by Gwyn Morgan
To document the moderation Vitellius showed in all but his taste for luxury, Tacitus provides three examples. There was, first, his sending ahead to Rome the annnouncement that he was putting off the title “Augustus” and refusing that of “Caesar,” an announcement—Tacitus adds—that made no difference to his actual powers. Second, he ordered all astrologers expelled from Italy. On this Tacitus says no more, but Suetonius reports that the emperor ordered them to quit Italy by 1 October, and that the astrologers responded by publishing the wish that he would be dead by then. (Dio sharpens up the story by having the astrologers predict the correct date of his death, 20 December.) To explain this measure we need not hark back to Vitellius’ horoscope. Astrologers were a threat to public order whenever they forecast that somebody or other was destined to take the throne. Though Vespasian maintained a personal astrologer, he too expelled all other practitioners of the art from Rome once he had become emperor. As for the third example of Vitellius’ moderation, he forbade Roman knights to enroll in the gladiatorial schools or appear in the arena, practices that earlier emperors had condoned in Rome and so had spread through the municipalities of Italy, ever eager to ape the latest fashions in the capital.
Having paid Vitellius this tripartite, if backhanded, compliment, Tacitus once more sets the emperor on a downward path, but he subdivides his subject matter by categories in the Suetonian manner, making it virtually impossible to reconstruct the chronology of Vitellius’ movements. We know only where he was when Bedriacum was fought on 15 April (somewhere in Gaul), what point he had reached about 40 days later, in late May (he visited Bedriacum), and by what date he must have reached Rome (18 July). In any event, the first action reported under these several headings is Vitellius’ disposing once for all of what appeared to be the sole surviving claimant to the throne, the Cornelius Dolabella who had once been considered a possible successor to Galba. Put under house arrest in Aquinum by Otho, Dolabella returned to Rome as soon as he heard of the emperor’s suicide. One of his so-called friends thereupon informed the prefect of the city, Flavius Sabinus, that Dolabella was trying to win over the troops in Rome. Sabinus was reluctant to act on this wild charge, but his hand was forced by Triaria, Lucius Vitellius’ wife, who was “far more ferocious than women usually are.” So the details were forwarded to Vitellius and he reacted out of a mixture of fear and jealousy. Supposedly he hated Dolabella because the latter had married Vitellius’ first wife Petronia, and presumably had made her much happier than Vitellius had been able to. So the new emperor ordered Dolabella to take up residence in the town of Interamna (Terni) in Umbria. But he also ordered that he be accompanied by a man who would kill him on arrival. As it happened, the assassin was averse to a long, dull journey and killed his victim out of hand in a tavern on the main road north. The news spread quickly, of course, and people took it as a sign of the way Vitellius would behave in future—or so Tacitus says, illustrating not only the idea of the programmatic act that makes or breaks an emperor’s reputation, but also the presupposition that this act must take place in or very close to Italy before it registers.
Triaria’s role in this affair gives Tacitus his pretext for talking of the imperial womenfolk—and to strike another gloom-filled note. Triaria’s excesses, he asserts, were thrown into high relief by the moderation of Vitellius’ wife Galeria and his mother Sextilia. According to Dio, Galeria shared her husband’s taste for luxurious living, finding the interior decor of Nero’s “Golden House” laughably inadequate, but Tacitus observes merely that she was never involved in Vitellius’ grimmer acts. The only specific evidence is her intervention on behalf of her kinsman Trachalus. As for Sextilia, she is praised as a woman of the old school and a positive paragon of virtue, in other words, as a very depressing old lady. This is where Tacitus sets his version of the story that she gave her son up for lost when he became emperor. As he tells the tale, “the moment she heard that her son had been proclaimed emperor with the title ‘Germanicus,’ she responded that she had borne no Germanicus, only a Vitellius. Nor was she ever moved to joy by the enticements of fortune or the flattering attentions of the populace after that, but registered only the ills that had befallen her family.” As Tacitus will add later, she died a few days before Vitellius fell from power, and “by a timely death forestalled the destruction of her house.”
