69 AD: The Year of Four Emperors

by Gwyn Morgan

  For much of what follows Tacitus is our sole source, and as usual he does the unexpected. A modern historian would probably turn next either to the dispositions made of the defeated troops, or else to Vitellius’ activities now that he was the uncontested emperor of Rome. After all, one would not expect the Vitellians to have left large numbers of Othonians milling around unsupervised in northern Italy, while an immediate transition to a description of how Vitellius took the news of his victory would point up his inadequacies as Otho’s successor. But the way Tacitus tells the story suggests that Caecina and Valens thought the Othonians’ taking the oath of allegiance to Vitellius sufficient to keep them quiet until their new emperor issued appropriate orders. This detail is worth stressing, since it gives us another indication that oaths of allegiance were taken more seriously than we might imagine, for all that there was nobody else to whom the Othonians could appeal once Verginius refused to intervene. And since Tacitus delays all talk of Vitellius too, in order to introduce a string of other events in different parts of the empire, it looks as if his aim is not just to work in material for which he could find no other place. He wants also to illustrate the proposition that, as bad an emperor as Vitellius was, there was nobody else out there—as yet—with greater gifts of leadership. The long pause between Otho’s death in mid-April and Vitellius’ arrival in Rome around the end of June created a power vacuum like the one that had followed Nero’s suicide, but this time nobody in the city took control. Without a strong hand at the helm of the ship of state, the crew spent their time quarreling amongst themselves.

  The senators, for example, who were marooned at Mutina (Modena), some 30 miles southeast of Brixellum, had no idea what to do. True, they were handicapped by having an escort of Othonian soldiers who dismissed the news of their emperor’s defeat and death as rumor. But these were leading senators and they included Vitellius’ brother Lucius. Attempting desperately to avoid taking any official action until they were sure that Otho was dead, they quarreled with one another and, in the interim, fell back to Bononia (Bologna), another 24 miles further to the southeast. In fact, they would probably have continued this desultory progress in the general direction of Rome indefinitely, had not Valens sent them an official communiqué confirming the reports of Otho’s sucide and so putting them out of their misery.

  In Rome, on the other hand, the announcement of Otho’s death produced only indifference. The games in honor of Ceres (ludi Ceriales) were being held at the time (19 April), and when the audience heard that Otho was dead and that Flavius Sabinus, the prefect of the city, had administered the oath of allegiance to Vitellius to such armed forces as were based there, they only applauded politely. After the games, however, they went to the site where Galba had fallen, to heap flowers on the spot. Perhaps they felt genuine regret now that Galba was dead. Perhaps they were just performing a courtesy it would have been unsafe as well as unwise to carry out sooner. But they too received no official guidance. In a rump meeting of the senate it was decided that Vitellius should be granted all the titles due to an emperor without debate or dispute, a vote of thanks was passed in honor of the Rhine legions, and envoys were chosen to convey it to the troops. At the same time a dispatch from Fabius Valens was read to the senators, but this put their backs up. Miffed that the letter came from an underling, not from Vitellius, they stood on their dignity, and praised Caecina’s restraint in not having written to them.

  Meanwhile, so says Tacitus, the Vitellian troops showed no restraint. Since there was no plan to march the victorious troops to Rome until Vitellius could arrive and assume command, they were billeted in the towns of northern Italy, and spent their time looting and raping without regard for right and wrong. Tacitus concedes that there was a certain amount of score settling by civilians who pretended to be part of the army. But he insists that the soldiers who knew the area went around noting down the wealthy farms and the rich town houses, determined to strip them bare and, if necessary, to murder their owners. All this Caecina and Valens countenanced, the former more from popularity seeking than greed, the latter because he connived at the depredations of others to cover up his own. But the two generals could not have controlled the men anyway, so Tacitus asserts, to validate his thesis that Italy north of Rome was reduced to penury by this gigantic force of infantry and cavalry. This being a stock depiction of the brutal soldiery at play, it may or may not be true. Tacitus neglects to mention until later that Caecina and Valens would be summoned to a victory celebration in Lugdunum (Lyon), and so deprived of any chance personally to keep their troops in Italy under control, whether they wanted to or not.

