Vitellius’ March to Rome
From Trabzon to Tangier, and from Brough-on-Humber to Berenice on the Red Sea, a web of military and civilian seaways and landways held the sprawling empire together. By A.D. 69 the pattern had already reached the obvious boundaries designed by nature for a commonwealth of peoples dwelling around the Inland Sea: the Alps, the Danube, the Euphrates, the Eastern Desert, the First Cataract of the Nile, the Sahara, the Atlantic. In Britain, half-conquered, the boundary ran from Cheshire to Lincolnshire. In the Low Countries it followed the Old Rhine, now a cheerful water-street at Leiden, the Oude Rijn to Utrecht, and the Kromme and Neder-Rijn to Arnhem. East of Nij-megen came the confluence with the broad Waal, which with the Rhine forms the Island of the Batavians, a green low-lying fruitfulness between the branches of the two-horned river. Then, as now, Germany came quickly after the traveller left Nijmegen. All this lower portion of the Rhine frontier was secured by auxiliary troops manning a string of forts: the first legionary fortress, Vetera, lay just inside Germany, keeping an eye on the route up the Lippe eastwards. Further south on the southern outskirts of Neuss and straddling the main road of Roman and modern times, lay another fort, measuring 580 by 470 metres, for a single legion, its plan, if not its history, known with notable completeness. At Cologne, the capital city of the Lower Rhine District, the saturation bombing of the 1939–45 war opened up the possibility of excavation. It was carefully conducted for many years. We now know the site and shape of the governor’s palace by the Rhine, and public-spirited ingenuity has seen to it that the visitor can still, despite rebuilding, study something of the impressive remains in a large crypt beneath the Town Hall. Already in 69 a walled city with its municipality, Cologne, the colony of the people of Agrippina, had a permanent bridge over the Rhine, serving to connect it with many Transrhenane Germans and funnel the trade flow in both directions. No legion guarded it; but slightly further on, at Bonn, just before the hills begin, lay the third station (528 by 524 metres) holding another single legion. A little before Koblenz (the confluence of Mosel and Rhine) a humble stream trickles into the latter from the west, flowing from a well-defined side valley penetrating the wooded hills; its name, the Vinxtbach, suggests that this was the frontier (finis) between Lower and Upper Germany, and inscriptions found north and south of the tributary make the supposition certain. At Mainz, where the inflowing Main forms a broad highway to and from the east, the double legionary fort was the main military site of the Upper District, of which the remaining legion lay now far to the south at Windisch in the Aargau. Interspersed between the seven legions were a number of minor forts manned by auxiliaries or even by local militia, and connecting all these frontier stations, large and small, ran the main road from the Ocean to Rome. On the waters of the Rhine the ships of the German fleet gave further protection, and forwarded a useful riverborne supply of commodities and munitions.
It was this vast and powerful river valley between the North Sea and Switzerland that had now provided its own pretender and sent out two armies to claim the principate for him. How much more could be withdrawn without serious danger to the frontier ?
Having dispatched Valens and Caecina in mid-January, Vitellius made no move to follow them until the end of March, when he had received news of the successful penetration of the Alpine frontier of Italy. Such caution, left unexplained by Tacitus except by the imputation of sluggishness to the pretender, was justified. In fact, Valens and Caecina were lucky, favoured by nature’s early spring and Otho’s late start; but the margin between success and disaster was no very large one. In any event, Vitellius had many tasks to fulfil. Fresh auxiliary and perhaps legionary troops must be raised to fill the gaps left by the departing forces. A draft of 8,000 men was exacted from the garrison of Britain, and allocated to Vitellius’ own expeditionary army. The Rhine fleet was put on alert, and the thinly-manned fortresses and forts given the appearance, if not the reality, of unimpaired strength by supplementing a few veterans with a quantity of new recruits. At the moment—though one never knew what the future might hold—Gaul, source of men, horses and supplies, presented no problem: the governor of Belgian Gaul, Valerius Asiaticus, was a supporter whom Vitellius was soon to select as his son-in-law, and his peer in Central Gaul was the wealthy and amiable Junius Blaesus. Neither could feel sentimental about Nero or under any obligation to Nero’s friend Otho. In default of a better, Hordeonius Flaccus was retained and given the overall command of Upper and Lower Germany.
