Translated by Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb
Book III
September December, A.D. 69
Under happier auspices and in a more loyal spirit the Flavianist
leaders were discussing the plans of the campaign. They had
assembled at Petovio, the winter quarters of the 13th legion.
There they debated, whether they should blockade the passes of
the Pannonian Alps till the whole strength of their party should
be gathered in their rear, or whether it would be the more
vigorous policy to close with the enemy, and to contend for the
possession of Italy. Those who thought it advisable to wait for
reinforcements, and to protract the campaign, dwelt on the
strength and reputation of the German legions. "Vitellius," they
said, "has now joined them with the flower of the British army.
Our numbers are not even equal to those of the legions whom they
lately defeated; and the conquered, let them talk as fiercely as
they will, lose something of their courage. But, if we occupy
meanwhile the passes of the Alps, Mucianus will come up with the
forces of the East. Vespasian has in addition the command of the
sea, his fleets, and provinces loyal to his cause, in which he
may collect the vast materials for what may be called another
war. A salutary delay will bring us new forces, while we shall
lose nothing of what we have."
In answer to this, Antonius Primus, who was the most energetic
promoter of the war, declared that prompt action would be
advantageous to themselves, and fatal to Vitellius. "Supineness,"
he said, "rather than confidence has grown upon the conquerors.
They are not even kept under arms or within camps. In every town
of Italy, sunk in sloth, formidable only to their entertainers,
they have drunk of unaccustomed pleasures with an eagerness equal
to the rudeness of their former life. They have been emasculated
by the circus, the theatre, and the allurements of the capital,
or they are worn out with sickness. Yet even to these men, if you
give them time, their old vigour will return with the preparation
for war. Germany, whence their strength is drawn, is faraway;
Britain is separated only by a strait; the provinces of Gaul and
Spain are near; on either side they can find troops, horses,
tribute; they have Italy itself, and the resources of the
capital, and, should they choose themselves to take the
offensive, they have two fleets, and the Illyrian sea open to
them. What good then will our mountain passes do us? What will be
the use of having protracted the war into another summer? Where
are we to find in the meanwhile money and supplies? Why not
rather avail ourselves of the fact that the legions of Pannonia,
which were cheated rather than vanquished, are hastening to rise
again for vengeance, and that the armies of Moesia have brought
us their unimpaired strength? If you reckon the number of
soldiers, rather than that of legions, we have greater strength,
and no vices, for our very humiliation has been most helpful to
our discipline. As for the cavalry, they were not vanquished even
on that day; though the fortune of war was against them, they
penetrated the Vitellianist lines. Two squadrons of Moesian and
Pannonian cavalry then broke through the enemy; now the united
standards of sixteen squadrons will bury and overwhelm with the
crash and din and storm of their onset these horses and horsemen
that have forgotten how to fight. Unless any one hinders me, I
who suggest will execute the plan. You, whose fortune never
suffered a reverse, may keep back the legions; the light cohorts
will be enough for me. Before long you will hear that Italy has
been opened, and the power of Vitellius shaken. You will be
delighted to follow, and to tread in the footsteps of victory."
With flashing eyes, and in the fierce tones that might be most
widely heard (for the centurions and some of the common soldiers
had intruded themselves into the deliberations), he poured out
such a torrent of these and similar words, that he carried away
even the cautious and prudent, while the general voice of the
multitude extolled him as the one man, the one general in the
army, and spurned the inaction of the others. He had raised this
reputation for himself at the very first assembly, when, after
Vespasian's letters had been read, he had not, like many, used
ambiguous language, on which he might put this or that
construction as might serve his purpose. It was seen that he
openly committed himself to the cause, and he had therefore
greater weight with the soldiers, as being associated with them
in what was either their crime or their glory.
Next to Primus in influence was Cornelius Fuscus, the procurator.
He also had been accustomed to inveigh mercilessly against
Vitellius, and had thus left himself no hope in the event of
defeat. T. Ampius Flavianus, disposed to caution by natural
temperament and advanced years, excited in the soldiers a
suspicion that he still remembered his relationship to Vitellius;
and as he had fled when the movement in the legions began, and
had then voluntarily returned, it was believed that he had sought
an opportunity for treachery. Flavianus indeed had left Pannonia,
and had entered Italy, and was out of the way of danger, when his
desire for revolution urged him to resume the title of Legate,
and to take part in the civil strife. Cornelius Fuscus had
advised him to this course, not that he needed the talents of
Flavianus, but wishing that a consular name might clothe with its
high prestige the very first movements of the party.
Still, that the passage into Italy might be safe and
advantageous, directions were sent to Aponius Saturninus to
hasten up with the armies of Moesia. That the provinces might not
be exposed without defence to the barbarian tribes, the princes
of the Sarmatae Iazyges, who had in their hands the government of
that nation, were enrolled in the army. These chiefs also offered
the service of their people, and its force of cavalry, their only
effective troops; but the offer was declined, lest in the midst
of civil strife they should attempt some hostile enterprise, or,
influenced by higher offers from other quarters, should cast off
all sense of right and duty. Sido and Italicus, kings of the
Suevi, were brought over to the cause. Their loyalty to the Roman
people was of long standing, and their nation was more faithful
than the other to any trust reposed in them. On the flank of the
army were posted some auxiliaries, for Rhaetia was hostile,
Portius Septimius, the procurator, remaining incorruptibly
faithful to Vitellius. Accordingly, Sextilius Felix with Aurius'
Horse, eight cohorts, and the native levies of Noricum, was sent
to occupy the bank of the river Aenus, which flows between
Rhaetia and Noricum. Neither hazarded an engagement, and the fate
of the two parties was decided elsewhere.
Antonius, as he hurried with the veteran soldiers of the cohorts
and part of the cavalry to invade Italy, was accompanied by
Arrius Varus, an energetic soldier. Service under Corbulo, and
successes in Armenia, had gained for him this reputation; yet it
was generally said, that in secret conversations with Nero he had
calumniated Corbulo's high qualities. The favour thus infamously
acquired made him a centurion of the first rank, yet the
ill gotten prosperity of the moment afterwards turned to his
destruction. Primus and Varus, having occupied Aquileia, were
joyfully welcomed in the neighbourhood, and in the towns of
Opitergium and Altinum. At Altinum a force was left to oppose the
Ravenna fleet, the defection of which from Vitellius was not yet
known. They next attached to their party Patavium and Ateste.
There they learnt that three cohorts, belonging to Vitellius, and
the Sebonian Horse had taken up a position at the Forum Alieni,
where they had thrown a bridge across the river. It was
determined to seize the opportunity of attacking this force,
unprepared as it was; for this fact had likewise been
communicated. Coming upon them at dawn, they killed many before
they could arm. Orders had been given to slay but few, and to
constrain the rest by fear to transfer their allegiance. Some
indeed at once surrendered, but the greater part broke down the
bridge, and thus cut off the advance of the pursuing enemy.
When this success became known, two legions, the seventh
(Galba's) and the eighteenth (the Gemina), finding the campaign
opening in favour of the Flavianists, repaired with alacrity to
Patavium under the command of Vedius Aquila the legate. A few
days were there taken for rest, and Minucius Justus, prefect of
the camp in the 7th legion, who ruled with more strictness than a
civil war will permit, was withdrawn from the exasperated
soldiery, and sent to Vespasian. An act that had been long
desired was taken by a flattering construction for more than it
was worth, when Antonius gave orders that the statues of Galba,
which had been thrown down during the troubles of the times,
should be restored in all the towns. It would, he supposed,
reflect honour on the cause, if it were thought that they had
been friendly to Galba's rule, and that his party was again
rising into strength.
The next question was, what place should be selected as the seat
of war. Verona seemed the most eligible, surrounded as it was
with open plains, suitable for the action of cavalry, in which
they were very strong. At the same time it was thought that in
wresting from Vitellius a colony so rich in resources there would
be both profit and glory. They secured Vicetia by simply passing
through it. Though in itself a small gain, for the town is but of
moderate strength, it was considered an important advantage when
they reflected that in this town Caecina was born, and that the
general of the enemy had lost his native place. The people of
Verona were a valuable aid; they served the cause by the example
of their zeal and by their wealth, and the army thus occupied a
position between Rhaetia and the Julian Alps. It was to cut off
all passage at this point from the armies of Germany that they
had barred this route. All this was done either without the
knowledge, or against the commands of Vespasian. He gave orders
that the army should halt at Aquileia and there await Mucianus;
and these orders he supported by the argument, that as Aegypt,
which commanded the corn supplies, and the revenues of the
wealthiest provinces were in his hands, the army of Vitellius
would be compelled to capitulate from the want of pay and
provisions. Mucianus in frequent letters advised the same policy;
a victory that should cost neither blood nor tears, and other
objects of the kind, were his pretexts; but in truth he was
greedy of glory, and anxious to keep the whole credit of the war
to himself. Owing, however, to the vast distances, the advice
came only after the matter was decided.
Then Antonius by a sudden movement fell upon the outposts of the
enemy, and made trial of their courage in a slight skirmish, the
combatants separating on equal terms. Soon afterwards, Caecina
strongly fortified a camp between Hostilia, a village belonging
to Verona, and the marshes of the river Tartarus, where his
position was secure, as his rear was covered by the river, and
his flank by intervening marshes. Had he only been loyal, those
two legions, which had not been joined by the army of Moesia,
might have been crushed by the united strength of the
Vitellianists, or driven back and compelled to evacuate Italy in
a disgraceful retreat. Caecina, however, by various delays
betrayed to the enemy the early opportunities of the campaign,
assailing by letters those whom it was easy to drive out by force
of arms, until by his envoys he settled the conditions of his
treachery. In this interval Aponius Saturninus came up with the
7th legion (Claudius'). This legion was commanded by the tribune
Vipstanus Messalla, a man of illustrious family, himself highly
distinguished, the only man who had brought into that conflict an
honest purpose. To this army, which was far from equalling the
forces of Vitellius (it in fact consisted of three legions),
Caecina despatched a letter reproaching them with rashness in
again drawing the sword in a vanquished cause. At the same time
he extolled the valour of the German army; of Vitellius he made
but some slight and common place mention without any abuse of
Vespasian. Certainly he said nothing which could either seduce or
terrify the enemy. The leaders of the Flavianist party, omitting
all apology for their former fortune, at once took up a tone of
high praise of Vespasian, of confidence in their cause, of
security as to their army, and of hostility to Vitellius, while
hopes were held out to the tribunes and centurions of retaining
the privileges which Vitellius had granted them, and Caecina was
himself encouraged in no ambiguous terms to change sides. These
letters read to the assembled army increased their confidence;
for Caecina had written in a humble strain, as if he feared to
offend Vespasian, while their own generals had used contemptuous
language, meant, it would seem, to insult Vitellius.
On the subsequent arrival of two legions, the third commanded by
Dillius Aponianus, the eighth by Numisius Lupus, it was resolved
to make a demonstration of their strength, and to surround Verona
with military lines. It so happened that Galba's legion had had
their work allotted to them on that side the lines which faced
the enemy, and that some of the allied cavalry appearing in the
distance were taken for the enemy, and excited a groundless
panic. They flew to arms, and as the rage of the soldiers at the
supposed treachery fell upon T. Ampius Flavianus, not from any
proof of his guilt, but because he had been long unpopular, they
clamoured for his death in a very whirlwind of passion,
vociferating that he was the kinsman of Vitellius, that he had
betrayed Otho, that he had embezzled the donative. He could get
no opportunity of defending himself, even though he stretched out
his hands in entreaty, repeatedly prostrating himself on the
ground, his garments torn, his breast and features convulsed with
sobs. This very conduct provoked afresh these furious men, for
fear so excessive seemed to argue a consciousness of guilt.
Aponius was clamoured down by the shouts of the soldiers, when he
attempted to address them; every one else was repulsed with noisy
cries. To Antonius alone the soldiers' ears were open; for he had
eloquence, the art of soothing an angry crowd, and personal
influence. As the mutiny grew fiercer, and the soldiers went on
from abuse and taunts to use their hands and their weapons, he
ordered that Flavianus should be put in irons. The soldiers saw
what a mockery it was, and pushing aside those who were guarding
the tribunal, were about to commit the most outrageous violence.
Antonius threw himself in the way with his sword drawn,
protesting that he would die either by the soldiers' hands or by
his own; whenever he saw any one who was known to him, or who was
distinguished by any military decoration, he summoned him by name
to his assistance. Then he turned to the standards, and prayed to
the gods of war, that they would inspire the armies of the enemy,
rather than his own, with such madness and such strife. So the
mutiny began to abate, and at the close of the day the men
dispersed to their tents. The same night Flavianus set out, and
being met by letters from Vespasian, was relieved from his
perilous position.