  In this same period there was an uproar in the two procuratorial districts of Mauretania on the northwest coast of Africa: Tingitana, the more westerly, less settled region (Morocco and Fez); and Caesariensis, the relatively more civilized area (western Algeria), next to the Roman province Africa. Galba had entrusted both to Lucceius Albinus. When Galba was murdered, Lucceius inclined to join Otho, but he was determined to aggrandize himself too. So he raised additional troops, and began planning an incursion into Baetica, the richest province in Spain on the other side of the Straits of Gibraltar. He could justify this on the ground that the most important official in the peninsula, the unwarlike Cluvius Rufus in Tarraconensis, had deserted Otho for Vitellius. In the event, Cluvius thwarted Lucceius’ plans by sending several centurions across to Africa, to act as agents provocateurs and—if necessary—assassins. These men alienated Lucceius’ Roman supporters by spreading rumors that he planned making himself king, with all the trappings the native dynasts of Mauretania had once worn. But, interestingly, it was auxiliaries who murdered Lucceius, and his wife too, when she tried to shield him. But Tacitus makes little of this, since he sees the episode as another stick with which to belabor Vitellius for not enquiring into the details.

  This criticism provides Tacitus with the transition that enables him at long last to make Vitellius the main subject of his narrative. Yet his account still shows marked peculiarities. For a start, he says far more about Vitellius’ march to Rome than he does about his actions as emperor in Rome. Then too, the trek is fleshed out with more side stories. There was Mariccus, a Boian tribesman who caused an uproar in central Gaul by declaring himself a god and raising a band of 8,000 believers. With them he raided the territory of the neighboring tribe of the Aedui until he was caught and killed. There was a runaway slave named Geta, who caused alarm in northeastern Italy (Histria) by claiming to be a scion of the Sulpicii Camerini, an aristocratic family Nero had wiped out in 67. Finally, Tacitus cuts Vitellius’ trek in half, so that in between the two segments he can insert his description of Vespasian’s proclamation as emperor by the legions of Judaea, Syria, and Egypt. After all this, he telescopes Vitellius’ actions as emperor in Rome into about half the space he has devoted to the trek.

  Whatever other reasons are offered for Tacitus’ tactics, three are worth spelling out. First, setting Vespasian’s acclamation as emperor within his rival’s trek to Rome substantiated Tacitus’ view that the Flavian bid for the throne before Vitellius reached Rome (as Josephus tells us, Vespasian asserted the opposite). Second, the behavior of the Vitellian troops during the trek gave Vespasian’s henchman, Licinius Mucianus, the material for the arguments he used in a speech that supposedly helped precipitate the revolt. And third, the idea behind telescoping Vitellius’ actions in Rome, and perhaps backdating some of them to the period before he reached the city (a possibility suggested by Suetonius’ setting some of these incidents after Vitellius’ arrival in Rome), may have been to justify sidelining Vitellius as a sluggard once the fighting began. Tacitus will certainly focus on the campaigns conducted by Caecina, Valens, and their opponents from September onward, and reintroduce Vitellius himself only in his last days, when he played the role “not of an emperor but only of a cause for the fighting.”

  The net result is that it is even more difficult to reconstruct the “reign” of Vitellius than it is t
hose of Galba and Otho. The main lines he pursued, during his trek south and after his arrival in Rome, are clear enough. In his early days (and from this perspective there were no later days), Vitellius was preoccupied with the need to reward his allies, to neutralize his enemies, and to placate everybody else. So though he showed some restraint in punishing the Othonian soldiery, he took steps to disarm and disperse them, and meanwhile tried to gratify his own troops. Yet he did all this in a fashion that would work effectively only if his own position were not challenged by a new contender for the throne. And he was too ready to believe the news that, initially, the legions stationed in the eastern provinces were content to take the oath of allegiance to him. According to Tacitus, indeed, the arrival of such a report from Syria induced Vitellius and his troops to “break out into the cruelty, debauchery and rapine expected of an oriental despot.” This is a deliberate overstatement, designed to rest Tacitus’ transition from Vitellius to Vespasian on the paradoxical contrast between a quasi-Persian king in Rome and a simple Roman in the east. But Caecina and Valens too must have been relieved to hear this news. In the civil sphere Vitellius attempted to appease and reassure senators and populace, although this created as many problems as it solved. And fiscally, he found interesting methods for raising money to satisfy immediate needs. But all his actions smack of shortsighted opportunism, whether or not we attribute this—as Tacitus does—to the emperor’s indolence, his inability to focus on serious issues when his pleasures beckoned, and his tendency to change his mind whenever he was presented with a different viewpoint.