One of Vitellius’ first political measures was to free Julius Civilis. This Batavian prince, commanding a cohort in the Roman auxiliary army, had apparently been implicated, with what justice we do not know, in the Vindex outbreak of March 68. Acquitted of treason by Galba in the summer, he was rearrested in 69 by the Rhineland troops, some of whom had fought at Besanjçon. The release of Civilis was doubly necessary. It was essential not to leave a fiercely independent and martial race to cause trouble in the Lower Rhine; and the eight Bata-vian cohorts incorporated by Valens in his army at Langres constituted a strong force which must not be alienated. Another sensible step was to resist the clamour for the removal of the commander of the Rhine fleet, Julius Burdo. Relations with the tribes inhabiting the military districts or bordering thereon had also to be nursed. During the two months, there was no lack of occupation for Vitellius and his staff. In February the envoys of the defeated Helvetians presented themselves, and were treated with consideration by Vitellius. The orator-historian maintains that a bitterly hostile audience was mollified by the artful appeals of Claudius Cossus, one of the deputation, whose appropriate affectation of nervousness commended him to an emotional audience. This may be so; but common sense, in which Vitellius was not entirely deficient, would readily suggest the desirability of playing down an action provoked by the genuine ignorance of the Helvetians and the undoubted riotousness of the Twenty-First.
Britain was certainly in no state to offer more support than the draft of 8,000 legionaries. The natives were restless, and the serious outbreak of Boudicca lay only seven years behind. In addition, the pacific policy of the governor Trebellius Maximus had strained relations between him and his legionary commanders, who looked out from their fortresses upon hills still untamed. Money was diverted to the development of town life. One officer reacted quite strongly: Roscius Coelius, commanding the Twentieth Legion, swung his colleagues and the commanders of the auxiliary army units against Trebellius, who was forced to retire and finally to take refuge with Vitellius, apparently in March. In his absence the administration of the province was carried on by the three legionary commanders jointly under the lead of Coelius. In May, Vitellius, by this time in Turin, found a replacement for Trebellius in the person of Vettius Bolanus, a notable who happened to be present and available, and who had acted as legionary commander and second-in-command to Corbulo during the Armenian campaign of the recent past. The choice was good, and as providential as the return, at any rate temporarily, of the Fourteenth Legion to Britain. Some care was taken to see that the legionary centurions were well disposed to Vitellius. That all this was very necessary was shown by an emergency that arose in the autumn. For some twenty years the client-kingdom of the Brigantians, who occupied northern England from the Humber to the Eden or beyond, had been ruled by a Roman sympathizer, Queen Cartimandua, descendant of kings, rich and—in so far as she had secured the capture of Caratacus in 51—a benefactor of the Romans. Some years before 69, it seems, she had grown tired of her consort Venutius and bestowed her favours on his armour-bearer Vellocatus. The discarded Venutius dis covered that the best way of avenging himself was to lead the anti-Roman party among the Brigantians, and attempt to dislodge Cartimandua from her throne and from her capital at Stanwick near Aldborough. By August or September, the news that a new pretender to the principate had arisen in Vespasian carried the clear message that a second internecine struggle between the Romans could not long be delayed. Venutius decided that his moment had come. He summoned all the wild men from the north and from the heights, and put the queen in a critical situation. She appealed to the Romans for help, which they could not refuse. A force of auxiliaries was supplied, but the struggle dragged on, Venutius acquiring a throne, and the Romans a frontier war. It was clear that in this instance the system of client-kingdoms or buffer-states had broken down, for their proper function was precisely to save the employment of the Roman army on peace-keeping duties in remote areas. The inevitable result was the conversion of a suzerainty over northern England and southern Scotland into direct rule. The frontier would have to go forward again. But all this, in the spring of 69, lay in the future. In the Long Year, Britain had her own worries: she played little or no part in the greater convulsions of the empire elsewhere.
