespasian equally well, to count his other adherents inferior to Sabinus. ”

“ In the service of the four preceding emperors, Vitellius had imbibed the principal vices of them all: but what chiefly distinguished him was extreme voraciousness, which, though he usually pampered it with enormous luxury, could yet be gratified by the vilest and most offensive garbage. The pusillanimity discovered by this emperor at his death, forms a striking contrast to the heroic behaviour of Otho. ”

“ By letters and messages, however, he offered Vitellius to make him his colleague in the empire, and his son-in-law. But a war being now unavoidable, and the generals and troops sent forward by Vitellius, advancing, he had a proof of the attachment and fidelity of the pretorian guards, which had nearly proved fatal to the senatorian order. It had been judged proper that some arms should be given out of the stores, and conveyed to the fleet by the marine troops. While they were employed in fetching these from the camp in the night, some of the guards suspecting treachery, excited a tumult ”

“ Some say that he was slain by order of Vitellius, but they bear the same testimony to his loyalty and courage. (Latin)
55 Vitellius, who seemed like a man roused from slumber, ordered Julius Priscus and Alfenius Varus, with fourteen of the Prætorian cohorts and the entire force of cavalry, to occupy the Apennines. A legion of troops drafted from the fleet followed. So many thousand troops, comprising the picked men and horses of the army, had they been under the direction of a different general, would have been quite equal even to aggressive operations. ”

“ In fact, the troops of Vitellius lacked neither skill nor courage in the midst of peril. Opposed to them were soldiers without self-possession, and a spiritless and, so to speak, infatuated commander, who had not the use of his tongue or his ears, who would not be guided by other men's counsels, and could not carry out his own, who, hurried to and fro by the shouts of the enemy, forbade what he had just ordered, and ordered what he had just forbidden. ”

“ About the remnant of Vitellius' army they were in some doubt. Many held that they ought to be killed as being treacherous and insubordinate and stained with the blood of their generals. However, the idea of sparing them carried the day. To destroy all hope of pardon would only steel their obstinacy: it was much better to seduce them into alliance: only the generals need be killed ”

“ If you repent of your compact, it is not against me, whom you treacherously deceived, that you must draw the sword, nor is it against the son of Vespasian, who is yet of tender age. What would be gained by the slaughter of one old man and one stripling? You should go and meet the legions, and fight there for Empire; everything else will follow the issue of that struggle." To these representations the embarrassed Vitellius answered a few words in his own exculpation, throwing all the blame upon the soldiers, with whose excessive zeal his moderation was, he said, unable to cope. ”

“ In the mean time Vitellius, after he had deposed Pilate, came to Jerusalem in the time of the Passover, to visit that Province as well as others in the beginning of his office; and in the place of Caiaphas, then High Priest, created Jonathas the son of Ananus, or Annas as he is called in scripture. Afterwards, when Vitellius was returned to Antioch, he received letters from Tiberius, to make peace with Artabanus king of the Parthians. At the same time the Alans, by the sollicitation of Tiberius, invaded the kingdom of Artabanus ”

“ Then they removed the images of Vitellius from their standards and took an oath that they would be governed by Vespasian. But, after the meeting had broken up and they had retired to their tents, they changed their minds and suddenly gathering excitedly in force with great outcry they again saluted Vitellius as emperor and imprisoned Alienus for having betrayed them, and they paid no heed to his consular office. Such are the regular practices of civil wars. ”

“ Disaster produced disunion, the troops from the Upper army dissociating their cause from that of their comrades. Nevertheless the statues of Vitellius were again set up in the camp and in the neighbouring Belgian towns, and this at a time when Vitellius himself had fallen. Then the men of the 1st, the 4th, and the 18th legions, repenting of their conduct, followed Vocula, and again taking in his presence the oath of allegiance to Vespasian, were marched by him to the relief of Mogontiacum. ”