The legions had caught the infection of mutiny, and next assailed
Aponius Saturnius, legate of the army of Moesia, this time the
more furiously because their rage broke out, not as before, when
they were wearied with labour and military toils, but at mid day.
Some letters had been published, which Saturninus was believed to
have written to Vitellius. If once they had emulated each other
in valour and obedience, so now there was a rivalry in
insubordination and insolence, till they clamoured as violently
for the execution of Aponius as they had for that of Flavianus.
The legions of Moesia recalled how they had aided the vengeance
of the Pannonian army, while the soldiers of Pannonia, as if they
were absolved by the mutiny of others, took a delight in
repeating their fault. They hastened to the gardens in which
Saturninus was passing his time, and it was not the efforts of
Primus Antonius, Aponianus, and Messalla, though they exerted
themselves to the uttermost, that saved him, so much as the
obscurity of the hiding place in which he concealed himself, for
he was hidden in the furnace of some baths that happened to be
out of use. In a short time he gave up his lictors, and retired
to Patavium. After the departure of the two men of consular rank,
all power and authority over the two armies centred in Antonius
alone, his colleagues giving way to him, and the soldiers being
strongly biased in his favour. There were those who believed that
both these mutinies were set on foot by the intrigues of
Antonius, in order that he might engross all the prizes of the
war.
Nor indeed was there less restlessness among the partisans of
Vitellius, who were distracted by yet more fatal dissensions,
springing, not from the suspicions of the common men, but from
the treachery of the generals. Lucilius Bassus, prefect of the
Ravenna fleet, finding that the troops wavered in purpose, from
the fact that many were natives of Dalmatia and Pannonia,
provinces held for Vespasian, had attached them to the Flavianist
party. The night time was chosen for accomplishing the treason,
because then, unknown to all the rest, the ringleaders alone
might assemble at head quarters. Bassus, moved by shame, or
perhaps by fear, awaited the issue in his house. The captains of
the triremes rushed with a great outcry on the images of
Vitellius; a few, who attempted to resist, were cut down; the
great majority, with the usual love of change, were ready to join
Vespasian. Then Bassus came forward and openly sanctioned the
movement. The fleet appointed Cornelius Fuscus to be prefect, and
he hastened to join them. Lucilius was put under honourable
arrest, and conveyed as far as Adria by the Liburnian ships;
there he was thrown into prison by Vivennius Rufinus, prefect of
a squadron of cavalry, which was there in garrison. His chains,
however, were immediately struck off on the interference of
Hormus, one of the Emperor's freedmen, for he too ranked among
the generals.
On the revolt of the fleet becoming known, Caecina called
together to head quarters, which he purposely selected as being
the most retired part of the camp, the chief centurions and some
few soldiers, while the rest were dispersed on various military
duties. Then he extolled the valour of Vespasian, and the
strength of his party; he told them that the fleet had changed
sides, that they were straitened for supplies, that Gaul and
Spain were against them, that in the capital there was nothing on
which to rely, thus making the worst of everything that concerned
Vitellius. Then, the conspirators present setting the example,
and the rest being paralysed by the strangeness of the
proceeding, he made them swear allegiance to Vespasian. At the
same time the images of Vitellius were torn down, and persons
were despatched to convey the intelligence to Antonius. But when
this treason became noised abroad throughout the camp, when the
soldiers, hurrying back to head quarters, saw the name of
Vespasian written on the colours, and the images of Vitellius
thrown upon the ground, first there was a gloomy silence, then
all their rage burst out at once. "What," they cried, "has the
glory of the army of Germany fallen so low, that without a
battle, even without a wound, they should yield up hands ready
bound and arms resigned to surrender? What legions indeed are
these against us? Only the conquered. The first and the twelfth,
the sole strength of the Othonianist army, are not there, and
even them we routed and crushed on these very plains, only that
so many thousands of armed men, like a herd of slaves for sale,
might be given as a present to the exile Antonius. Thus,
forsooth, the adhesion of one fleet would be worth eight legions.
So it pleases Bassus and Caecina, after robbing the Emperor of
palaces, gardens, and money, to rob the soldiers of their
Emperor. But we, who have seen nothing of toil and bloodshed, we,
who must be contemptible even to the Flavianists, what shall we
answer to those who shall ask us of our victories and our
defeats?"
Joining one and all in these cries, by which each expressed his
own vexation, they proceeded, following the lead of the fifth
legion, to replace the images of Vitellius, and to put Caecina in
irons. They elected to the command Fabius Fabullus, legate of the
fifth legion, and Cassius Longus, prefect of the camp; they
massacred the soldiers from three Liburnian ships, who happened
to fall in their way, but who were perfectly ignorant and
innocent of these proceedings; they then abandoned the camp, and,
after breaking down the bridge, fell back on Hostilia, and thence
on Cremona, in order to effect a junction with the two legions,
the 1st Italica and the 21st Rapax, which, with a portion of the
cavalry, Caecina had sent on to occupy Cremona.
On this becoming known to Antonius, he determined to attack the
hostile armies, while they were still distracted in feeling and
divided in strength, before the generals could recover their
authority, and the soldiers their subordination along with that
confidence which would spring from the junction of the legions.
He concluded indeed that Fabius Valens had left the capital, and
would hasten his march, on hearing of the treason of Caecina; and
Fabius was loyal to Vitellius, and not without some military
skill. At the same time he dreaded the approach of a vast body of
Germans by way of Rhaetia. Vitellius had also summoned
reinforcements from Britain, Gaul, and Spain, whose arms would
have wasted like a wide spread pestilence, had not Antonius,
fearful of this very danger, hurried on an engagement, and thus
secured his victory. He reached Bedriacum with his whole army in
two days' march from Verona. The next day, keeping the legions to
fortify the position, he sent the auxiliary infantry into the
territories of Cremona, ostensibly to collect supplies, really to
imbue the soldiery with a taste for the spoils of civil war. He
himself advanced with 4000 cavalry as far as the 8th milestone
from Bedriacum, in order that they might plunder with greater
freedom. The scouts, as usual, took a wider range.
It was almost eleven o'clock, when a horseman arrived at full
speed with the news, that the enemy were approaching, that a
small body was moving in front, but that the stir and noise could
be heard far and wide. While Antonius was deliberating as to what
was to be done, Arrius Varus, eager to do his best, charged with
the bravest of the cavalry, and drove back the Vitellianists,
inflicting upon them some slight loss; as more came up, the
fortune of the day changed, and those who had been most eager in
the pursuit found themselves last in the flight. This rash act
did not originate with Antonius; he anticipated in fact what
actually happened. He now urged his soldiers to enter on the
battle with a good heart; he then drew off the squadrons of his
cavalry to the two flanks, leaving in the midst an open space in
which to receive Varus and his troopers; the legions were ordered
to arm themselves, signals were made over the country that every
man should leave plundering, and join the battle at the nearest
point. Meanwhile the terror stricken Varus plunged into the
disordered ranks of his friends, and brought a panic with him.
The fresh troops were driven back along with the wounded
fugitives, confused by their own alarm and by the difficulties of
the road.
In the midst of this panic Antonius omitted nothing that a
self possessed commander or a most intrepid soldier could do. He
threw himself before the terrified fugitives, he held back those
who were giving way, and wherever the struggle was hardest,
wherever there was a gleam of hope, there he was with his ready
skill, his bold hand, his encouraging voice, easily recognized by
the enemy, and a conspicuous object to his own men. At last he
was carried to such a pitch of excitement, that he transfixed
with a lance a flying standard bearer, and then, seizing the
standard, turned it towards the enemy. Touched by the reproach, a
few troopers, not more than a hundred in number, made a stand.
The locality favoured them, for the road was at that point
particularly narrow, while the bridge over the stream which
crossed it had been broken down, and the stream itself, with its
varying channel and its precipitous banks, checked their flight.
It was this necessity, or a happy chance, that restored the
fallen fortunes of the party. Forming themselves into strong and
close ranks, they received the attack of the Vitellianists, who
were now imprudently scattered. These were at once overthrown.
Antonius pursued those that fled, and crushed those that
encountered him. Then came the rest of his troops, who, as they
were severally disposed, plundered, made prisoners, or seized on
weapons and horses. Roused by the shouts of triumph, those who
had lately been scattered in flight over the fields hastened to
share in the victory.
At the fourth milestone from Cremona glittered the standards of
two legions, the Italica and the Rapax, which had been advanced
as far as that point during the success achieved by the first
movement of their cavalry. But when fortune changed, they would
not open their ranks, nor receive the fugitives, nor advance and
themselves attack an enemy now exhausted by so protracted a
pursuit and conflict. Vanquished by accident, these men had never
in their success valued their general as much as they now in
disaster felt his absence. The victorious cavalry charged the
wavering line; the tribune Vipstanus Messalla followed with the
auxiliary troops from Moesia, whom, though hurriedly brought up,
long service had made as good soldiers as the legionaries. The
horse and foot, thus mixed together, broke through the line of
the legions. The near neighbourhood of the fortifications of
Cremona, while it gave more hope of escape, diminished the vigour
of their resistance.
Antonius did not press forward, for he thought of the fatigue and
the wounds with which a battle so hard fought, notwithstanding
its successful termination, must have disabled his cavalry and
their horses. As the shadows of evening deepened the whole
strength of the Flavianist army came up. They advanced amid heaps
of dead and the traces of recent slaughter, and, as if the war
was over, demanded that they should advance to Cremona, and
receive the capitulation of the vanquished party, or take the
place by storm. This was the motive alleged, and it sounded well,
but what every one said to himself was this: "The colony,
situated as it is on level ground, may be taken by assault. If we
attack under cover of darkness, we shall be at least as bold, and
shall enjoy more licence in plunder. If we wait for the light, we
shall be met with entreaties for peace, and in return for our
toil and our wounds shall receive only the empty satisfaction of
clemency and praise, but the wealth of Cremona will go into the
purses of the legates and the prefects. The soldiers have the
plunder of a city that is stormed, the generals of one which
capitulates." The centurions and tribunes were spurned away; that
no man's voice might be heard, the troops clashed their weapons
together, ready to break through all discipline, unless they were
led as they wished.
Antonius then made his way into the companies. When his presence
and personal authority had restored silence, he declared, "I
would not snatch their glory or their reward from those who have
deserved them so well. Yet there is a division of duties between
the army and its generals. Eagerness for battle becomes the
soldiers, but generals serve the cause by forethought, by
counsel, by delay oftener than by temerity. As I promoted your
victory to the utmost of my power by my sword and by my personal
exertions, so now I must help you by prudence and by counsel, the
qualities which belong peculiarly to a general. What you will
have to encounter is indeed perfectly plain. There will be the
darkness, the strange localities of the town, the enemy inside
the walls, and all possible facilities for ambuscades. Even if
the gates were wide open, we ought not to enter the place, except
we had first reconnoitred it, and in the day time. Shall we set
about storming the town when we have no means seeing where the
ground is level, what is the height of the walls, whether the
city is to be assailed by our artillery and javelins, or by
siege works and covered approaches?" He then turned to individual
soldiers, asking them whether they had brought with them their
axes and spades and whatever else is used when towns are to be
stormed. On their admitting that they had not done so, "Can any
hands," he answered, "break through and undermine walls with
swords and lances? And if it should be found necessary to throw
up an embankment and to shelter ourselves under mantlets and
hurdles, shall we stand baffled like a thoughtless mob,
marvelling at the height of the towers and at the enemy's
defences? Shall we not rather, by delaying one night, till our
artillery and engines come up, take with us a strength that must
prevail?" At the same time he sent the sutlers and camp followers
with the freshest of the cavalry to Bedriacum to fetch supplies
and whatever else they needed.
The soldiers, however, were impatient, and a mutiny had almost
broken out, when some cavalry, who had advanced to the very walls
of Cremona, seized some stragglers from the town, from whose
information it was ascertained, that the six legions of Vitellius
and the entire army which had been quartered at Hostilia had on
that very day marched a distance of thirty miles, and having
heard of the defeat of their comrades, were preparing for battle,
and would soon be coming up. This alarm opened the ears that had
before been deaf to their general's advice. The 13th legion was
ordered to take up its position on the raised causeway of the Via
Postumia, supported on the left by the 7th (Galba's) which was
posted in the plain, next came the 7th (Claudius'), defended in
front by a field ditch, such being the character of the ground.
On the right was the 8th legion, drawn up in an open space, and
then the 3rd, whose ranks were divided by some thick brushwood.
Such was the arrangement of the eagles and the standards. The
soldiers were mingled in the darkness as accident had determined.
The Praetorian colours were close to the 3rd legion; the
auxiliary infantry were stationed on the wings; the cavalry
covered the flanks and the rear. Sido and Italicus, the Suevian
chieftains, with a picked body of their countrymen, manoeuvred in
the van.