Towards the end of March Vitellius set out from Cologne towards Zülpich, Trier and Rome, with a modest force that can scarcely have exceeded 20,000 men, including the 8,000 legionaries drafted from Britain. Three weeks and 360 miles later, when he was approaching Chalon-sur-Saone, he received a laurelled dispatch conveying news of the victory at Cremona and the death of Otho: Caecina and Valens would meet him at Lyon. Vitellius’ delighted reaction was to assemble the troops and thank them unstintingly for their support and that of their fellows. There was other gratifying news from North Africa: Mauretania Caesariensis (roughly modern Algeria) and Mauretania Tingitana (roughly Morocco) had gone over to him. The previous governor, Lucceius Albinus, had been appointed to rule the former province by Nero and the latter by Galba. When it seemed possible that, for whatever purpose, Albinus had designs upon southern Spain, a coup d’état had been staged in the interests of Vitellius. Three officers of the governor had been assassinated, and on returning by sea from Tingitana, inaccessible by road, Albinus was set upon as he landed in the larger province and killed. His wife threw herself upon the murderers and shared his fate. This grim story Vitellius listened to in silence: what was done could not be undone.
The good news gave him a strong inducement to move more quickly. Now that the southward-flowing course of the Sane had been reached, its lively navigation could be used. Telling the infantry to march on by the highroad, he embarked on a river vessel suitably bedecked to honour him. Even without the help of the current—and indeed the Saône is notoriously sluggish—it would be easy to cover the eighty miles to Lyon in twenty-four or thirty-six hours. As he approached the capital of the Three Gauls, the hill of Fourviére and the plateau of La Serra rose straight ahead, and immediately beyond was the confluence with the Rhone. The administrative quarter of the city lay upon the dominating heights. As Vitellius disembarked on the right bank, he was greeted by the governor, escorted up to the official residence at the top, and accorded, for the first time, the trappings of power. Junius Blaesus, his host, was a man of birth, wealth and open-handed generosity. He, no less than his guest, enjoyed a banquet, and Vitellius was sensible of his attentions. That beneath the latter’s gratitude lurked a resentment that harboured murder is merely one of the improbable stories circulated by Flavian scribblers.
As Aulus looked from the height where the basilica now stands, he had to his right the terraced slope later to be occupied by a handsome theatre flanked by an attractive music hall; looking ahead and steeply down, he observed the three islands where the two rivers met, in modern times joined together to form the tongue of land containing the Place Bellecour and the Gare Perrache. One of these islands, Canabae, ‘the Settlement’, was a convenient home for those who gained a livelihood from the dense traffic upon the Saône and Rhone. And if Vitellius turned his gaze leftwards across the Saône, he could see on rising ground the suburb of Condate and the monumental area of the amphitheatre and the altar of Rome and Augustus, with its fine sculptured panels of oak foliage in bas-relief and the two 35-foot pillars of Egyptian syenite, which now, cut each in half, provide the four supports for the cupola of St Martin d’Ainay. At the altar delegates gathered annually from the sixty-four communities of Gaul to demonstrate the loyalty to the régime and to the emperor of all those who, while not a nation, felt some corporate identity as speakers of the Gallic tongue. Social, ceremonial and non-political occasions, these assemblies helped Gaul, despite occasional relapses, to forget the vicious rivalries of the age of Julius Caesar and Vercingetorix and to adapt herself more readily to the secure and unheroic advantages of living a settled life in the new towns on the plains. Such local jealousies, such resistance to Rome as remained in the hearts of ambitious men exploiting tribal sentiment still found occasional expression. Thus border warfare had recently flared up under a certain Mariccus of the Boii, a tribe settled on the middle Loire north of its confluence with the Allier. He had raised 8,000 men and gained control of some portions of the land of the Aedui to his east. But when the authorities at Autun called up their militia and requested Vitellius to place some auxiliary cohorts at their disposal, the Boii were scattered and their leader executed. But incidents of this sort are untypical of Gaul in the first two centuries. It was a land of peace, improved