The historians' history of the world in twenty-five volumes, volume 06

by Unknown

A Roman Slinger

With his accession, all the crimes and prodigalities of the government of a Caligula, a Claudius, and a Nero were repeated, although he was wanting neither in culture nor in better qualities. He had only attained to consideration by his vices, and won over the soldiers in Germany by his familiar bearing. A dull, slack, and withal cruel disposition, a greediness which amounted to voraciousness, and a prodigality in which he even surpassed Nero, were the soul of his existence and government. Only thinking of pleasure and idle repose, even on the march to Rome, he allowed his army to rob and plunder at will, and permitted all kinds of excesses and insubordination. In Rome, freedmen, comedians, and revellers were his most cherished companions, and he who knew how to prepare the most voluptuous feast, rose in his favour.

In order to obtain money for his prodigalities, like Caligula and Nero, he committed all sorts of inhuman cruelties. For example: he freed himself from debt by having his creditors killed, and when one of them, condemned to death, sought to obtain favour by making the emperor a legacy, but unfortunately gave him a co-heir, Vitellius had the latter as well as the former put out of the way, and took the wealth of both. His revelries and prodigalities surpassed all realisation.

By the use of emetics he was enabled to take daily from three to four principal meals. Once, for untold gold, he had marvellous dishes prepared from the tongues of the rarest birds and other costly delicacies, and at the celebration of his entry into Rome he took part in a banquet at his brother’s house in which no less than two thousand rare fish and seven thousand birds were served up. He gormandised so shamefully that, during the short time of his reign, he is said to have squandered no less than nine hundred million sesterces, and, as an historian of antiquity asserts, the Roman Empire would finally have become too poor to defray the expenses of the emperor’s table. Fortunately for the kingdom this did not come to pass; for Vitellius was overthrown by his troops eight months after his accession.

This second mutiny of the army within the course of a year started in the legions who had come from the Danube to help Otho against Vitellius. When on the way they heard of Otho’s death, they determined to choose a new emperor, and some of them, who shortly before had served under the valiant Titus Flavius Vespasian, directed the choice to their former general who was then commanding in Syria. Scarcely had the news reached the East, when first the governor of Egypt, then Mucianus [Roman governor of Syria and general of four legions,] and afterwards Vespasian himself, recognised this choice. One after another all the remaining armies declared for Vespasian. Valens and Cæcina, the principal instruments in the elevation of Vitellius, soon detached themselves from the latter, and only the soldiers of the Germanic army, to whom Vitellius owed the throne, remained true to their emperor. It was therefore no great effort to overthrow the indolent libertine. Before Vespasian had embarked his troops, his opponent was dethroned and deprived of his life.

The legions of the Danube under one of their generals, Antonius Primus, broke into Italy; at Cremona they beat the troops of Vitellius and then marched against the capital, which alone seemed resolved to defend the tyrant. Antonius Primus wished to spare the town. Vitellius himself was too cowardly to try to offer any powerful resistance, and as by chance a brother of Vespasian, Flavius Sabinus, was town prefect of Rome, it was easy to negotiate matters. The result was an agreement by which Vitellius agreed to abdicate in a very ignominious fashion. Only the soldiers of the emperor and all those who had taken part in his universal revels, would hear nothing of an abdication of Vitellius, and without further ceremony laid hands on Sabinus, to whom a great number of the senate, the knights, and the town-guard had already sworn allegiance, on behalf of his brother. Sabinus, with a small number of attendants, was obliged to take to flight, and retired to the Capitol. His adversaries stormed it, took Sabinus prisoner, killed his followers, and intentionally or by chance occasioned a fire, by which the temple of the Capitoline Jupiter, the most sacred building in Rome, was reduced to ashes, and some of the historical records preserved there were destroyed.

In vain did Vitellius, by earnest entreaty, try to restrain the soldiers from murdering Sabinus; he was killed in a terrible manner, whilst Domitian, one of Vespasian’s sons, who had just fled to the Capitol, to the misfortune of the empire escaped the wrath of the enemy. The rude soldiers of Vitellius conducted themselves on this occasion with the same savagery as the troops of Antonius Primus had shown a few weeks before, when after their victory they had burned down the town of Cremona and had ill treated its inhabitants in the most shocking manner. Vitellius was quite innocent of what took place in Rome, for he would gladly have submitted to any terms by which he might have saved his life. With this object, immediately after the murder of Sabinus, he sent ambassadors to Antonius Primus, and that his representations and requests might make the more impression, he sent the vestal virgins with them.

But Antonius Primus refused any further negotiations, defeated the populace and the soldiers of Vitellius in a bloody fight, which took place partly before the walls and partly in the streets of the town, and had the entire body of the conquered ruthlessly massacred. On this occasion the deep moral depravity of the Roman people showed itself in a revolting manner. The populace watched the fierce struggle between the two barbarian armies as coldly as though the usual gladiatorial displays had been taking place before them; they applauded first one side and then the other, fetched those who fled from their victorious enemy out of their hiding places, and gave them up to their adversaries to be killed.

No one was disturbed in his usual pleasures by the fight for the empire; the baths, the taverns, and other public resorts were filled with revellers and pleasure seekers, as at any other time, and, as the historian Tacitus affirms, Rome presented the hideous spectacle of a town whose inhabitants had abandoned themselves at once to all the horrors of civil war and all the vices of a decadent nation. Vitellius died as he had lived.[d] Seeing the city conquered, he was conveyed in a litter, by a private way at the back of the palace, to his wife’s house on Mount Aventine, with intent, if he could lie concealed during the day, to fly for refuge to his brother and the cohorts at Tarracina. Straightway, from his inherent fickleness, and the natural effects of fright, since, as he dreaded everything, whatever course he adopted was the least satisfactory, he returned to his palace, and found it empty and desolate; even his meanest slaves having made their escape, or shunning the presence of their master. The solitude and silence of the scene alarmed him; he opened the doors of the apartments, and was horror-struck to see all void and empty. Exhausted with this agonising state of doubt and perplexity, and concealing himself in a wretched hiding place, he was dragged forth by Placidus, the tribune of a cohort. With his hands tied behind him, and his garment torn, he was conducted, a revolting spectacle, through crowds insulting his distress, without a friend to shed a tear over his misfortunes. The unseemliness of his end banished all sympathy. Whether one of the Germanic soldiers who met him intended for him the stroke he made, and if he did, whether from rage or to rescue him the quicker from the mockery to which he was exposed; or whether he aimed at the tribune, is uncertain; he cut off the ear of the tribune, and was immediately despatched.[19]