It would have been the best policy for the army of Vitellius to
rest at Cremona, and, with strength recruited by food and repose,
to attack and crush the next day an enemy exhausted by cold and
hunger; but now, wanting a leader, and having no settled plan,
they came into collision about nine o'clock at night with the
Flavianist troops, who stood ready, and in order of battle.
Respecting the disposition of the Vitellianist army, disordered
as it was by its fury and by the darkness, I would not venture to
speak positively. Some, however, have related, that on the right
wing was the 4th legion (the Macedonian); that the 5th and 15th,
with the veterans of three British legions (the 9th, 2nd, and
20th), formed the centre, while the left wing was made up of the
1st, the 16th, and the 22nd. Men of the legions Rapax and Italica
were mingled with all the companies. The cavalry and the
auxiliaries chose their position themselves. Throughout the night
the battle raged in many forms, indecisive and fierce,
destructive, first to one side, then to the other. Courage,
strength, even the eye with its keenest sight, were of no avail.
Both armies fought with the same weapons; the watch word,
continually asked, became known; the colours were confused
together, as parties of combatants snatched them from the enemy,
and hurried them in this or that direction. The 7th legion,
recently levied by Galba, was the hardest pressed. Six centurions
of the first rank were killed, and some of the standards taken;
but the eagle was saved by Atilius Verus, the centurion of the
first company, who, after making a great slaughter among the
enemy, at last fell.
The line was supported, as it began to waver, by Antonius, who
brought up the Praetorians. They took up the conflict, repulsed
the enemy, and were then themselves repulsed. The troops of
Vitellius had collected their artillery on the raised causeway,
where there was a free and open space for the discharge of the
missiles, which at first had been scattered at random, and had
struck against the trees without injury to the enemy. An engine
of remarkable size, belonging to the 15th legion, was crushing
the hostile ranks with huge stones, and would have spread
destruction far and wide, had not two soldiers ventured on a deed
of surpassing bravery. Disguising themselves with shields
snatched from the midst of the carnage, they cut the ropes and
springs of the engine. They were instantly slain, and their names
have consequently been lost; but the fact is undoubted. Fortune
favoured neither side, till at a late hour of the night the moon
rose and showed, but showed deceptively, both armies. The light,
however, shining from behind, favoured the Flavianists. With them
a lengthened shadow fell from men and horses, and the enemy's
missiles, incorrectly aimed at what seemed the substance, fell
short, while the Vitellianists, who had the light shining on
their faces, were unconsciously exposed to an enemy who were, so
to speak, concealed while they aimed.
As soon as Antonius could recognize his men and be recognized by
them, he sought to kindle their courage, striving to shame some
with his reproaches, stirring many with praise and encouragement,
and all with hopes and promises. "Why," he demanded of the
legions of Pannonia, "have you again taken up arms? Yonder is the
field where you may wipe out the stain of past disgrace, and
redeem your honour." Then turning to the troops of Moesia, he
appealed to them as the authors and originators of the war.
"Idly," he said "have you challenged the Vitellianists with
threatening words, if you cannot abide their attack or even their
looks." So he spoke to each as he approached them. The third
legion he addressed at greater length, reminding them of old and
recent achievements, how under Marcus Antonius they had defeated
the Parthians, under Corbulo the Armenians, and had lately
discomfited the Sarmatians. Then angrily turning to the
Praetorians, "Clowns," said he, "unless you are victorious, what
other general, what other camp will receive you? There are your
colours and your arms; defeat is death, for disgrace you have
exhausted." A shout was raised on all sides, and the soldiers of
the third legion saluted, as is the custom in Syria, the rising
sun.
A vague rumour thus arose, or was intentionally suggested by the
general, that Mucianus had arrived, and that the two armies had
exchanged salutations. The men then charged as confidently as if
they had been strengthened by fresh reinforcements, while the
enemy's array was now less compact; for, as there was no one to
command, it was now contracted, now extended, as the courage or
fear of individual soldiers might prompt. Antonius, seeing that
they gave way, charged them with a heavy column; the loose ranks
were at once broken, and, entangled as they were among their
wagons and artillery, could not be re formed. The conquerors, in
the eagerness of pursuit, dispersed themselves over the entire
line of road. The slaughter that followed was made particularly
memorable through the murder of a father by his son. I will
record the incident with the names, on the authority of Vipstanus
Messalla. Julius Mansuetus, a Spaniard, enlisting in the legion
Rapax, had left at home a son of tender age. The lad grew up to
manhood, and was enrolled by Galba in the 7th legion. Now
chancing to meet his father, he brought him to the ground with a
wound, and, as he rifled his dying foe, recognized him, and was
himself recognized. Clasping the expiring man in his arms, in
piteous accents he implored the spirit of his father to be
propitious to him, and not to turn from him with loathing as from
a parricide. "This guilt," he said, "is shared by all; how small
a part of a civil war is a single soldier!" With these words he
raised the body, opened a grave, and discharged the last duties
for his father. This was noticed by those who were on the spot,
then by many others; astonishment and indignation ran through the
whole army, and they cursed this most horrible war. Yet as
eagerly as ever they stripped the bodies of slaughtered kinsfolk,
connexions, and brothers. They talk of an impious act having been
done, and they do it themselves.
When they reached Cremona a fresh work of vast difficulty
presented itself. During the war with Otho the legions of Germany
had formed their camp round the walls of the city, round this
camp had drawn an entrenchment, and had again strengthened these
defences. At this sight the victorious army hesitated, while the
generals doubted what orders they should give. To attempt an
assault with troops exhausted by the toil of a day and a night
would be difficult, and with no proper reserves might be
perilous. Should they return to Bedriacum, the fatigue of so long
a march would be insupportable, and their victory would result in
nothing. To entrench a camp with the enemy so close at hand would
be dangerous, as by a sudden sortie they might cause confusion
among them while dispersed and busied with the work. Above all,
they were afraid of their soldiers, who were more patient of
danger than delay. Cautious measures they disliked; their
rashness inspired them with hope, and eagerness for plunder
outweighed all the horrors of carnage, wounds, and bloodshed.
Antonius himself was this way inclined, and he ordered the
entrenched camp to be invested. At first they fought from a
distance with arrows and stones, the Flavianists suffering most,
as the enemy's missiles were aimed at them from a superior
height. Antonius then assigned to each legion the attack on some
portion of the entrenchments, and on one particular gate, seeking
by this division of labour to distinguish the cowardly from the
brave, and to stimulate his men by an honourable rivalry. The 3rd
and 7th legions took up a position close to the road from
Bedriacum; more to the right of the entrenchments were stationed
the 8th and the 7th (Claudius'). The 13th were carried by the
impetuosity of their attack as far as the gate looking towards
Brixia. There ensued a little delay, while from the neighbouring
fields some were collecting spades and pickaxes, others hooks and
ladders. Then raising their shields over their heads, they
advanced to the rampart in a dense "testudo." Both used the arts
of Roman warfare; the Vitellianists rolled down ponderous stones,
and drove spears and long poles into the broken and tottering
"testudo," till the dense array of shields was loosened, and the
ground was strewn with a vast number of lifeless and mangled
bodies.
28. Some hesitation had shewn itself, when the generals, seeing
that the weary troops would not listen to what seemed to them
unmeaning encouragement, pointed to Cremona. Whether this was, as
Messalla relates, the device of Hormus, or whether Caius Plinius
be the better authority when he charges it upon Antonius, I
cannot easily determine. All I can say is this, that neither in
Antonius nor in Hormus would this foulest of crimes have been a
degeneracy from the character of their former lives. Wounds or
bloodshed no longer kept the men back from undermining the
rampart and battering the gates. Supported on the shoulders of
comrades, and forming a second "testudo," they clambered up and
seized the weapons and even the hands of the enemy. The unhurt
and the wounded, the half dead and the dying, were mingled
together with every incident of slaughter and death in every
form.
The fiercest struggle was maintained by the 3rd and 7th legions,
and Antonius in person with some chosen auxiliaries concentrated
his efforts on the same point. The Vitellianists, unable to
resist the combined and resolute attack, and finding that their
missiles glided off the "testudo," at last threw the engine
itself on the assailants; for a moment it broke and overwhelmed
those on whom it fell, but it drew after it in its fall the
battlements and upper part of the rampart. At the same time an
adjoining tower yielded to the volleys of stones, and, while the
7th legion in wedge like array was endeavouring to force an
entrance, the 3rd broke down the gate with axes and swords. All
authors are agreed that Caius Volusius, a soldier of the 3rd
legion, entered first. Beating down all who opposed him, he
mounted the rampart, waved his hand, and shouted aloud that the
camp was taken. The rest of the legion burst in, while the troops
of Vitellius were seized with panic, and threw themselves from
the rampart. The entire space between the camp and the walls of
Cremona was filled with slain.
Difficulties of another kind presented themselves in the lofty
walls of the town, its stone towers, its iron barred gates, in
the garrison who stood brandishing their weapons, in its numerous
population devoted to the interests of Vitellius, and in the vast
conflux from all parts of Italy which had assembled at the fair
regularly held at that time. The besieged found a source of
strength in these large numbers; the assailants an incentive in
the prospect of booty. Antonius gave orders that fire should
instantly be set to the finest buildings without the city, to see
whether the inhabitants of Cremona might not be induced by the
loss of their property to transfer their allegiance. Some houses
near the walls, which overtopped the fortifications, he filled
with the bravest of his soldiers, who, by hurling beams, tiles,
and flaming missiles, dislodged the defenders from the ramparts.
The legions now began to form themselves into a "testudo," and
the other troops to discharge volleys of stones and darts, when
the courage of the Vitellianists began to flag. The higher their
rank, the more readily they succumbed to fortune, fearing that
when Cremona had fallen quarter could no longer be expected, and
that all the fury of the conqueror would be turned, not on the
penniless crowd, but on the tribunes and centurions, by whose
slaughter something was to be gained. The common soldiers,
careless of the future and safer in their obscurity, still held
out. Roaming through the streets or concealed in the houses, they
would not sue for peace even when they had abandoned the contest.
The principal officers of the camp removed the name and images of
Vitellius; Caecina, who was still in confinement, they released
from his chains, imploring him to plead their cause. When he
haughtily rejected their suit, they entreated him with tears; and
it was indeed the last aggravation of misery, that many valiant
men should invoke the aid of a traitor. Then they displayed from
the walls the olive branches and chaplets of suppliants, and when
Antonius had ordered that the discharge of missiles should cease,
they brought out the eagles and standards. Then followed, with
eyes bent on the ground, a dismal array of unarmed men. The
conquerors had gathered round; at first they heaped reproaches on
them and pointed at them their weapons; then seeing how they
offered their cheeks to insulting blows, how, with all their high
spirit departed, they submitted, as vanquished men, to every
indignity, it suddenly occurred to their recollection, that these
were the very soldiers who but shortly before had used with
moderation their victory at Bedriacum. Yet, when Caecina the
consul, conspicuous in his robes of state and with his train of
lictors, came forward thrusting aside the crowd, the victors were
fired with indignation, and reproached him with his tyranny, his
cruelty, and, so hateful are such crimes, even with his treason.
Antonius checked them, gave him an escort, and sent him to
Vespasian.
Meanwhile the population of Cremona was roughly handled by the
soldiers, who were just beginning a massacre, when their fury was
mitigated by the entreaties of the generals. Antonius summoned
them to an assembly, extolled the conquerors, spoke kindly to the
conquered, but said nothing either way of Cremona. Over and above
the innate love of plunder, there was an old feud which made the
army bent on the destruction of the inhabitants. It was generally
believed that in the war with Otho, as well as in the present,
they had supported the cause of Vitellius. Afterwards, when the
13th legion had been left to build an amphitheatre, with the
characteristic insolence of a city population, they had wantonly
provoked and insulted them. The ill feeling had been aggravated
by the gladiatorial show exhibited there by Caecina, by the
circumstance that their city was now for the second time the seat
of war, and by the fact that they had supplied the Vitellianists
with provisions in the field, and that some of their women, taken
by party zeal into the battle, had there been slain. The
occurrence of the fair filled the colony, rich as it always was,
with an appearance of still greater wealth. The other generals
were unnoticed; Antonius from his success and high reputation was
observed of all. He had hastened to the baths to wash off the
blood; and when he found fault with the temperature of the water,
an answer was heard, "that it would soon be warm enough. Thus the
words of a slave brought on him the whole odium of having given
the signal for firing the town, which was indeed already in
flames.