agriculture, developing civic achievement and urbanization, prosperous craftsmanship, good communications: best of all, a land almost without history. As for the movement of Vindex, there is no evidence that this was directed against Rome rather than Nero. During it, Lyon itself had sustained a brief siege at the hands of Vindex’ forces, and now looked for recompense from an emperor chosen by the victors of Besançjon: a lightening, for instance, of the financial burdens imposed by Galba. But Lyon was not only the commercial capital and political metropolis of Gaul: it was also a Roman city. Founded in October 43 B.C. by Muna-tius Plancus, founder also (as his impressive mausoleum upon the headland of Gaeta reminds us) of Augst, it normally maintained a garrison, if only an Urban Cohort, to protect the Mint; and it was a city through which Roman soldiers constantly passed on their way to and from the northern frontier, and where as retired veterans they tended to settle. Its hills and rivers (scenic attractions to which the Roman was susceptible) were further adorned by agreeable and impressive buildings.34
By travelling ahead of his army from Chalon, Vitellius had secured the possibility of a few extra days here without slowing up the rate of his progress to the capital. In the latter part of April, then, he held audiences and accustomed himself to the modest but novel pomps of power. The first occasion was pleasant indeed—a detailed account of the victory at Cremona and of the death of Otho from the lips of Caecina and Valens. For their services they received a glowing tribute at a military parade, at which they were stationed immediately behind Vitellius on the saluting platform. Vitellius’ wife Galeria had arrived in Lyon with their children. The daughter was now of marriageable age. Her fate was the traditional one in noble Roman families: to serve as a political instrument, offered in marriage to Valerius Asiaticus, as she was later to be offered to Antonius Primus. But the son and heir, a young child some six years old, who unfortunately suffered from a serious impediment of speech, was his father’s darling. The doting Vitellius now dressed him up in some version of the imperial purple toga, and held him up to receive the cheers of the troops as ‘Germanicus’. The name, at first hearing grotesque, was not entirely unhappy. It recalled at once his father’s title and the name of Drusus’ son, the popular governor of Gaul and commander-in-chief on the Rhine fifty years before.
Indeed, whatever his shortcomings as a man and a ruler, Vitellius possessed one notable advantage over his predecessors: he could present the unusual spectacle of a happy and united imperial family; a mother—Sextilia—and a wife—Galeria—who provided a pleasing contrast with many of the women around them; a brother; a daughter; and above all a son to follow him, if the need arose. On that spring morning at Lyon no cloud was foreseeable. In the south-east, on the far side of the flat plain, could be seen the serration of the Alps; beyond the Alps lay Rome, waiting to receive its master and his family.
Meanwhile, two crestfallen Othonian generals were kicking their heels in Vitellius’ anteroom. The excuses to which Paulinus and Pro-culus were reduced did them little credit, for they actually claimed that the long march of the Othonians before the battle, the exhaustion, the chaotic confusion, and a number of other purely fortuitous incidents were so many stratagems of their own designed to favour what they had come to believe was the righteous cause. The story was incredible, the hypocrisy revolting. But Vitellius contemptuously took them at their word in the matter of treachery, and acquitted them of the serious imputation of loyalty. They survived to be saddled with an ignominy which in Suetonius’ case at least was regrettable, for in his day he had served his country well in the Atlas mountains and in rebellious Britain. It seems that Titianus and Celsus were also present. No action was taken against them either; for Titianus had acted out of loyalty to his brother, and Celsus was transparently an honest man. Also pardoned was Galerius Trachalus the orator, confidant of Otho, but friend also of Galeria and a popular figure in Rome. No severe measures were taken against individual Othonian leaders or their property. Effect was given to the wills of the enemy troops who had fallen in battle, or else the law of intestacy was applied. It is clear that neither vindictiveness nor cupidity were characteristic of the new emperor, though some felt that there was a hardening of attitude on the arrival from Bologna of Lucius Vitellius, a man as determined and obdurate as his brother was easy-going.
