by Gwyn Morgan
Consul for the first time in 34, Lucius was appointed governor of Syria with extraordinary powers, to conduct delicate negotiations with the king of Parthia, who was then threatening Rome’s eastern frontier. So successful were his efforts that Lucius endeared himself both to Tiberius and, no mean feat, to his successor, Caligula. He found another use for his diplomatic skills when he returned to Rome in 40, the most notorious instance being his response to a question few others could have fielded. When asked by Caligula if he could see the Moon in the emperor’s company, Vitellius replied promptly that “only you gods, Master, can see one another.” Still, Lucius reached his apogee under Claudius, being consul ordinarius with the emperor twice (in 43 and 47), serving as his regent during the months Claudius was away on his British expedition, and holding the censorship with him in 47/48. Last heard of in 51, Lucius died soon after, of a stroke according to Suetonius, and was honored by Claudius with a state funeral and a statue bearing the inscription “of unshakable loyalty to his emperor.”
Lucius married Sextilia, a woman of indifferent ancestry but monumental virtue. She needed the latter during her husband’s life and she refused to forsake it after his death. Though Lucius was honest and energetic in his public life, he had no qualms about currying favor in the most outrageous manner, not only with the freedmen but also with the womenfolk of the imperial house. In Tiberius’ reign he cultivated Antonia Minor, the mother of Claudius; and in Claudius’ reign he charmed each of the emperor’s wives, first Messallina and then Agrippina the Younger. Indeed, he played a major role in smoothing out the legal and religious problems created by Claudius’ decision to marry his niece. Besides this, says Suetonius, he acquired a terrible reputation as a result of his passion for a freedwoman: “he even used to take her saliva, mixed with honey, as a soothing remedy when he had a sore throat, and this he did, not secretly or rarely, but openly every day.”
Sextilia bore Lucius two sons, Aulus and Lucius. Of Lucius, the younger, we know only that, before 69, he usually followed in his brother’s footsteps: they held the consulship for 48 one after the other (Aulus as ordinarius, Lucius as suffectus), and they governed the province Africa in sequence in the early 60s. Lucius made a good first marriage, to a great-great-granddaughter of Augustus, but that ended in divorce in 49. Subsequently, he married the less well born, if far more formidable Triaria, but they had no children—a nondevelopment for which those who knew Triaria should have been profoundly grateful. Lucius came into his own only in 69, and then because he was the emperor’s brother. So he was “invited” to join Otho’s entourage because he was too dangerous to be left in Rome while the emperor conducted a campaign in northern Italy. And once his brother had won that war, he became his most stalwart defender.
The date of Aulus’ birth is disputed. Suetonius reports that he was born, in Rome no doubt, on 7 or 24 September. The biographer prefers the later date, but the earlier is commonly held to be correct, largely because it provides what is thought a more satisfactory chronological datum for the campaign that began soon after his birthday in 69 and ended with his overthrow. There is similar uncertainty over the year, 12 or 15. Again Suetonius opts for the later date, but this time the earlier must be right if the emperor died at the age of 57, as a majority of our sources report. (One possible solution to the conundrum is to hold that the brothers’ birthdates were confused, Aulus being born in 12 and Lucius in 15.) This kind of detail fascinates Suetonius anyway, even when he gets the answers wrong. But in Vitellius’ case much more is involved. As Suetonius goes on to say, when the infant Aulus’ horoscope was cast, his parents were appalled. The astrologers predicted that if Vitellius was given command of an army, the result would be disaster. Now, Suetonius is not above ridiculing astrologers, but he no more doubts astrology than those who sue doctors have lost faith in medicine. So he tells this tale, with an excess of circumstantial detail and—it appears—after consultation with a friendly astrologer, because he has a very specific purpose in mind, to set the tone for a Life that must end badly. Like his placing Vitellius’ proclamation on 2 instead of 3 January, this is one of the signs he attaches to his account at moments of crisis, to remind the reader that this emperor is doomed.