Next Tacitus takes up the fates of two provincial governors. The first was Cluvius Rufus in Tarraconensis. He left his province now, and hurried to join the emperor. On the surface he was all joy and congratulations, but underneath he was deeply fearful. An imperial freedman named Hilarus was alleging that Cluvius had tried to create a power base for himself in Spain, after the manner of Galba. The supposed evidence for this was his issuing official documents with neither Otho’s nor Vitellius’ name at the head (the implication being that Cluvius planned to set his own name there, not that he was sitting on the fence until he knew who would win), and that he had made speeches in which he had insulted Vitellius and sought popularity for himself. Cluvius was fluent enough not only to save himself, but also to induce Vitellius to punish Hilarus (Vitellius—like Claudius earlier—is said usually to have been the dupe of his freedmen). Yet Cluvius was not allowed to return to his province. He was attached to the emperor’s entourage and exercised his governorship in absentia. The other governor, Trebellius Maximus, was accorded less consideration. His feuding with the legates commanding Britain’s three legions had not only delayed the dispatch of the detachments summoned by Vitellius to aid the war effort, but by now had induced Trebellius to flee his province and take refuge with the emperor. Unimpressed, Vitellius sent out Marcus Vettius Bolanus, a man described as one of his intimates, but an intimate who would show him no loyalty when the time came, and by way of reward would be kept en poste by Vespasian until 71.
Although these stories help illustrate the different ways in which Vitellius dealt with possible threats to his own position, they are the kinds of details that might fascinate a Roman senator but tend to irritate modern readers, eager to learn more about Vitellius himself. It is worth noting, however, that Tacitus turns next to the final dispositions made in regard to Otho’s troops, leaving it to the reader to make the necessary connection. For the two most troublesome legions, XIV Gemina Martia Victrix and I Adiutrix, were sent to Britain and Spain respectively. The former was to exhaust its pugnacity fighting the unruly natives, while the latter was “to sober down in peace and quiet” in a province without a governor to take advantage of any residual discontent among the men.
There are two significant aspects to Tacitus’ account of these movements. First, he makes Vitellius’ fear of the soldiery the guiding motif, and so records a progression from the unit causing the emperor the greatest alarm (XIV Gemina Martia Victrix) to that arousing the least (XIII Gemina, kept in north Italy to build amphitheaters). Otho’s praetorians he sandwiches in between. Second, it may look as if he contradicts himself, by reversing the feelings he has attributed to the men in the past. After Bedriacum, supposedly, the fighting spirit of the other troops was broken, but the praetorians’ morale was undiminished. Now the praetorians are said to be relatively quiescent, whereas the legionaries of XIV Gemina Martia Victrix are especially defiant. But the legionaries claimed that they had not been defeated, because only their advance detachment had participated in the battle In other words, the bulk of the men, having failed to appear in time for the battle, overcompensated now for their failure with defiant talk. For their part, the praetorians may have been cowed to an extent, but they may merely have been leaderless. Vitellius had executed “the most enthusiastic Othonian centurions” at Lugdunum, and while some of his victims must have come from the Othonian legions, to cause the alienation of the Balkan troops, others were surely taken from the praetorian cohorts.
In any case, Tacitus spreads himself on the misadventures of legion XIV Gemina Martia Victrix. Vitellius decided to return the legion to Britain, where it had been stationed before Nero summon
ed it to Italy. But he also made what would prove a less fortunate decision. Planning initially to attach to his own column the eight Batavian cohorts who had thwarted the legion’s attempts to support Nero in 68, he changed his mind almost at once, probably at Valens’ urging, and disencumbered himself of these unruly allies by ordering them back to the Rhine frontier. Under the new plan, legion and cohorts would march to central Gaul, keeping each other in check until they came to a parting of the ways. Then the legion would continue on to Britain, the cohorts to the German frontier. Vitellius, however, underestimated the hatred the two forces felt for each other. So, when they reached Augusta Taurinorum (Turin), there was a set-to when a Batavian picked on a local inhabitant in whose house one of the legionaries was quartered. This grew into a mêlée, and says Tacitus, an outright battle would have flared up, had not two praetorian cohorts in the town backed the legionaries and induced the Batavians to think again. Then, on the night the legion quitted Turin, the men neglected to extinguish their camp fires, from carelessness or malice, and part of the town was burned down. As for the Batavian cohorts, they made their way peaceably back to the Rhine frontier, perhaps subdued by the “battle of Augusta Taurinorum.” But once there, they would use the pretext of supporting Vespasian to cover a rebellion against Roman rule in Germany and Gaul.