Forty thousand armed men burst into Cremona, and with them a body
of sutlers and camp followers, yet more numerous and yet more
abandoned to lust and cruelty. Neither age nor rank were any
protection from indiscriminate slaughter and violation. Aged men
and women past their prime, worthless as booty, were dragged
about in wanton insult. Did a grown up maiden or youth of marked
beauty fall in their way, they were torn in pieces by the violent
hands of ravishers; and in the end the destroyers themselves were
provoked into mutual slaughter. Men, as they carried off for
themselves coin or temple offerings of massive gold, were cut
down by others of superior strength. Some, scorning what met the
eye, searched for hidden wealth, and dug up buried treasures,
applying the scourge and the torture to the owners. In their
hands were flaming torches, which, as soon as they had carried
out the spoil, they wantonly hurled into the gutted houses and
plundered temples. In an army which included such varieties of
language and character, an army comprising Roman citizens,
allies, and foreigners, there was every kind of had a law of his
own, and nothing was forbidden. For four days Cremona satisfied
the plunderers. When all things else, sacred and profane, were
settling down into the flames, the temple of Mephitis outside the
walls alone remained standing, saved by its situation or by
divine interposition.
Such was the end of Cremona, 286 years after its foundation. It
was built in the consulship of Tiberius Sempronius and Cornelius
Scipio, when Hannibal was threatening Italy, as a protection
against the Gauls from beyond the Padus, or against any other
sudden invader from the Alps. From the number of settlers, the
conveniences afforded by the rivers, the fertility of the soil,
and the many connexions and intermarriages formed with
neighbouring nations, it grew and flourished, unharmed by foreign
enemies, though most unfortunate in civil wars. Ashamed of the
atrocious deed, and aware of the detestation which it was
inspiring, Antonius issued a proclamation, that no one should
detain in captivity a citizen of Cremona. The spoil indeed had
been rendered valueless to the soldiers by a general agreement
throughout Italy, which rejected with loathing the purchase of
such slaves. A massacre then began; when this was known, the
prisoners were secretly ransomed by their friends and relatives.
The remaining inhabitants soon returned to Cremona; the temples
and squares were restored by the munificence of the burghers, and
Vespasian gave his exhortations.
The soil poisoned with blood forbade the enemy to remain long by
the ruins of the buried city. They advanced to the third
milestone, and gathered the dispersed and panic stricken
Vitellianists round their proper standards. The vanquished
legions were then scattered throughout Illyricum; for civil war
was not over, and they might play a doubtful part. Messengers
carrying news of the victory were then despatched to Britain and
to Spain. Julius Calenus, a tribune, was sent to Gaul, and
Alpinius Montanus, prefect of a cohort, to Germany; as the one
was an Aeduan, the other a Trever, and both were Vitellianists,
they would be a proof of the success. At the same time the passes
of the Alps were occupied with troops, for it was suspected that
Germany was arming itself to support Vitellius.
A few days after the departure of Caecina, Vitellius had hurried
Fabius Valens to the seat of war, and was now seeking to hide his
apprehensions from himself by indulgence. He made no military
preparation; he did not seek to invigorate the soldiers by
encouraging speeches or warlike exercises; he did not keep
himself before the eyes of the people. Buried in the shades of
his gardens, like those sluggish animals which, if you supply
them with food, lie motionless and torpid, he had dismissed with
the same forgetfulness the past, the present, and the future.
While he thus lay wasting his powers in sloth among the woods of
Aricia, he was startled by the treachery of Lucilius Bassus and
the defection of the fleet at Ravenna. Then came the news about
Caecina, and he heard with a satisfaction mingled with distress,
first, that he had revolted, and then, that he had been put in
irons by the army. In that dull soul joy was more powerful than
apprehension. In great exultation he returned to Rome, and before
a crowded assembly of the people heaped praises on the dutiful
obedience of the soldiers. He ordered Publius Sabinus, prefect of
the Praetorian Guard, to be thrown into prison, because of his
friendship with Caecina, and substituted in his place Alfenius
Varus.
He then addressed the Senate in a speech of studied
grandiloquence, and was extolled by the Senators with elaborate
adulation. A savage resolution against Caecina was moved by
Lucius Vitellius; the rest affected indignation at the idea that
a consul had betrayed the State, a general his Emperor, a man
loaded with wealth so vast and honours so numerous his
benefactor, and seemed to deplore the wrongs of Vitellius, while
they uttered their private griefs. Not a word from any one of
them disparaged the Flavianist leaders; they censured the
delusion and recklessness of the armies, and with a prudent
circumlocution avoided the name of Vespasian. A man was found,
who, while all regarded with great contempt both giver and
receiver, wormed himself by flattery into the one day of office
which remained to complete the consulate of Caecina. On the last
day of October Rosius Regulus both assumed and resigned the
office. The learned remarked that never before had a new consul
been elected without a formal act of deprivation and the passing
of a law. Before this indeed Caninius Rebilus had been consul for
a single day during the dictatorship of Caius Caesar, when the
prizes of the civil war had to be enjoyed in haste.
At this time the murder of Junius Blaesus obtained an infamous
notoriety. Of this act I have heard the following account.
Vitellius, who was suffering from severe illness, observed from
the Servilian gardens a neighbouring turret brilliantly
illuminated throughout the night. Inquiring the cause, he was
told that Caecina Tuscus was entertaining a large party, of whom
Junius Blaesus was the most distinguished. Other particulars were
given with much exaggeration about the splendour of the banquet
and the unrestrained gaiety of the guests. There were persons who
charged Tuscus and his guests, and Blaesus more vindictively than
any, with passing their days in merriment while the Emperor was
sick. As soon as it was sufficiently clear to those who keenly
watch the angry moods of princes, that Vitellius was exasperated,
and that Blaesus might be destroyed, the part of the informer was
intrusted to Lucius Vitellius. An unworthy jealousy made him the
enemy of Blaesus, whose illustrious character raised him far
above one who was stained with every infamy; he burst into the
Imperial chamber, and clasping to his bosom the Emperor's son,
fell at his knees. On Vitellius enquiring the cause of his
emotion: "It is not," he replied, "from any private apprehension,
or because I am anxious for myself; it is for a brother and for a
brother's children that I have come hither with my prayers and
tears. It is idle to fear Vespasian, when there are so many
legions of Germany, so many provinces with their valour and their
loyalty, and lastly, so vast an extent of sea and land with
enormous distances, to keep him from us. In the capital, in the
very bosom of the empire, there is the foe of whom we must
beware, a foe who boasts of Junii and Antonii among his
ancestors, who, claiming an Imperial descent, displays to
soldiers his condescension and his magnificence. On him all
thoughts are fixed, while Vitellius, regardless alike of friends
and foes, is cherishing a rival, who from his banqueting table
gazes at the sufferings of his sovereign. For such ill timed
mirth let him be recompensed with a night of sorrow and of death,
that he may know and feel that Vitellius still lives and reigns,
and has a son, if in the course of destiny anything should happen
to himself."
Vitellius, after wavering between his guilty purpose and his
fears, dreading lest to postpone the murder of Blaesus might
hasten his own ruin, while openly to order it might provoke
terrible odium, determined to destroy him by poison. He gave a
proof of his guilt by his marked joy when he visited Blaesus. He
was even heard to utter a most brutal speech, in which (I will
relate the very words) he boasted that he had feasted his eyes on
the spectacle of his enemy's death. Besides his noble birth and
refinement of character, Blaesus was a man of resolute loyalty.
In the flourishing days of the party, when canvassed by Caecina
and the leading men, who were beginning to despise Vitellius, he
persevered in rejecting their solicitations. A righteous man and
a lover of peace, who coveted no sudden elevation, much less the
throne, he could not escape being thought to deserve it.
Meanwhile Fabius Valens, who was moving along with a vast and
luxurious train of concubines and eunuchs too tardily for a
general about to take the field, received speedy intelligence of
the betrayal of the Ravenna fleet by Lucilius Bassus. Had he
hastened the march which he had then begun, he might have come up
with Caecina while still undecided, or have reached the legions
previous to the decisive action. Some advised him to take a few
of his most devoted soldiers, and, avoiding Ravenna, to hurry on
by unfrequented paths to Hostilia or Cremona. Others thought that
he should summon the Praetorian cohorts from Rome, and then force
his way with a strong body of troops. But with a ruinous delay he
wasted in deliberation the opportunities of action. Eventually he
rejected both plans, and did what is the very worst thing in
circumstances of peril, attempted a middle course, and was
neither bold enough on the one hand, nor cautious enough on the
other.
He wrote to Vitellius asking for aid. Three cohorts with some
British cavalry arrived, a force too numerous to elude
observation, too small to force its way. Even amidst such perils
Valens could not keep himself clear of the infamous reputation of
grasping at unlawful gratifications and polluting the houses of
his hosts with intrigue and violation. He had power, he had
money, and he indulged the lusts that are the last solace of
desperate fortunes. At length on the arrival of the infantry and
cavalry the folly of his plans became evident. With so small a
force, even had it been thoroughly loyal, he could not have made
his way through the enemy, and the loyalty they had brought with
them was not beyond suspicion. Yet shame and respect for the
presence of their general held them in check, no lasting
restraint with men who loved danger and were careless of
disgrace. Moved by this apprehension, Valens, while he retained a
few attendants whom adversity had not changed, sent on the
infantry to Ariminum and ordered the cavalry to cover his rear.
He then himself made his way to Umbria, and thence to Etruria,
where, having learnt the issue of the battle of Cremona, he
conceived a plan not wanting in vigour, and which, had it
succeeded, would have had terrible results. This was to seize
some ships, to land on some part of Gallia Narbonensis, to rouse
Gaul with its armies as well as the tribes of Germany, and so to
kindle a fresh war.
The garrison of Ariminum were discouraged by the departure of
Valens, and Cornelius Fuscus, bringing up his army and disposing
his Liburnian ships at the nearest points of the shore, invested
the place by sea and land. His troops occupied the plains of
Umbria and that portion of the Picentine territory that is washed
by the Adriatic, and now the whole of Italy was divided by the
range of the Apennines between Vespasian and Vitellius. Valens,
having started from the bay of Pisa, was compelled, either by a
calm or a contrary wind, to put in at the port of Hercules
Monoecus. Near this place was stationed Marius Maturus,
procurator of the Maritime Alps, who was loyal to Vitellius, and
who, though everything around him was hostile, had not yet thrown
off his allegiance. While courteously receiving Valens, he
deterred him by his advice from rashly invading Gallia
Narbonensis. And now the fidelity of the rest of the party was
weakened by their fears. In fact the procurator Valerius
Paullinus, an enterprising officer, who had been a friend of
Vespasian before his elevation to the throne, had made the
neighbouring States swear allegiance to that Prince.
Paullinus had collected all the troops who, having been disbanded
by Vitellius, were now spontaneously taking up arms, and was
holding with this force the colony of Forum Julii, which
commanded the sea. His influence was all the greater, because
Forum Julii was his native place, and because he was respected by
the Praetorians, in which force he had once been a tribune. The
inhabitants themselves, favouring a fellow townsman, and
anticipating his future greatness, did their best to promote the
cause. When these preparations, which were really formidable and
were exaggerated by report, became known among the now distracted
Vitellianists, Fabius Valens returned to his ships with four
soldiers of the body guard, three personal friends, and as many
centurions, while Maturus and the rest chose to remain behind and
swear allegiance to Vespasian. For Valens indeed the open sea was
safer than the coast or the towns, yet, all uncertain about the
future, and knowing rather what he must avoid than what he could
trust, he was thrown by adverse weather on the Stoechades,
islands off Massilia. There he was captured by some Liburnian
ships, dispatched by Paullinus.
Valens once captured, everything turned to swell the resources of
the conqueror; the lead was taken in Spain by the 1st legion (the
"Adjutrix"), whose recollections of Otho made them hate
Vitellius; they drew with them the 6th and 10th. Gaul did not
hesitate to follow. A partiality long felt in Britain for
Vespasian, who had there commanded the 2nd legion by the
appointment of Claudius, and had served with distinction,
attached that province to his cause, though not without some
commotion among the other legions, in which were many centurions
and soldiers promoted by Vitellius, who felt uneasy in exchanging
for another ruler one whom they knew already.
These dissensions, and the continual rumours of civil war, raised
the courage of the Britons. They were led by one Venutius, who,
besides being naturally high spirited, and hating the name of
Rome, was fired by his private animosity against Queen
Cartismandua. Cartismandua ruled the Brigantes in virtue of her
illustrious birth; and she strengthened her throne, when, by the
treacherous capture of king Caractacus, she was regarded as
having given its chief distinction to the triumph of Claudius
Caesar. Then followed wealth and the self indulgence of
prosperity. Spurning her husband Venutius, she made Vellocatus,
his armour bearer, the partner of her bed and throne. By this
enormity the power of her house was at once shaken to its base.
On the side of the husband were the affections of the people, on
that of the adulterer, the lust and savage temper of the Queen.