The story of the horoscope is probably true. It looks very much as though the emperor’s father did all he could to prevent Aulus’ being assigned a military province, and his mother gave him up for lost when he was sent to Germany in 68. It is also a fact not only that Aulus developed a strong dislike of astrologers (when he needed a prediction in later days, he called on a German prophetess), but also that he held no military post before 68. His duties as consul in 48 were civil and formal (and his father, as censor with Claudius that year, was able to ride herd on him). His proconsulate of Africa in the early 60s involved no formal links with the military forces stationed in the province. And the one other official post he is known to have held before going to Germany, that of curator of public works, also kept him firmly in Rome (the year for which he held this office is uncertain). Yet here too the contradictory nature supposedly innate in Vitellii came to the surface, if we believe Suetonius. His administration of Africa was distinguished by flawless integrity (a detail confirmed by Tacitus), but his curatorship was allegedly a scandal: “he was said to have stolen some of the offerings and ornaments from the state temples, and to have exchanged others, substituting tin and brass objects for the gold and silver originals.” If the story is true, incidentally, he must have run through the money almost at once. He was already penniless when he set out for Lower Germany in the autumn of 68.
The same contradiction shows up in Aulus’ marriages. In the mid-30s, when his father was governing Syria, out of sight but scarcely out of mind, Aulus married Petronia, a woman of prominent family whose father was to become another boon companion of Claudius. This marriage broke up around the time that Aulus’ father died, coincidentally or not, and Petronia went on to marry Cornelius Dolabella, the kinsman of Galba. By Petronia, anyway, Aulus had a son who was blind in one eye and whom he subsequently poisoned. According to Suetonius’ account, Petronia died fairly soon after she remarried, and in her will she left the boy some property on condition that his father emancipate him (hence his being named Vitellius Petronianus). Since this property would go to the father so long as the boy died without issue, Vitellius charged his son with an attempt to kill him, and the boy swallowed poison, according to Aulus a draught he had planned to administer to his loving parent. Whatever the truth of this tale, Aulus also remarried, taking as his wife Galeria Fundana, a relative of Otho’s alleged speechwriter, Publius Galerius Trachalus. By her he had two children, a girl who was born first though we cannot establish when, and a boy who was six years old in 69. And he seems to have loved all three deeply, perhaps because his was a changeable nature, perhaps because this time he chose his partner.
As if this were not enough, Aulus is said to have been tall, a good thing, but out of proportion, a very bad sign. By the time he died, after 12 months of unrelenting self-indulgence, his face was flushed with his drinking and he had developed a potbelly. And he limped, another bad sign in the eyes of aristocrats who held strong views on the need for graceful deportment no less than a well-proportioned physique. Yet despite the maneuvering of his father, his mother’s disapproval, an undistinguished career, one misadventure in matrimony, and off-putting looks, Vitellius found a way to reach the top. According to Suetonius, he became one of Tiberius’ minions on Capri (this is a certainly untrue, and not merely because it is attached to a claim that his physical charms advanced his father’s career). But to Caligula he endeared himself by sharing the emperor’s passion for chariot racing (this was how he acquired his limp); to Claudius by showing the same enthusiasm for dicing; and to Nero by acting as a leader of the claque whose function it was to applaud the emperor’s acting and singing.
None of this proves that Vitellius was unversed in the etiquette expected of senators, although a few anecdotes we have about his c
onduct in senate meetings before and after his elevation suggest that it was so. There is no evidence that he developed a contempt for the senate and senatorial values to match that the senate showed for him, the contempt that induced Galba to make him governor of Lower Germany in the first place. Rather, he seems to have been as awkward in his dealing with his peers as he was ungainly in his appearance and, for that matter, clumsy in expressing himself (Tacitus never gives him a speech). Nor would the snooty upper reaches of Roman society have been reassured if, like Claudius, he compensated for this with the “common touch” so evident in his journey to and his first month in Lower Germany. All in all, it seems reasonable to argue that despite the gusto Aulus displayed during the first month of his new command, he soon found—and knew—himself to be out of his depth. Overcome by the troops’ hailing him emperor, a step he had neither sought nor anticipated, he may even have gone into a kind of fugue. It is as good an explanation as any for his falling into what Tacitus calls a torpor, in which, day after day, “he anticipated his elevation to the principate in luxurious idleness and lavish banquets, tipsy by noon and stuffed with food.”