  This hand-to-mouth behavior is illustrated by the snippets of information we have about Vitellius’ dynastic plans. That he intended founding a dynasty is obvious. To this end he exploited both his children by Galeria Fundana. One of his first moves, taken at Lugdunum, was to proclaim the six-year-old boy his heir. Around the same time he betrothed his daughter to Decimus Valerius Asiaticus, a power in the land not only because his family came from Vienna (Vienne), but also because Asiaticus himself was governor of Gallia Belgica, an appointment—along with a consulship for 70—he owed seemingly to Galba. Both children were advertised from the first on Vitellius’ gold and silver coinage (he also honored his father on his gold coins). And Vitellius himself accepted from his troops the title “Germanicus,” aptly when he was the candidate of the Rhine legions, and this is his commonest title on the coinage.

  There has been some dispute over the interpetation of a comment that Tacitus and Suetonius report in almost exactly the same words. When the senate voted on 19 April to invest Vitellius with his assorted powers, “he sent an edict to Rome in which he put off the title ‘Augustus’ and refused that of ‘Caesar.’” That he rejected “Caesar” is understandable. By then the title was becoming the mark of the heir apparent (as in Piso’s case). But his “putting off” the title “Augustus” has been taken in opposite ways. Some see it as a statement of fact, in which case Vitellius was thinking of founding a new dynasty forthwith. Others regard it as a retrospective view of the situation, conditioned by the emperor’s giving in to popular pressure once he reached Rome and accepting the title anyway. The former possibility looks more straightforward and more likely too, and yet we are told that Vitellius hailed his mother “Augusta” as soon as he arrived in the city. This is not the only complication. Vitellius shared Otho’s fascination with Nero, and it was not long after his arrival in Rome that he carried out official sacrifices to Nero’s memory. The simplest solution may be to maintain that Vitellius wanted to satisfy everybody’s hopes for a return to normal conditions. So he fell in with whatever sentiments were expressed, no matter how contradictory. Playing things by ear, he presented himself as heir to Augustus, or Nero, or Galba, as the situation demanded.

  In any event, Vitellius was still in Gaul when the battle of Bedriacum was fought, and Suetonius trots out more omens of doom. Not only does he assert that “equestrian statues that were being erected to Vitellius all over the place suddenly fell down all at once with broken legs.” He also tells a story designed specifically to balance that of Fabius Valens’ eagle: “later, as he was dispensing justice on the tribunal at Vienna, a rooster perched first on his shoulder and then on his head.” Since the rooster indicated that he would be brought down by a man from Gaul, Antonius Primus as it turned out, “the outcome corresponded with these portents.” Tacitus ignores such twaddle, commenting merely that Vitellius was bustling about raising additional troops. These new recruits were sent north to join—and presumably to be trained by—the handful of veterans left on the Rhine frontier, and this entire area was entrusted to Hordeonius Flaccus. The balance of the German legionaries, constituted around XXII Primigenia, together with detachments totaling 8,000 men from the three legions in Britain (II Augusta, IX Hispana, and XX Valeria Victrix), Vitellius marched south through Gaul. The moment he heard of the victory, of course, he halted and heaped praises on his armies. But he did not cut too fine a figure, being still as poverty stricken as when he first arrived in Lower Germany. As a result, the governor of Lugdunensis, Junius Blaesus, generously provided him with all the splendors appropriate to his new rank, and it may have been in return for this that Vitellius decided to hold a victory celebration in Lugdunum.5

