] [For all who were able were eager to entertain him.] It is said that after the elapse of a few days he spent a hundred myriads upon a dinner. [His birthday celebration lasted over two days and numbers of beasts and of men were slain.]
[The character of Vitellius, being such as I have described, did not serve to promote temperance on the part of the soldiers, but numerous instances of their wantonness and licentiousness were everywhere at hand.]
Vitellius ascended the Capitol and greeted his mother. She was a sensible woman, and when she first heard that her son had been given the name Germanicus, she said: "My child was Vitellius and not Germanicus."
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Vitellius, however, furnished many with material for amusement. They could not restrain their laughter when they beheld wearing a solemn face in the public processions a man whom they knew to have played the strumpet--or saw mounted on a royal steed and clad in a purple riding-habit him who wore, as they were well aware, the Blue costume and curried the race-horses--or viewed ascending the Capitol with so great a crowd of soldiers him whom previously no one could catch a glimpse of even in the Forum because of his throngs of creditors--or gazed at him receiving the adoration of all, whom once nobody liked very well even to kiss. Indeed, those who had lent him anything had laid hold of him when he started out for Germany and would scarcely release him after he had given security. Now, however, so far from laughing at him the same men mourned and hid themselves. But he sought them out, telling them he spared their lives as an equivalent of the debt he owed, and he demanded back his contracts.
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[Though his life was of this kind he was not entirely without good deeds. For example, he retained the coinage minted under Nero and Galba and Otho, evincing no displeasure at their images; and whatever gifts had been bestowed upon any persons he held to be valid and deprived no one of any such possession. He did not collect any sums still owing of former public contributions, and he confiscated no one's property. A very few of those who sided with Otho he put to death but did not withhold even the property of these from their relatives. Upon the kinsmen of those previously executed he bestowed all the funds that were found in the public treasury. He did not obstruct the execution of the wills of such as had fought against him and had fallen in the battles. Furthermore he forbade the senators and the knights to fight as gladiators or to appear in any spectacle in the orchestra. And for these measures he was commended.]
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