The presence of the two praetorian cohorts in Turin shows that Caecina and Valens had taken some steps to disperse the Othonian units through the towns of North Italy. To this Vitellius gave his approval, but it was not enough for him. So he offered the men honorable discharge and the pension that went with it, and according to Dio, the sum normally disbursed in Augustus’ day was 20,000 sesterces a head. Whether or not Otho’s praetorians received this much, it was risky to give them large sums of money, but it was riskier still to give them none at all. Mollified for the time being, the guardsmen turned in their weapons, and there was peace until they heard of the plans to make Vespasian emperor. As for the remaining legions, I Adiutrix was sent off to Spain; XI Claudia and VII Galbiana were merely ordered back to their winter quarters in Dalmatia and Pannonia respectively; and XIII Gemina was retained in northern Italy for a month or so, to exploit the men’s engineering skills in the construction of two amphitheaters. Caecina was planning a gladiatorial show in Vitellius’ honor at Cremona, and Valens one at Bononia (Bologna). This was as good a way as any of disposing of the suvivors from the 2,000 gladiators whom Martius Macer had commanded. Besides, as Tacitus puts it, Vitellius never paid so much attention to serious business that he forgot or forwent his pleasures.
This sneer gives Tacitus his transition from defeated Othonians to victorious Vitellians. So he deals next with disturbances that he can blame squarely on the emperor’s love of pleasure. Vitellius, we are told, held an early and lavish dinner at Ticinum (Pavia) and invited Verginius to join him. Since officers and men aped the habits of their commander in chief, there was disorder and drunkenness everywhere, the scene closer to an all-night orgy than to a camp under military discipline.6 Trouble started when two of the soldiers decided to have a friendly wrestling match. One was a legionary from V Alaudae, the other a Gaul from an auxiliary cohort. When the Gaul threw the legionary, he started taunting him, and that provoked a fight among the spectators. Supposedly, two cohorts of auxiliaries were wiped out by the legionaries before a fresh alarm brought the fighting to a halt. A cloud of dust and the glinting of armor was seen in the distance, and the troops panicked, under the impression that it was legion XIV Gemina Martia Victrix, returned to renew the war. Eventually they realized that it was their own rearguard (the men sent to ensure that the Othonian legion left no stragglers behind), but in the panic one of Verginius’ slaves seems to have been caught acting suspiciously. He was accused of trying to murder Vitellius, and as it was taken for granted that his master had put him up to it, the troops rushed to the emperor’s quarters and demanded that Verginius be put to death. Even Vitellius refused to believe this, but he found it hard to restrain the men who had served under Verginius. They still admired him, says Tacitus, but they hated him too, because he had spurned their offer of the throne.
The embassy the senate sent to congratulate Vitellius was given a hearing in Ticinum on the day following the uproar. Then he made his way to the camp and delivered a speech in which he praised the legionaries’ devotion to him. This upset the auxiliaries, their victims, and it was now that Vitellius decided to rid himself not only of the Batavian cohorts, but of a large number of Gallic auxiliaries too, the latter being sent back to their various communities. As an economy measure Vitellius also ordered that legionary and auxiliary units be allowed to fall below their nominal strength, that there be no fresh recruiting, and that those legionaries who requested honorable discharge be let go. This, says Tacitus, wrecked the state’s finances, as it may well have done, coming on top of the money paid out to Otho’s praetorians, and it went unappreciated by those who remained. They complained that there were now fewer men to carry out the unpleasant and difficult assignments. And they were probably not consoled by being billeted on civilians in the towns of northern Italy, even if this gave them the chance to indulge in luxurious living during their off-duty hours.