Accordingly Venutius collected some auxiliaries, and, aided at
the same time by a revolt of the Brigantes, brought Cartismandua
into the utmost peril. She asked for some Roman troops, and our
auxiliary infantry and cavalry, after fighting with various
success, contrived to rescue the Queen from her peril. Venutius
retained the kingdom, and we had the war on our hands.
About the same time, Germany suffered from the supineness of our
generals and the mutinous conduct of our legions; the assaults of
enemies and the perfidy of allies all but overthrew the power of
Rome. Of this war, its origin and its issue, for it lasted long,
I shall hereafter speak. The Dacians also were in motion, a
people which never can be trusted, and which, now that our
legions were withdrawn from Moesia, had nothing to fear. They
quietly watched the opening of the campaign, but when they heard
that Italy was in a blaze of war, and that the whole Empire was
divided against itself, they stormed the winter quarters of the
auxiliary infantry and cavalry, and occupied both banks of the
Danube. They were then preparing to destroy the camp of the
legions, but Mucianus sent the 6th legion against them, for he
knew of the victory of Cremona, and he feared this double
pressure of barbarian power with Dacians and Germans invading
Italy from opposite sides. We were helped, as often before, by
the good fortune of the Roman people, which brought to the spot
Mucianus with the armies of the East, and by the decisive
settlement which in the meantime was effected at Cremona.
Fonteius Agrippa was removed from Asia (which province he had
governed as proconsul for a year) to Moesia, and had some troops
given him from the army of Vitellius. That this army should be
dispersed through the provinces and closely occupied with foreign
wars, was sound policy and essential to peace.
All other nations were equally restless. A sudden outbreak had
been excited in Pontus by a barbarian slave, who had before
commanded the royal fleet. This was Anicetus, a freedman of
Polemon, once a very powerful personage, who, when the kingdom
was converted into a Roman province, ill brooked the change.
Accordingly he raised in the name of Vitellius the tribes that
border on Pontus, bribed a number of very needy adventurers by
the hope of plunder, and, at the head of a force by no means
contemptible, made a sudden attack on the old and famous city of
Trapezus, founded by the Greeks on the farthest shore of the
Pontus. There he destroyed a cohort, once a part of the royal
contingent. They had afterwards received the privileges of
citizenship, and while they carried their arms and banners in
Roman fashion, they still retained the indolence and licence of
the Greek. Anicetus also set fire to the fleet, and, as the sea
was not guarded, escaped, for Mucianus had brought up to
Byzantium the best of the Liburnian ships and all the troops. The
barbarians even insolently scoured the sea in hastily constructed
vessels of their own called "camarae," built with narrow sides
and broad bottoms, and joined together without fastenings of
brass or iron. Whenever the water is rough they raise the
bulwarks with additional planks according to the increasing
height of the waves, till the vessel is covered in like a house.
Thus they roll about amid the billows, and, as they have a prow
at both extremities alike and a convertible arrangement of oars,
they may be paddled in one direction or another indifferently and
without risk.
The matter attracted the attention of Vespasian, and induced him
to dispatch some veterans from the legions under Virdius Geminus,
a tried soldier. Finding the enemy in disorder and dispersed in
the eager pursuit of plunder, he attacked them, and drove them to
their ships. Hastily fitting out a fleet of Liburnian ships he
pursued Anicetus, and overtook him at the mouth of the river
Cohibus, where he was protected by the king of the Sedochezi,
whose alliance he had secured by a sum of money and other
presents. This prince at first endeavoured to protect the
suppliant by a threat of hostilities; when, however, the choice
was presented to him between war and the profit to be derived
from treachery, he consented, with the characteristic perfidy of
barbarians, to the destruction of Anicetus, and delivered up the
refugees. So ended this servile war. Amidst the joy of this
success, while everything was prosperous beyond his hopes,
tidings of the victory of Cremona reached Vespasian in Aegypt.
This made him hasten his advance to Alexandria, for, now that the
army of Vitellius was shattered, he sought to apply the pressure
of famine to the capital, which is always dependent on foreign
supplies. He was indeed also preparing to invade by sea and land
the province of Africa, which lies on the same line of coast,
intending by thus closing the supplies of corn to cause famine
and dissension among the enemy.
While with this world wide convulsion the Imperial power was
changing hands, the conduct of Primus Antonius, after the fall of
Cremona, was by no means as blameless as before. Either he
believed that the necessities of the war had been satisfied, and
that all else would follow easily, or, perhaps, success, working
on such a temperament, developed his latent pride, rapacity and
other vices. He swept through Italy as if it were a conquered
country and caressed the legions as if they were his own; by all
his words and acts he sought to pave for himself the way to
power. To imbue the army with a spirit of licence, he offered to
the legions the commissions of the centurions killed in the war.
By their vote the most turbulent men were elected. The soldiers
in fact were not under the control of the generals, but the
generals were themselves constrained to follow the furious
impulses of the soldiers. These mutinous proceedings, so ruinous
to discipline, Antonius soon turned to his own profit, regardless
of the near approach of Mucianus, a neglect more fatal than any
contempt for Vespasian.
As winter was approaching, and the low country was flooded by the
Padus, the army marched on without its heavy baggage. The
standards and eagles of the victorious legions, the old and
wounded soldiers, and even many effective men, were left at
Verona. The auxiliary infantry and cavalry, with some picked
troops from the legions, appeared sufficient for a war that was
all but finished. They had been joined by the 11th legion, which
at first had hesitated, but now in the hour of success felt alarm
at having stood aloof. A recent levy of 6000 Dalmatians was
attached to the legion. They were under the command of Pompeius
Silvanus, a man of consular rank; the real direction of affairs
was in the hands of Annius Bassus, the legate of the legion. This
officer contrived, under an appearance of submission, to govern
Silvanus, a leader without vigour, and apt to waste in words the
opportunities of action. Bassus, with his unobtrusive energy, was
ready for everything that had to be done. To these forces were
added the elite of the marines of the Ravenna fleet, who demanded
permission to serve in the legions. The crews were made up with
Dalmatians. The army and generals halted at the Temple of
Fortune, undecided as to their line of action. They had heard
that the Praetorian Guard had marched out of Rome, and they
supposed that the Apennines were occupied with troops. The
generals, finding themselves in a country utterly impoverished by
war, were terrified by the scarcity of provisions and the
mutinous clamours of the soldiery, who incessantly demanded the
"clavarium," as the donative was called. They had provided
neither money nor corn, and they were embarrassed by the general
impatience and rapacity; for what they might have obtained was
plundered.
I have the very highest authority for asserting, that there was
among the conquerors such an impious disregard of right and
wrong, that a private cavalry soldier declared he had slain his
brother in the late battle, and claimed a reward from the
generals. The common law of humanity on the one hand forbade them
to reward this act of blood, the necessities of the war on the
other forbade them to punish it. They put him off, on the ground
that the obligation was too great to be immediately discharged.
Nothing more is recorded. In the earlier civil wars indeed a
similar horror had occurred. In the battle with Cinna at the
Janiculum, a soldier in Pompey's army, as Sisenna tells us, slew
his own brother, and, on discovering the horrible deed he had
committed, destroyed himself. So much more earnest among our
ancestors was the honour paid to virtue, and the remorse that
waited on crime. These and like instances, drawn from the
recollections of the past, I shall mention not irrelevantly,
whenever the subject and the occasion shall call for some example
of goodness or some solace in the presence of evil.
Antonius and the other generals of the party judged it expedient
to send forward the cavalry and explore the whole of Umbria for
some point where the Apennines presented a more gentle ascent,
and also to bring up the eagles and standards and all the troops
at Verona, while they were to cover the Padus and the sea with
convoys. Some there were among the generals who were contriving
delays, for Antonius in fact was now becoming too great a man,
and their hopes from Mucianus were more definite. That commander,
troubled at so speedy a success, and imagining that unless he
occupied Rome in person he should lose all share in the glory of
the war, continued to write in ambiguous terms to Varus and
Antonius, enlarging at one time on the necessity of following up
their operations, at another on the advantage of delay, and with
expressions so worded that he could, according to the event,
repudiate a disastrous, or claim a successful policy. To Plotius
Griphus, who had lately been raised by Vespasian to the
senatorial rank and appointed to command a legion, as well as to
all others on whom he could fully rely, he gave plainer
instructions. All these men sent replies reflecting unfavourably
on the precipitancy of Varus and Antonius, and suiting the wishes
of Mucianus. By forwarding these letters to Vespasian he had
accomplished this much, that the measures and achievements of
Antonius were not valued according to his hopes.
Antonius was indignant, and blamed Mucianus, whose calumnies had
depreciated his own hazardous achievements. Nor was he temperate
in his expressions, for he was habitually violent in language,
and was unaccustomed to obey. He wrote a letter to Vespasian in
terms more arrogant than should be addressed to an Emperor, and
not without implied reproach against Mucianus. "It was I," he
said, "who brought into the field the legions of Pannonia; my
instigations roused the generals in Moesia; my courageous
resolution forced a passage through the Alps, seized on Italy,
and cut off the succours from Germany and Rhaetia. The
discomfiture of the disunited and scattered legions of Vitellius
by a fierce charge of cavalry, and afterwards by the steady
strength of the infantry in a conflict that lasted for a day and
a night, was indeed a most glorious achievement, and it was my
work. For the destruction of Cremona the war must be answerable;
the civil strifes of former days cost the State more terrible
loss and the overthrow of many cities. Not with messages and
letters, but with my arm and my sword, have I served my Emperor.
I would not seek to hinder the renown of those who in the
meanwhile have reduced Asia to tranquillity. They had at heart
the peace of Moesia, I the safety and security of Italy. By my
earnest representations Gaul and Spain, the most powerful region
of the world, have been won for Vespasian. But all my efforts
have been wasted, if they alone who have not shared the peril
obtain its rewards." The meaning of all this did not escape
Mucianus, and there arose a deadly feud, cherished by Antonius
with frankness, by Mucianus with reserve, and therefore with the
greater bitterness.
Vitellius, after his power had been shattered at Cremona,
endeavoured to suppress the tidings of the disaster, and by this
foolish attempt at concealment he put off, not indeed his
troubles, but only the application of the remedy. Had he avowed
and discussed his position, he had some chance, some strength,
left; whereas, on the contrary, when he pretended that all was
prosperous, he aggravated his perils by falsehood. A strange
silence was observed in his presence as to the war; throughout
the country all discussion was prohibited, and so, many who would
have told the truth had it been allowed, finding it forbidden,
spread rumours exaggerating the calamity. The generals of the
enemy failed not to magnify the report of their strength, for
they sent back any spies of Vitellius whom they captured, after
conducting them round the camp in order that they might learn the
force of the victorious army. All of these persons Vitellius
questioned in secret, and then ordered that they should be put to
death. Singular bravery was displayed by a centurion, Julius
Agrestis, who, after several interviews, in which he had in vain
endeavoured to rouse Vitellius to courage, prevailed on the
Emperor to send him in person to see what was the strength of the
enemy's resources, and what had happened at Cremona. He did not
seek to escape the notice of Antonius by making his observations
in secret, but avowed the emperor's instructions and his own
purpose, and asked leave to see everything. Persons were sent to
shew him the field of battle, the remains of Cremona, and the
captured legions. He then made his way back to Vitellius, and
when the Emperor denied the truth of the intelligence which he
brought, and even charged him with having been bribed, "Since,"
he replied, "you require some decisive proof, and I can no longer
serve you in any other way either by my life or death I will give
you a proof which you can believe." So he departed, and confirmed
his statement by a voluntary death. Some say that he was slain by
order of Vitellius, but they bear the same testimony to his
loyalty and courage.
Vitellius, who seemed like a man roused from slumber ordered
Julius Priscus and Alfenius Varus, with fourteen of the
Praetorian 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. The
rest of the Praetorian cohorts were entrusted to Lucius
Vitellius, brother of the Emperor, for the defence of the
capital. Vitellius, while he abated nothing of his habitual
indulgence, with a precipitancy prompted by alarm, anticipated
the elections, at which he appointed consuls for several years.
With a profuse liberality, he granted treaties to allies, and the
rights of Latin citizenship to foreigners; some he relieved by
the remission of tribute, others by exemptions; in a word,
utterly careless of the future, he mutilated the resources of the
Empire. But the mob was attracted by the magnificence of his
bounties. The most foolish bought these favours with money; the
wise held that to be invalid, which could neither be given nor
received without ruin to the State. Yielding at length to the
importunity of the army, which had taken up its position at
Mevania, and accompanied by a numerous train of senators, into
which many were brought by ambition and more by fear, he entered
the camp, undecided in purpose and at the mercy of faithless
counsels.