Even if Vitellius paid insufficient attention to the proprieties, his personal failings alone do not explain this disregard for decorum. We must also take into account his two self-appointed lieutenants, Caecina and Valens, both largely unconcerned with gentlemanly behavior. Normally, the position of legionary legate was given to men who had held the praetorship, that is, to men who were launched on their political careers but not yet assured of high office, provided always that this is what they sought. If things went well, they held the post normally for two or three years, in their early to mid-thirties, when they were thought old enough to be aware of their duties, but too young and, perhaps, too “unsocialized” to be entrusted with a major command or another senior position, one more reason no doubt for making them answerable directly to the governor of the province in which their legion was stationed. But the system was not yet set in stone, and there were two types of exception to this rule, both likely to involve misfits.
The first category was represented by men who reached this post much earlier in life, as did Caecina—and as did Vespasian’s son Titus. Josephus tells us that Vespasian had frequently to rebuke Titus for his rashness. Caecina was even more of a handful. From Vicetia, a small village north of Verona, he was a good-looking young man, probably around 26 years old (as quaestor of Baetica he should have been 25 in 68). He must have been over six feet tall, as his height is said to have been as enormous as his ambitions, and the latter were fanned hugely by Galba, when the latter rewarded him for his services in Spain by making him a legionary legate. In Germany his temperament above all endeared him to the troops. Fast-talking and impetuous, he was open, generous, energetic, and undeniably charismatic. He was also an adventurer. The moment he was threatened with indictment for embezzlement, he concluded that he had nothing to lose by encouraging Galba’s overthrow, and everything to gain from a display of military prowess on Vitellius’ behalf. Glory, high office, and influence at court would all be his at an impressively early age, he seems to have believed, so long as he seized every opportunity for deeds of derring-do.
The second kind of misfit was represented by the men who received the appointment later in life. Two who clearly fall into this category, Titus Vinius and Marcus Antonius Primus (Galba’s appointee to VII Galbiana), had suffered setbacks in their career, and were impatient with or contemptuous of a system they could blame for holding them back. Fabius Valens apparently fell into this category too, for all that he traveled a different route. Tacitus tells us that he was born of an equestrian family from Anagnia (Anagni) in Latium and spent his youth in poverty. Completely immoral but by no means unintelligent (Tacitus’ wording), Valens caught Nero’s eye at the “Festival of Youth” in 59. So he decided to win himself a reputation as a man of the world by his rakishness, and then parlayed this somehow into a senatorial career and an appointment as legionary legate of I Germanica. Since Tacitus states explicitly that Valens was “an old man” in 69, he should have been in his forties. The troops found him too crafty to trust and too tight-fisted to like, but his skills and his delight lay in intrigue and manipulation, as is evident from his dealings with Verginius Rufus, Fonteius Capito, and now Vitellius. And Valens saw a war against Galba as a way of taking revenge on an emperor who had treated him shoddily, of gratifying his taste for plunder and satisfying his varied sexual appetites, and of securing entry into the upper reaches of the senate by gaining high office.
Even a strong-willed commander would have found it difficult to control Caecina and Valens. Vitellius never stood a chance. So the uprising was masterminded by two men who never considered playing by the established rules. One reason for Tacitus’ almost unremitting contempt for Vitellius, in fact, seems to spring from the conviction that he allowed these two to run wild. And it is for the same reason that Suetonius’ Life of Vitellius lacks much substantive detail. Under the rules laid down for biography, the writer omitted matters handled by the friends or subordinates of his subject. So Suetonius ignored almost every action taken by Caecina and Valens, and could capture the tenor of the new administration only with the vague assertion that Vitellius conducted his eight-month reign “largely according to the whims of actors and charioteers.”