Meanwhile Vitellius attended Caecina’s gladiatorial show at Cremona and then, being in the neighborhood, took it into his head to view the battlefield of Bedriacum as well. Tacitus provides an elaborate description. He dwells on the horror of the site, littered with the unburied Othonian dead, and the reactions of the various elements in the victorious army. Caecina and Valens gave Vitellius a guided tour, the junior officers’ exaggerated their exploits in the battle, and the rankers felt a range of emotion from joy at having survived the struggle to compassion for those who had not. Then comes the contrast with their bloodthirsty, civilian commander in chief, fascinated by the gruesome scene. But Tacitus leaves out, as inappropriate to the dignity of his work, the most striking detail—the smell of the corpses of men and animals left to rot for 40-odd days. Suetonius is less reticent. He reports that Vitellius declared the smell of a dead enemy sweet and that of a dead fellow citizen sweeter still, and that he drained large jolts of strong wine to combat the stench and distributed it to others who needed medication. In the same way, Tacitus omits to report here that Vitellius must have gone next to view Otho’s grave and make his petty-minded remarks about the tomb.
After viewing Valens’ gladiatorial games at Bononia, Vitellius at last began the march to Rome, a locustlike advance by some 60,000 soldiers and an even larger number of soldiers’ slaves and camp followers. It was a horde almost impossible to control—says Tacitus—even if the emperor had wanted to enforce discipline.7 The nearer he approached the city, the “more corrupt” his journey became. Valens had brought up all sorts of equipment from Rome to ensure that his was the more impressive show given the emperor. Next to join the column were “actors, flocks of eunuchs and all the other characteristic features of Nero’s court.” They were followed in turn by senators and knights, eager to ingratiate themselves with the emperor, and a trickle soon became a flood, as none wanted to be left behind. But the theme on which Tacitus dwells is conflict. There was still tension between legionaries and auxiliaries, he says, but the soldiery were able to put aside their differences when there were civilians to fight. And civilians there were. When the column was some seven miles out and Vitellius was preparing the men for a triumphal entry into Rome, the common people poured out of the city and made their way to the camp. Some stood and gawped. Others exercised their taste for practical jokes by stealing the soldiers’ sword belts, and then asking their victims whether they had all their equipment. Since to be caught without one’s sword belt was a punishable offense, the troops found this singularly unfunny. They turned on the crowd, cutting down many until—by accident—they killed the father of one of their own men who had come to greet his son. Only that halted the slaughter.
Apparently while this was going on, other troops rushed on ahead, eager above all t
o see the site where Galba had been murdered. This has been taken as evidence that they considered themselves Galba’s avengers. It makes better sense to interpret it as the ultimate gratification of the hatred for the emperor that had led them to rebel against him originally. In any case, so says Tacitus to play up their outlandish appearance, the men were more of a spectacle than the site they came to view. Clothed in the hides of wild beasts and brandishing gigantic spears, they lacked the skill to negotiate Rome’s narrow and crowded streets. Sometimes they were forced off the sidewalks, sometimes they tripped and fell, and every accident led to abuse and brawls with the locals. To add to the confusion, there were tribunes and prefects, who “charged about, spreading terror with their armed bands,” but Tacitus does not specify their purpose. Perhaps they were supposed to keep order, but they may have been sent ahead to pick sites where the troops could be billeted after the parade. As in Galba’s day, the praetorian camp was the only barracks in Rome, and the men would have to be quartered in open spaces and public buildings all over the city.
When Vitellius began preparing his entry into Rome at the Milvian Bridge, just outside the city limits, he envisaged a military parade in which he himself—like Galba nearly a year earlier—would wear his imperial cloak, carry a sword, ride a horse, and drive senators and people before him like sheep. Friends and advisers quickly pointed out that to celebrate a victory gained in civil war would be a gigantic blunder. So he changed into a toga and entered Rome on foot. His troops followed, and a brave show they made. At the head of the column were the eagles of the four legions present in full strength (I Italica, V Alaudae, XXI Rapax, and XXII Primigenia). Next came the standards or banners of the seven legions represented by detachments, four from the Rhine frontier (I Germanica, IV Macedonica, XV Primigenia, and XVI), and three from Britain (II Augusta, IX Hispana, and XX Valeria Victrix), and the emblems of 12 squadrons of cavalry. Then came the main body of the legionary troops and cavalry, along with 34 cohorts of auxiliary infantry, these last separated into their units by the tribal titles of the regiments or the type of weapons they carried. The senior officers, that is, the prefects of the camp, the tribunes and the leading centurions marched ahead of the eagles, all of them conspicuous in the white togas that indicated equestrian rank. The rest of the officers marched with their men, wearing all their decorations. It was a magnificent display, says Tacitus, and an army worthy of any emperor but Vitellius.