While he was haranguing his troops (marvellous to relate) such a
multitude of ill omened birds flew over him, as to obscure with a
dark cloud the light of day. There occurred another terrible
presage. A bull escaped from the altar, scattered the
preparations for sacrifice, and was finally slain far from the
spot where the victims are usually struck down. But the most
portentous spectacle of all was Vitellius himself, ignorant of
military matters and without forethought in his plans, even
asking others about the order of march, about the business of
reconnoitring, and the discretion to be used in pushing on or
protracting the campaign, betraying in his countenance and gait
his alarm at every fresh piece of intelligence, and finally
drinking to intoxication. At last, weary of the camp, and having
received tidings of the defection of the fleet at Misenum, he
returned to Rome, trembling at every new disaster, but reckless
of the final result. For though it was open to him to have
crossed the Apennines with an army in unimpaired vigour, and to
have attacked in the field an enemy suffering from cold and scant
supplies, yet, by dividing his forces, he abandoned to
destruction or captivity troops of the keenest courage and
faithful to the last, against the judgment of the most
experienced among the centurions, who, had they been consulted,
would have told him the truth. They were all kept at a distance
by the intimate friends of Vitellius; for the Emperor's ears were
so formed, that all profitable counsels were offensive to him,
and that he would hear nothing but what would please and ruin.
The fleet at Misenum, so much can be done in times of civil
discord by the daring of even a single man, was drawn into revolt
by Claudius Faventinus, a centurion cashiered by Galba, who
forged letters in the name of Vespasian offering a reward for
treachery. The fleet was under the command of Claudius
Apollinaris, a man neither firm in his loyalty, nor energetic in
his treason. Apinius Tiro, who had filled the office of praetor,
and who then happened to be at Minturnae, offered to head the
revolt. By these men the colonies and municipal towns were drawn
into the movement, and as Puteoli was particularly zealous for
Vespasian, while Capua on the other hand remained loyal to
Vitellius, they introduced their municipal jealousy into the
civil war. Claudius Julianus, who had lately exercised an
indulgent rule over the fleet at Misenum, was selected by
Vitellius to soothe the irritation of the soldiery. He was
supported by a city cohort and a troop of gladiators whose chief
officer he was. As soon as the two camps were pitched, Julianus,
without much hesitation, went over to the side of Vespasian, and
they then occupied Tarracina, which was protected by its
fortifications and position rather than by any ability of theirs.
Vitellius, when informed of these events, left a portion of his
army at Narnia under the command of the prefect of the Praetorian
Guard, and deputed his brother Lucius with six cohorts of
infantry and 500 cavalry to encounter the danger that now
threatened him on the side of Campania. Sick at heart, he found
relief in the zeal of the soldiers and in the shouts with which
the people clamoured for arms, while he gave the delusive name of
an army and of Roman legions to a cowardly mob, that would not
venture on any thing beyond words. At the instance of his
freedmen (for his friends were the less faithful the more
distinguished their rank) he ordered the tribes to be convoked,
and to those who gave in their names administered the oath of
service. As the numbers were excessive, he divided the business
of enrolment between the consuls. He required the Senators to
furnish a prescribed number of slaves and a certain weight of
silver. The Roman Knights offered their services and money, and
even the freedmen voluntarily sought the privilege of doing the
same. This pretence of loyalty, dictated at first by fear, passed
into enthusiasm, and many expressed compassion, not so much for
Vitellius, as for the fallen condition of the Imperial power.
Vitellius himself failed not to draw out their sympathies by his
pitiable looks, his voice, and his tears; he was liberal in his
promises and even extravagant, as men in their alarm naturally
are. He even expressed a wish to be saluted as Caesar, a title
which he had formerly rejected. But now he had a superstitious
feeling about the name; and it is a fact that in the moment of
terror the counsels of the wise and the voice of the rabble are
listened to with equal respect. But as all movements that
originate in thoughtless impulse, however vigorous in their
beginnings, become feeble after a time, the throng of Senators
and Knights gradually melted away, dispersing at first tardily
and during the absence of the Emperor, but before long with a
contemptuous indifference to his presence, till, ashamed of the
failure of his efforts, Vitellius waived his claims to services
which were not offered.
As the occupation of Mevania, and the apparent revival of the war
with new vigour, had struck terror into Italy, so now did the
timorous retreat of Vitellius give an unequivocal bias in favour
of the Flavianists. The Samnites, the Peligni, and the Marsi,
roused themselves, jealous at having been anticipated by
Campania, and, as men who serve a new master, were energetic in
all the duties of war. The army, however, was much distressed by
bad weather in its passage over the Apennines, and since they
could hardly struggle through the snow, though their march was
unmolested, they perceived what danger they would have had to
encounter, had not Vitellius been made to turn back by that good
fortune, which, not less often than the wisdom of their counsels,
helped the Flavianist generals. Here they fell in with Petilius
Cerialis, who had escaped the sentries of Vitellius by a rustic
disguise and by his knowledge of the country. There was a near
relationship between Cerialis and Vespasian, and he was not
without reputation as a soldier. He was therefore admitted to
rank among the generals. It has been said by many that the means
of escape were likewise open to Flavius Sabinus and to Domitian,
and indeed messengers, dispatched by Antonius, contrived under
various disguises to make their way to them, offering them a
place of refuge and a protecting force. Sabinus pleaded his ill
health, unsuited to toil and adventure. Domitian did not want the
courage, but he feared that the guards whom Vitellius had set
over him, though they offered to accompany him in his flight, had
treacherous designs. And Vitellius himself, out of a regard for
his own connexions, did not meditate any cruelty against
Domitian.
The Flavianist generals on their arrival at Carsulae took a few
days for repose, while the eagles and standards of the legions
were coming up. Carsulae appeared a good position for an
encampment, for it commanded an extensive prospect, provisions
could be safely brought up, and there were in its rear several
very wealthy towns. They also calculated on interviews with the
Vitellianists, who were only ten miles distant, and on the
chances of defection. The soldiers were dissatisfied with this
prospect, and wished for victory rather than for peace. They
would not even await the arrival of their own legions, whom they
looked upon as sharers in the spoil rather than in the dangers of
the campaign. Antonius summoned them to an assembly, and
explained to them that Vitellius had still forces, which would
waver in their loyalty if they had time to reflect, but would be
fierce foes if driven to despair. "The opening of a civil war
must," he said, "be left to chance; the final triumph is
perfected by wise counsels and skill. The fleet of Misenum and
the fairest portion of Campania have already revolted, and out of
the whole world Vitellius has nothing left but the country
between Tarracina and Narnia. From our victory at Cremona
sufficient glory has accrued to us, and from the destruction of
that city only too much disgrace. Let us not be eager to capture
rather than to preserve the capital. Greater will be our reward,
far higher our reputation, if we secure without bloodshed the
safety of the Senate and of the people of Rome." By this and
similar language their impatience was allayed.
Soon after, the legions arrived. Alarmed by the report of this
increase to the army, the Vitellianist cohorts began to waver; no
one urged them to fight, many urged them to change sides, each
more eager than the other to hand over his company or troop, a
present to the conqueror, and a source of future advantage to
himself. From these men it was ascertained that Interamna,
situated in the adjoining plain, was occupied by a garrison of
400 cavalry. Varus was at once dispatched with a lightly equipped
force, and cut to pieces a few who attempted to resist; the
greater number threw down their arms, and begged for quarter.
Some fled back into the camp, and spread panic everywhere by
exaggerated reports of the courage and strength of the enemy,
seeking thus to mitigate the disgrace of having lost the
position. Among the Vitellianists treason went unpunished; all
loyalty was subverted by the rewards of desertion, and nothing
was left but emulation in perfidy. There were numerous desertions
among the tribunes and centurions; the common soldiers remained
obstinately faithful to Vitellius, till Priscus and Alfenius,
deserting the camp and returning to Vitellius, relieved all from
any shame they might feel at being traitors.
About the same time Fabius Valens was put to death while in
confinement at Urbinum. His head was displayed to the
Vitellianist cohort, that they might not cherish any further
hope, for they generally believed that Valens had made his way
into Germany, and was there bringing into the field veteran as
well as newly levied armies. The bloody spectacle reduced them to
despair, and it was amazing how the army of Vespasian welcomed in
their hearts the destruction of Valens as the termination of the
war. Valens was a native of Anagnia, and belonged to an
Equestrian family; he was a man of loose character, but of no
small ability, who sought to gain by profligacy a reputation for
elegance. In the theatricals performed by young men during the
reign of Nero, at first apparently from compulsion, afterwards of
his own free choice, he repeatedly acted in the farces, with more
cleverness than propriety. While legate of a legion, he first
supported, then slandered, Verginius. Fonteius Capito he
murdered, either after he had corrupted him, or because he had
failed to do so. Though a traitor to Galba he was loyal to
Vitellius, and gained a lustre from the perfidy of others.
Finding all their hopes cut off, the troops of Vitellius,
intending to pass over to the side of the conqueror, but to do so
with honour, marched down with their standards and colours into
the plains beneath Narnia. The army of Vespasian, prepared and
equipped as if for action, was drawn up in dense array on both
sides of the road. The Vitellianists were received between the
two columns; when they were thus surrounded, Antonius addressed
them kindly. One division was ordered to remain at Narnia,
another at Interamna; with them were left some of the victorious
legions, which would not be formidable to them if they remained
quiet, but were strong enough to crush all turbulence. At the
same time Primus and Varus did not neglect to forward continual
messages to Vitellius, offering him personal safety, the
enjoyment of wealth, and a quiet retreat in Campania, provided he
would lay down his arms and surrender himself and his children to
Vespasian. Mucianus also wrote to him to the same effect, and
Vitellius was often disposed to trust these overtures, and even
discussed the number of his household and the choice of a
residence on the coast. Such a lethargy had come over his spirit,
that, had not others remembered he had been an Emperor, he would
have himself forgotten it.
The leading men in the State had secret conferences with Flavius
Sabinus, prefect of the city, urging him to secure a share in the
credit of the victory. "You have," they said, "a force of your
own in the city cohorts; the cohorts of the watch will not fail
you, and there are also our own slaves, there is the prestige of
the party, there is the fact that to the victorious everything is
easy. You should not yield the glory of the war to Antonius and
Varus. 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."
Old and infirm as he was, it was with anything but eagerness that
he listened to these suggestions. Some indeed assailed him with
dark insinuations, implying that from motives of envy and rivalry
he was seeking to retard the elevation of his brother. It was
true, that while both were in a private station, Flavius Sabinus,
who was the elder, was the superior of Vespasian in influence and
in wealth. He was believed indeed to have sustained the failing
credit of his brother, while taking a mortgage of his house and
lands; and hence, though the outward appearance of harmony was
preserved, some secret grudge was feared. It is more charitable
to suppose that the mild temper of the man shrank from bloodshed
and slaughter, and that for this reason he had held frequent
conferences with Vitellius to discuss the question of peace and
the cessation of hostilities upon certain conditions. After many
private interviews, they finally, so report said, ratified an
agreement in the temple of Apollo. The words of their
conversation had two witnesses in Cluvius Rufus and Silius
Italicus. Their looks were noted by the more distant spectators;
the expression of Vitellius was abject and mean, that of Sabinus
not triumphant, but rather akin to pity.
Could Vitellius have swayed the feelings of his partisans as
easily as he had himself yielded, the army of Vespasian might
have entered the capital without bloodshed. But the more loyal
his adherents, the more did they protest against peace and
negotiation. They pointed out the danger and disgrace of a
submission in which the caprice of the conqueror would be their
sole guarantee. "And Vespasian," they said, "is not so arrogant
as to tolerate such a subject as Vitellius. Even the vanquished
would not endure it. Their pity would be dangerous to him. You
certainly are an old man, and have had enough both of prosperity
and of adversity, but think what a name, what a position, you
will leave to your son Germanicus. Now indeed they promise you
wealth, and a large establishment, and a luxurious retreat in
Campania; but when Vespasian has once seized the throne, neither
he, nor his friends, nor even his armies, will feel themselves
secure till all rivalry has been extinguished. Fabius Valens,
captive as he was, and reserved against the chance of disaster,
was yet too formidable to them; and certainly Primus, Fuscus, and
Mucianus, who exhibits the temper of his party, will not be
allowed power over Vitellius except to put him to death. Caesar
did not leave Pompey, Augustus did not leave Antony in safety,
though, perhaps, Vespasian may show a more lofty spirit,
Vespasian, who was a dependant of Vitellius, when Vitellius was
the colleague of Claudius. If you would act as becomes the
censorship, the thrice repeated consulate of your father, and all
the honours of your illustrious house, let despair at any rate
arm you to courageous action. The troops are still firm, and
among the people there is abundant zeal. Lastly, nothing can
happen to us more terrible than that upon which we are
voluntarily rushing. If we are conquered, we must die; we must
die, if we capitulate. All that concerns us is this; shall we
draw our last breath amidst scorn and insult, or in a valiant
struggle?"