Once Vitellius had been proclaimed emperor, there could be no going back. So long as Galba held power in Rome, there was no hope of negotiation, and the Rhine legions would not learn of his assassination until the last days of January. Now Tacitus, for much of the time our only guide to the opening moves in this campaign, brings out the enthusiasm of the soldiery at the start by drawing a vivid contrast between the urgency with which they demanded action and the lethargy of their commander. Making his point in a manner worthier of Plutarch, he declares that the soldiery would brook no delays: “winter was no obstacle, nor hesitancy about breaking a peace only cowards would observe; they must invade Italy at once and seize control of Rome itself.” The contrast between emperor and soldiery has tended to overshadow the implications of the phrase “hesitancy about breaking a peace only cowards would observe.” We could dismiss it as a rhetorical flourish, or see it as a reference to Vitellius’ reluctance to take action. But as Tacitus revels in conveying important information obliquely, the remark probably reflects a disagreement, not between Vitellius and his troops, but between his officers, a disagreement similar to the one that would preoccupy the Flavian commanders in September.
The basic point is simple. Given a choice, Roman armies tended to avoid campaigning in winter. So it would not be surprising if some—a majority even—of the Vitellian officers argued for delaying the start of their campaign until the weather improved. In Germany they would not have suspected that the winter of 68/69 would be unusually mild. The counterargument, that neither winter nor delay would serve their purposes, can be attributed to Vitellius’ two henchmen. Caecina must almost certainly have thought that to launch an offensive forthwith would get things off to a dashing start befitting his self-image. Valens may have been less enthusiastic, but he could not afford to let himself be outshone by Caecina, an interloper who was taking advantage of the plotting Valens had fostered for so long. This could even have been the spark that ignited Valens’ dislike for Caecina and prompted him to engage in the feuding that would continue almost unabated until his death. So even if their motives differed, these two probably urged immediate action, because that alone could bring them the immediate advancement they coveted.
It was by no means unrealistic for the Vitellians to imagine that they could win a victory in any war they fought. The Rhine legions were considered to be, and may have been, the finest troops in the empire. They quickly won important support too. Although governors and commanders in the nearby provinces had no choice but to join them, their first supporters seem to have been genuinely enthusiastic. They included the governor of Belgica, Valerius Asiaticus, whose reward was briefly to be Vitelli
us’ son-in-law; Galba’s choice as governor of Lugdunensis, Junius Blaesus; and the commander of I Italica in Lugdunum, Manlius Valens, probably 63 years old and apparently a career military man. There was the promise of aid from Britain as well, but as the governor, Trebellius Maximus, was feuding with his legionary legates, detachments from the British legions would arrive only after the campaign against Otho had been won. Meanwhile, the resources to fund the war were volunteered not only by the Lingones and the Treveri, but by the leading men of nearby communities, Roman and indigenous, and even by the troops themselves. Of their own accord they contributed their savings and their decorations of gold and silver.2
The plan of campaign, surely worked out by Caecina and Valens in the headquarters at Colonia Agrippinensis, was straightforward, to dispatch two columns to Italy by two different routes, and to crush any opposition. Henderson claimed that behind this there lay an ambitious two-pronged strategy, designed sooner or later to envelop the enemy in a pincer movement. Such interpretations are anachronistic. Strategy as we understand it had not been invented, and Roman generals, like Roman military manuals, seldom functioned or needed to function at anything above the tactical level. And the Vitellians’ plan was based on sound tactical thinking. Splitting the invasion force would ease supply problems, for the troops as well as for the communities across whose lands they marched. And two relatively small columns could make better speed than one large one on the trek to Italy, this when speed was of the essence.