  For this ceremony Vitellius was joined not only by Caecina and Valens, but by four of Otho’s defeated generals, Suetonius Paulinus and Licinius Proculus, Marius Celsus and Salvius Titianus. Whether or not these four were part of the parade, Caecina and Valens figured prominently. They were praised loud and long, and then set one on each side of Vitellius’ own chair of office. After this he ordered his entire army to salute his young son, dressed him in the accouterments of an emperor, in effect proclaiming him officially his heir, and so—as Tacitus points out—condemned the boy to death once he himself fell from power. Against the boy’s future death Tacitus sets Vitellius’ ordering the execution of the most energetic of Otho’s centurions. How many suffered we do not know, but since Otho had built his conspiracy against Galba on noncommissioned officers, it made sense for Caecina and Valens to round up these loyalists, and bring them north for exemplary punishment. No steps were taken against the rest of the Othonian soldiery, but this restraint failed to offset the executions. They alienated the Balkan troops especially, and disquieted “all the other legions.”

  For Otho’s generals Vitellius showed open contempt. Paulinus and Proculus undoubtedly deserved it. Alleging that they had done everything possible to sabotage Otho’s campaign, they “were acquitted of loyalty” to their late emperor. Titianus was pardoned because of his devotion to Otho and his own incompetence. Only Marius Celsus came out of the episode well. Vitellius too, it seems, was willing to think him an honorable man, and allowed him to keep the consulship Otho had assigned to him. Celsus was supposed to hold office for July through September 69, and did so in fact for July and August, losing only a month, so that Caecina and Valens could be fitted into the schedule for September and October. Finally, there was Galerius Trachalus, Otho’s adviser and purported speechwriter. He was saved by Galeria, who apparently traveled north with her children to attend the celebration.

  In one area Vitellius showed no restraint: “if only Vitellius had been able to control his love of luxurious living, nobody would have had reason to fear his greed.” To support this observation, Tacitus gives us a synoptic description of Vitellius’ progress from Lugdunum to Rome. For lavish banquets, he declares, the emperor’s lust was as insatiable as it was disgraceful. Delicacies to tickle his palate had to be brought from every direction, so much so that the roads echoed with the creaking of the wagons conveying them. When he stayed with local dignitaries along the way, he beggared his hosts and devastated their towns. Exaggerated as this may be, it is not fiction. For Suetonius tells similar stories of the emperor’s behavior after he reached Rome. None of his banquets, he asserts, cost less than 400,000 sesterces, and Vitellius got through four a day. He goes into detail on the two most lavish affairs. The fi
rst was a cena adventicia, the kind of banquet put on for a friend or relative who had just returned from a journey or, in this case, from a term as governor of a province. This one was thrown for Vitellius by his brother Lucius, to honor the emperor’s arrival in the city. The second banquet was occasioned by Vitellius’ own wish to show off a brand new silver serving dish (Dio claims that it cost a million sesterces), in which he mixed delicacies brought from the ends of the earth. Suetonius rounds out his account with the comment that Vitellius was unable even so to resist eating between meals, devouring snacks whenever and wherever he found them. Still, the best anecdote is preserved by Dio. One of Vitellius’ courtiers, Vibius Crispus, had to absent himself from these eating marathons for several days because of illness. After recovering, he observed that if he had not fallen ill, the banquets would surely have killed him.

  To his version of Vitellius’ excesses Tacitus adds another, much weightier charge, that his troops—as Wellesley renders it—”became flabby and work-shy as they acquired a taste for indulgence and a contempt for their leader.” This is clearly another overstatement. Although the troops’ discipline suffered on the march to Rome and after their arrival, the rankers never grew contemptuous of their emperor. But the officers—Caecina and Valens above all—most certainly did. This being the first opportunity they had to observe Vitellius in his new guise as emperor, Caecina and Valens need not have been upset by the torpor he was now showing, since that gave them free rein to pursue their own plans. But it must have come as a nasty shock to find that they had been misled by the activism he had shown in his first month as commander of Lower Germany.