The ears of Vitellius were deaf to manly counsels. His whole soul
was overwhelmed by a tender anxiety, lest by an obstinate
resistance he might leave the conqueror less mercifully disposed
to his wife and children. He had also a mother old and feeble,
but she, expiring a few days before, escaped by her opportune
death the ruin of her house, having gained from the Imperial
dignity of her son nothing but sorrow and a good name. On the
18th of December, after hearing of the defection of the legion
and the auxiliary infantry which had surrendered at Narnia, he
left the palace, clad in mourning robes, and surrounded by his
weeping household. With him went his little son, carried in a
litter, as though in a funeral procession. The greetings of the
people were flattering, but ill suited to the time; the soldiers
preserved an ominous silence.
There could hardly be a man so careless of human interests as not
to be affected by this spectacle. There was the Roman Emperor,
lord but a few days before of the whole human race, leaving the
seat of his power, and passing through the midst of his people
and his capital, to abdicate his throne. Men had never before
seen or heard of such an event. Caesar, the Dictator, had fallen
by sudden violence, Caligula by secret treason. The shades of
night and the obscurity of a rural hiding place had veiled the
flight of Nero. Piso and Galba had, it might be said, fallen in
battle. In an assembly of his own people, and in the midst of his
own soldiers, with the very women of his family looking on,
Vitellius stood and spoke a few words suitable to the sad
conjuncture. "He gave way," he said, "for the sake of peace, for
the sake of his country; let them only remember him, and think
with compassion of his brother, of his wife, of his young and
innocent children." At the same time he held out his son,
commending him first to individual bystanders, then to the whole
assembly. At last, unable to speak for weeping, he unfastened the
dagger from his side, and offered it to the Consul, Caecilius
Simplex, who was standing by him, as if to indicate that he
surrendered the power of life and death over the citizens. The
Consul rejecting it, and those who were standing by in the
assembly shouting remontrance, he departed, as if with the
intention of laying aside the emblems of Imperial power in the
Temple of Concord, and of betaking himself to his brother's
house. Louder shouts here met him from the crowd, which hindered
him from entering a private house, and invited him to return to
the palace. Every other route was closed, and the only one open
was one which led into the Via Sacra. Then in utter perplexity he
returned to the palace. The rumour that he had renounced the
Imperial dignity had preceded him thither, and Flavius Sabinus
had sent written orders to the tribunes of the cohorts to keep
their soldiers under restraint.
Then, as if the whole State had passed into the hands of
Vespasian, the leading men of the Senate, many of the Equestrian
order, with all the city soldiery and the watch, thronged the
dwelling of Sabinus. Intelligence was there brought to him of the
enthusiasm of the populace and of the threatening attitude of the
German cohorts. He had now gone too far to be able to retreat,
and every one, fearing for himself, should the Vitellianists come
upon them while they were scattered and comparatively weak, urged
him, in spite of his reluctance, to hostilities. As usually
happens, however, in such cases, all gave the advice, but few
shared the risk. The armed retinue which was escorting Sabinus
was met, as it was coming down by the Lake Fundanus, by some of
the most determined of the Vitellianists. From this unforeseen
collision resulted an encounter slight indeed, but terminating
favourably for the Vitellianists. In the hurry of the moment
Sabinus adopted the safest course open to him, and occupied the
Capitol with a miscellaneous body of soldiery, and some Senators
and Knights. It is not easy to give the names of these persons,
since after the triumph of Vespasian many pretended to have
rendered this service to his party. There were even women who
braved the dangers of the siege; the most conspicuous among them
being Verulana Gratilla, who was taken thither, not by the love
of children or kindred, but by the fascination of war. The
Vitellianists kept but a careless watch over the besieged, and
thus at the dead of night Sabinus was able to bring into the
Capitol his own children and Domitian his brother's son, and to
send by an unguarded route a messenger to the generals of the
Flavianist party, with information that they were besieged, and
that, unless succour arrived, they must be reduced to distress.
The night passed so quietly that he might have quitted the place
without loss; for, brave as were the soldiers of Vitellius in
encountering danger, they were far from attentive to the
laborious duties of watching. Besides this, the sudden fall of a
winter storm baffled both sight and hearing.
At dawn of day, before either side commenced hostilities, Sabinus
sent Cornelius Martialis, a centurion of the first rank, to
Vitellius, with instructions to complain of the infraction of the
stipulated terms. "There has evidently," he said, "been a mere
show and pretence of abdicating the Empire, with the view of
deceiving a number of distinguished men. If not, why, when
leaving the Rostra, had he gone to the house of his brother,
looking as it did over the Forum, and certain to provoke the gaze
of the multitude, rather than to the Aventine, and the family
house of his wife? This would have befitted a private individual
anxious to shun all appearance of Imperial power. But on the
contrary, Vitellius retraced his steps to the palace, the very
stronghold of Empire; thence issued a band of armed men. One of
the most frequented parts of the city was strewed with the
corpses of innocent persons. The Capitol itself had not been
spared. "I," said Sabinus, "was only a civilian and a member of
the Senate, while the rivalry of Vitellius and Vespasian was
being settled by conflicts between legions, by the capture of
cities, by the capitulation of cohorts; with Spain, Germany, and
Britain in revolt, the brother of Vespasian still remained firm
to his allegiance, till actually invited to discuss terms of
agreement. Peace and harmony bring advantage to the conquered,
but only credit to the conqueror. 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. He
advised Martialis to depart unobserved through a concealed part
of the palace, lest he should be killed by the soldiers, as the
negotiator of this abhorred convention. Vitellius had not now the
power either to command or to forbid. He was no longer Emperor,
he was merely the cause of war.
Martialis had hardly returned to the Capitol, when the infuriated
soldiery arrived, without any leader, every man acting on his own
impulse. They hurried at quick march past the Forum and the
temples which hang over it, and advanced their line up the
opposite hill as far as the outer gates of the Capitol. There
were formerly certain colonnades on the right side of the slope
as one went up; the defenders, issuing forth on the roof of these
buildings, showered tiles and stones on the Vitellianists. The
assailants were not armed with anything but swords, and it seemed
too tedious to send for machines and missiles. They threw lighted
brands on a projecting colonnade, and following the track of the
fire would have burst through the half burnt gates of the
Capitol, had not Sabinus, tearing down on all sides the statues,
the glories of former generations, formed them into a barricade
across the opening. They then assailed the opposite approaches to
the Capitol, near the grove of the Asylum, and where the Tarpeian
rock is mounted by a hundred steps. Both these attacks were
unexpected; the closer and fiercer of the two threatened the
Asylum. The assailants could not be checked as they mounted the
continuous line of buildings, which, as was natural in a time of
profound peace, had grown up to such a height as to be on a level
with the soil of the Capitol. A doubt arises at this point,
whether it was the assailants who threw lighted brands on to the
roofs, or whether, as the more general account has it, the
besieged thus sought to repel the assailants, who were now making
vigorous progress. From them the fire passed to the colonnades
adjoining the temples; the eagles supporting the pediment, which
were of old timber, caught the flames. And so the Capitol, with
its gates shut, neither defended by friends, nor spoiled by a
foe, was burnt to the ground.
This was the most deplorable and disgraceful event that had
happened to the Commonwealth of Rome since the foundation of the
city; for now, assailed by no foreign enemy, with Heaven ready to
be propitious, had our vices only allowed, the seat of Jupiter
Supremely Good and Great, founded by our ancestors with solemn
auspices to be the pledge of Empire, the seat, which neither
Porsenna, when the city was surrendered, nor the Gauls, when it
was captured, had been able to violate, was destroyed by the
madness of our Emperors. Once before indeed during civil war the
Capitol had been consumed by fire, but then only through the
crime of individuals; now it was openly besieged, and openly set
on fire. And what were the motives of this conflict? what the
compensation for so great a disaster? was it for our country we
were fighting? King Tarquinius Priscus had vowed its erection in
his war with the Sabines, and had laid the foundations on a scale
which suited the hopes of future greatness rather than what the
yet moderate resources of Rome could achieve. After him, Servius
Tullius, heartily assisted by the allies, and Tarquinius
Superbus, employing the spoils of war from the conquered Suessa
Pometia, raised the superstructure. But the glory of its
completion was reserved for the days of liberty. After the
expulsion of the Kings, Horatius Pulvillus, in his second
consulate, dedicated it, a building so magnificent, that the vast
wealth afterwards acquired by the people of Rome served to
embellish rather than increase it. It was rebuilt on the same
site, when, after an interval of 415 years, it was burnt to the
ground in the consulate of Lucius Scipio and Caius Norbanus.
Sulla, after his final triumph, undertook the charge of restoring
it, but did not live to dedicate it, the one thing denied to his
uniform good fortune. The name of Lutatius Catulus, the
dedicator, remained among all the vast erections of the Emperors,
down to the days of Vitellius. This was the building that was now
on fire.
The catastrophe, however, caused more panic among the besieged
than among the besiegers. 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. Then, as usually happens when
everything is lost, all gave orders, and no one obeyed. At last,
they threw away their arms, and began to look about for ways of
escape and means of concealment. The Vitellianists burst in,
carrying everywhere with indiscriminate ferocity the firebrand
and the sword. A few of the military men, among whom the most
conspicuous were Cornelius Martialis, Aemilius Pacensis,
Casperius Niger, and Didius Sceva, ventured to resist, and were
cut down. Flavius Sabinus, who was unarmed, and who did not
attempt to fly, was surrounded, and with him the consul Quinctius
Atticus, marked out by his clinging to the shadow of office, and
by his folly in having scattered among the people edicts highly
eulogistic of Vespasian and insulting to Vitellius. The rest
escaped by various chances, some disguised as slaves, others
concealed by the fidelity of dependants, and hiding among the
baggage. Some caught the watchword by which the Vitellianists
recognised each other, and, themselves challenging others and
giving it when challenged, found in their audacity an effectual
disguise.
When the enemy first burst in, Domitian concealed himself in the
house of a servant of the temple. At the ingenious suggestion of
a freedman, he assumed a linen vestment, and passing unnoticed
among a crowd of acolytes, found a refuge with Cornelius Primus,
one of his father's dependants, in a house near the Velabrum.
When his father mounted the throne, he pulled down the chamber of
the temple servant, and built a small chapel, dedicated to
Jupiter the Preserver, with an altar on which his own adventures
were represented in marble. Afterwards, on his own accession to
the Imperial power, he consecrated a vast temple to Jupiter the
Guardian, with an effigy of himself in the arms of the god.
Sabinus and Atticus were loaded with chains, and conducted to
Vitellius, who received them with anything but anger in his words
and looks, amidst the murmurs of those who demanded the privilege
of slaying them and their pay for the work they had done. Those
who were standing near began the clamour, and the degraded rabble
cried out for the execution of Sabinus, and mingled threats with
their flatteries. Vitellius, who was standing before the steps of
the palace, and was preparing to intercede, was induced to
desist. The body of Sabinus, pierced and mutilated and with the
head severed from it, was dragged to the Gemoniae.
Such was the end of a man in no wise contemptible. In five and
thirty campaigns he had served the State, and had gained
distinction both at home and abroad. His blamelessness and
integrity no one could question. He was somewhat boastful; this
was the only fault of which rumour accused him in the seven years
during which he had governed Moesia, and the twelve during which
he was prefect of the city. In the closing scene of his life some
have seen pusillanimity, many a moderate temper, sparing of the
blood of his countrymen. One thing is allowed by all, that,
before the accession of Vespasian, the distinction of the family
was centred in Sabinus. I have heard that his death gratified
Mucianus, and many indeed asserted that the interests of peace
were promoted by the removal of the rivalry between these two
men, one of whom felt himself to be the brother of the Emperor,
while the other thought himself his colleague. Vitellius resisted
the demands of the people for the execution of the Consul; he was
now pacified, and wished, it would seem, to recompense Atticus,
who, when asked who had set fire to the Capitol, had confessed
his own guilt, and by this confession, which may indeed have been
an opportune falsehood, was thought to have taken upon himself
the odium of the crime, and to have acquitted the Vitellianist
party.
Meanwhile Lucius Vitellius, who was encamped near Feronia, was
threatening Tarracina with destruction. There were shut up in the
place a few gladiators and seamen, who dared not leave the walls
and risk an engagement in the plain. I have mentioned before that
Julianus was in command of the gladiators, Apollinaris of the
seamen, two men whose profligacy and indolence made them resemble
gladiators rather than generals. They kept no watch; they did not
strengthen the weak points of the fortifications; but, making
each pleasant spot ring with the noise of their daily and nightly
dissipation, they dispersed their soldiers on errands which were
to minister to their luxury, and never spoke of war, except at
their banquets. Apinius Tiro had quitted the place a few days
before, and was now, by the harsh exaction of presents and
contributions from the towns, adding to the unpopularity rather
than to the resources of his party.
Meanwhile a slave belonging to Verginius Capito deserted to L.
Vitellius, and having engaged, on being furnished with a force,
to put him in possession of the unoccupied citadel, proceeded at
a late hour of the night to place some light armed cohorts on the
summit of a range of hills which commanded the enemy's position.
From this place the troops descended to what was more a massacre
than a conflict. Many whom they slew were unarmed or in the act
of arming themselves, some were just awaking from sleep, amid the
confusion of darkness and panic, the braying of trumpets, and the
shouts of the foe. A few of the gladiators resisted, and fell not
altogether unavenged. The rest made a rush for the ships, where
everything was involved in a general panic, the troops being
mingled with country people, whom the Vitellianists slaughtered
indiscriminately. Six Liburnian ships with Apollinaris, prefect
of the fleet, escaped in the first confusion. The rest were
either seized upon the beach, or were swamped by the weight of
the crowds that rushed on board. Julianus was brought before L.
Vitellius, and, after being ignominiously scourged, was put to
death in his presence. Some persons accused Triaria, the wife of
L. Vitellius, of having armed herself with a soldier's sword, and
of having behaved with arrogance and cruelty amid the horrors and
massacres of the storm of Tarracina. Lucius himself sent to his
brother a laurelled dispatch with an account of his success, and
asked whether he wished him at once to return to Rome, or to
complete the subjugation of Campania. This circumstance was
advantageous to the State as well as to the cause of Vespasian.
Had the army fresh from victory, and with all the pride of
success added to its natural obstinacy, marched upon Rome, a
conflict of no slight magnitude, and involving the destruction of
the capital, must have ensued. Lucius Vitellius, infamous as he
was, had yet some energy, but it was not through his virtues, as
is the case with the good, but through his vices, that he, like
the worst of villains, was formidable.
While these successes were being achieved on the side of
Vitellius, the army of Vespasian had left Narnia, and was passing
the holiday of the Saturnalia in idleness at Ocriculum. The
reason alleged for so injurious a delay was that they might wait
for Mucianus. Some persons indeed there were who assailed
Antonius with insinuations, that he lingered with treacherous
intent, after receiving private letters from Vitellius, which
conveyed to him the offer of the consulship and of the Emperor's
daughter in marriage with a vast dowry, as the price of treason.
Others asserted that this was all a fiction, invented to please
Mucianus. Some again alleged that the policy agreed upon by all
the generals was to threaten rather than actually to attack the
capital, as Vitellius' strongest cohorts had revolted from him,
and it seemed likely that, deprived of all support, he would
abdicate the throne, but that the whole plan was ruined by the
impatience and subsequent cowardice of Sabinus, who, after rashly
taking up arms, had not been able to defend against three cohorts
the great stronghold of the Capitol, which might have defied even
the mightiest armies. One cannot, however, easily fix upon one
man the blame which belongs to all. Mucianus did in fact delay
the conquerors by ambiguously worded dispatches; Antonius, by a
perverse acquiescence, or by an attempt to throw the odium upon
another, laid himself open to blame; the other generals, by
imagining that the war was over, contrived a distinction for its
closing scene. Even Petilius Cerialis, though he had been sent on
with a thousand cavalry by crossroads through the Sabine district
so as to enter Rome by the Via Salaria, had not been sufficiently
prompt in his movements, when the report of the siege of the
Capitol put all alike on the alert.
Antonius marched by the Via Flaminia, and arrived at Saxa Rubra,
when the night was far spent, too late to give any help. There he
received nothing but gloomy intelligence, that Sabinus was dead,
that the Capitol had been burnt to the ground, that Rome was in
consternation, and also that the populace and the slaves were
arming themselves for Vitellius. And Petilius Cerialis had been
defeated in a cavalry skirmish. While he was hurrying on without
caution, as against a vanquished enemy, the Vitellianists, who
had disposed some infantry among their cavalry, met him. The
conflict took place not far from the city among buildings,
gardens, and winding lanes, which were well known to the
Vitellianists, but disconcerting to their opponents, to whom they
were strange. Nor indeed were all the cavalry one in heart, for
there were with them some who had lately capitulated at Narnia,
and who were anxiously watching the fortunes of the rival
parties. Tullius Flavianus, commanding a squadron, was taken
prisoner; the rest fled in disgraceful confusion, but the victors
did not continue the pursuit beyond Fidenae.
By this success the zeal of the people was increased. The mob of
the city armed itself. Some few had military shields, the greater
part seized such arms as came to hand, and loudly demanded the
signal of battle. Vitellius expressed his thanks to them, and
bade them sally forth to defend the capital. Then the Senate was
called together, and envoys were selected to meet the armies and
urge them in the name of the Commonwealth to union and peace. The
reception of these envoys was not everywhere the same. Those who
fell in with Petilius Cerialis were exposed to extreme peril, for
the troops disdained all offers of peace. The praetor Arulenus
Rusticus was wounded. This deed seemed all the more atrocious,
when, over and above the insult offered to the dignity of the
envoy and praetor, men considered the private worth of the man.
His companions were dispersed, and the lictor that stood next to
him, venturing to push aside the crowd, was killed. Had they not
been protected by an escort provided by the general, the dignity
of the ambassador, respected even by foreign nations, would have
been profaned with fatal violence by the madness of Roman
citizens before the very walls of their Country. The envoys who
met Antonious were more favourably received, not because the
troops were of quieter temper, but because the general had more
authority.
One Musonius Rufus, a man of equestrian rank, strongly attached
to the pursuit of philosophy and to the tenets of the Stoics, had
joined the envoys. He mingled with the troops, and, enlarging on
the blessings of peace and the perils of war, began to admonish
the armed crowd. Many thought it ridiculous; more thought it
tiresome; some were ready to throw him down and trample him under
foot, had he not yielded to the warnings of the more orderly and
the threats of others, and ceased to display his ill timed
wisdom. The Vestal virgins also presented themselves with a
letter from Vitellius to Antonius. He asked for one day of truce
before the final struggle, and said, that if they would permit
some delay to intervene, everything might be more easily
arranged. The sacred virgins were sent back with honour, but the
answer returned to Vitellius was, that all ordinary intercourse
of war had been broken off by the murder of Sabinus and the
conflagration of the Capitol.
Antonius, however, summoned the legions to an assembly, and
endeavoured to calm them, proposing that they should encamp near
the Mulvian bridge, and enter the capital on the following day.
His reason for delay was the fear that the soldiers, once
exasperated by conflict, would respect neither the people nor the
Senate, nor even the shrines and temples of the Gods. They,
however, looked with dislike on all procrastination as inimical
to victory. At the same time the colours that glittered among the
hills, though followed by an unwarlike population, presented the
appearance of a hostile array. They advanced in three divisions,
one column straight from where they had halted along the Via
Flaminia, another along the bank of the Tiber, a third moved on
the Colline Gate by the Via Salaria. The mob was routed by a
charge of the cavalry. Then the Vitellianist troops, themselves
also drawn up in three columns of defence, met the foe. Numerous
engagements with various issue took place before the walls, but
they generally ended in favour of the Flavianists, who had the
advantage of more skilful generalship. Only that division
suffered which had wound its way along narrow and slippery roads
to the left quarter of the city as far as the gardens of Sallust.
The Vitellianists, taking their stand on the garden walls, kept
off the assailants with stones and javelins till late in the day,
when they were taken in the rear by the cavalry, which had then
forced an entrance by the Colline Gate. In the Campus Martius
also the hostile armies met, the Flavianists with all the
prestige of fortune and repeated victory, the Vitellianists
rushing on in sheer despair. Though defeated, they rallied again
in the city.
The populace stood by and watched the combatants; and, as though
it had been a mimic conflict, encouraged first one party and then
the other by their shouts and plaudits. Whenever either side gave
way, they cried out that those who concealed themselves in the
shops, or took refuge in any private house, should be dragged out
and butchered, and they secured the larger share of the booty;
for, while the soldiers were busy with bloodshed and massacre,
the spoils fell to the crowd. It was a terrible and hideous sight
that presented itself throughout the city. Here raged battle and
death; there the bath and the tavern were crowded. In one spot
were pools of blood and heaps of corpses, and close by
prostitutes and men of character as infamous; there were all the
debaucheries of luxurious peace, all the horrors of a city most
cruelly sacked, till one was ready to believe the Country to be
mad at once with rage and lust. It was not indeed the first time
that armed troops had fought within the city; they had done so
twice when Sulla, once when Cinna triumphed. The bloodshed then
had not been less, but now there was an unnatural recklessness,
and men's pleasures were not interrupted even for a moment. As if
it were a new delight added to their holidays, they exulted in
and enjoyed the scene, indifferent to parties, and rejoicing over
the sufferings of the Commonwealth.
The most arduous struggle was the storming of the camp, which the
bravest of the enemy still held as a last hope. It was,
therefore, with peculiar energy that the conquerors, among whom
the veteran cohorts were especially forward, brought to bear upon
it at once all the appliances which have been discovered in
reducing the strongest cities, the testudo, the catapult, the
earth work, and the firebrand. They repeatedly shouted "that all
the toil and danger they had endured in so many conflicts would
be crowned by this achievement. The capital has been restored to
the Senate and people of Rome, and their temples to the Gods; but
the soldier's peculiar distinction is in the camp; this is his
country, and this his home; unless this be recovered forthwith,
the night must be passed under arms." On the other hand the
Vitellianists, though unequal in numbers and doomed to defeat,
could yet disturb the victory, delay the conclusion of peace, and
pollute both hearth and altar with blood; and they clung to these
last consolations of the vanquished. Many, desperately wounded,
breathed their last on the towers and ramparts. When the gates
were torn down, the survivors threw themselves in a body on the
conquerors, and fell to a man, with their wounds in front and
their faces turned towards the foe, so anxious were they even in
their last hours to die with honour. When the city had been
taken, Vitellius caused himself to be carried in a litter through
the back of the palace to the Aventine, to his wife's dwelling,
intending, if by any concealment he could escape for that day, to
make his way to his brother's cohorts at Tarracina. Then, with
characteristic weakness, and following the instincts of fear,
which, dreading everything, shrinks most from what is immediately
before it, he retraced his steps to the desolate and forsaken
palace, whence even the meanest slaves had fled, or where they
avoided his presence. The solitude and silence of the place
scared him; he tried the closed doors, he shuddered in the empty
chambers, till, wearied out with his miserable wanderings, he
concealed himself in an unseemly hiding place, from which he was
dragged out by the tribune Julius Placidus. His hands were bound
behind his back, and he was led along with tattered robes, a
revolting spectacle, amidst the invectives of many, the tears of
none. The degradation of his end had extinguished all pity. One
of the German soldiers met the party, and aimed a deadly blow at
Vitellius, perhaps in anger, perhaps wishing to release him the
sooner from insult. Possibly the blow was meant for the tribune.
He struck off that officer's ear, and was immediately dispatched.
Vitellius, compelled by threatening swords, first to raise his
face and offer it to insulting blows, then to behold his own
statues falling round him, and more than once to look at the
Rostra and the spot where Galba was slain, was then driven along
till they reached the Gemoniae, the place where the corpse of
Flavius Sabinus had lain. One speech was heard from him shewing a
spirit not utterly degraded, when to the insults of a tribune he
answered, "Yet I was your Emperor." Then he fell under a shower
of blows, and the mob reviled the dead man with the same
heartlessness with which they had flattered him when he was
alive.
Luceria was his native place. He had nearly completed his 57th
year. His consulate, his priesthood, his high reputation, his
place among the first men of the State, he owed, not to any
energy of his own, but to the renown of his father. The throne
was offered him by men who did not know him. Seldom have the
affections of the army attached themselves to any man who sought
to gain them by his virtues as firmly as they did to him from the
indolence of his character. Yet he had a certain frankness and
generosity, qualities indeed which turn to a man's ruin, unless
tempered with discretion. Believing that friendship may be
retained by munificent gifts rather than by consistency of
character, he deserved more of it than he secured. Doubtless it
was good for the State that Vitellius should be overthrown, but
they who betrayed Vitellius to Vespasian cannot make a merit of
their treachery, since they had themselves revolted from Galba.
The day was now fast drawing to a close, and the Senate could not
be convened, owing to the panic of the magistrates and Senators,
who had stolen out of the city, or were concealing themselves in
the houses of dependants. When nothing more was to be feared from
the enemy, Domitian came forward to meet the leaders of the
party; he was universally saluted by the title of Caesar, and the
troops, in great numbers, armed as they were, conducted him to
his father's house.