After nearly a week at Lyon, Vitellius moved down the Rhone and held court at Vienne on the eastern bank, the first town in Southern Gaul and one whose Roman remains are as impressive today as those of its rival Lyon. It was probably here that Vitellius received news of his recognition on 19 April in Rome. In acknowledging the dispatch, he postponed—if only for a few weeks—the acceptance of the title ‘Augustus’ and steadfastly rejected the name ‘Caesar’ until the last desperate days in December.
Vitellius left Vienne in late April. The Alpine passes were now open. We have no information as to the choice the emperor made between the two available routes, by Mont Genévre and the Little St Bernard. Considerations of supplies, which would not be so plentiful where Valens had passed a month before, and of the route prescribed for the return of the Fourteenth Legion are among the reasons which suggest that from Vienne he made for the more northerly pass via the valley of the Isére. At some point between Lyon and Italy he was joined by Cluvius Rufus, governor of Nearer Spain.
Rufus had promptly recognized Otho in January and as promptly gone over to Vitellius’ faction. Such rapid changes of allegiance sound ill; and Tacitus speaks rather patronizingly of Cluvius. But the literary commander had vigorously confronted the threat posed by Albinus from Morocco by moving the Tenth Legion down to the Gibraltar area to repel any invasion. The death of Albinus and the adhesion of northwest Africa to Vitellius removed the danger, and we must suppose that Vitellius now thought that Cluvius would be better employed at court, while still remaining theoretically governor of Nearer Spain and exercising his powers by proxy. What is clear is that as late as December Cluvius was still on terms of friendship with Vitellius, and it seems possible that he fulfilled for him the functions performed by Trachalus for Otho.
The most pressing problem facing Vitellius when he reached Italy was the dispersal of the Othonian formations. After what they regarded rather as a deception practised upon them than a defeat inflicted, their morale was high. The reasons that had made them enthusiastic supporters of Otho—if Spain and Germany could create emperors, why not they?—were still operative so long as potential emperors, capaces imperii, were available. Numerically the Othonians were scarcely inferior to the Vitellian forces, and the issue had been evenly balanced when they were not so numerous. Luckily for Vitellius, the three legions from Moesia posed no problem. They had been still a little way east of Aquileia when the fatal news of battle and suicide reached them. Incredulously they, or at least their advance parties, or that of the leading formation VII Claudia, pressed on into the frontier town, and it is alleged by the biographer Suetonius, though not entirely convincingly, that they there proclaimed as their new candidate Vespasian, governor of Judaea, and placed his name upon their flags. But this is almost certainly an anticipation of events. In any case, the movement, whatever its exact nature, failed, and the Moesian troops discreetly returned to their various fortresses upon the Danube without penetrating further into Italy. No action was, or could be, taken against them in the confused circumstances of the time. Their moment to intervene in the game was still to come.
The participants in the First Battle of Cremona, both Othonian and Vitellian, still lay in the Bedriacum-Cremona-Piacenza area. At Veleia, south of Piacenza in the foothills of the Apennines, a 25-year-old soldier who had served two years in the Fourth (Macedonian) Legion was buried by his comrades at this time: he is described as belonging to the drafts from the three legions of Upper Germany, that is, from Caecina’s force. Of the Othonians, VII Galbiana and XI were probably in the neighbourhood of Este: Vitellius ordered them to return to their respective stations in Pannonia and Dalmatia. XIII was punished for its prominent part in the battle by being allotted the unenviable task of building amphitheatres at Cremona and Bologna, where Valens and Caecina proposed to put on competing shows. Civil engineering work was of course regularly performed by Roman legionaries in peaceful conditions, but the motive here was partisan and peevish. The assignment was carried out, sometimes amid the stupid jeers of the local youth; their behaviour was to cost Cremona very dear. The First (Support) Legion was sent off to cool down in Spain as a complement to X and VI, though the beaten legion did not forget its hostility to Vitellius.35
But the most truculent formation among the Othonians was the fighting Fourteenth, which considered itself ill-used. Its recent movements had been indeed bewildering. In Britain since Claudius’ invasion, it had been recalled in 67 by Nero for service in the East, and was still in central Europe (either Pannonia or less probably Dalmatia) when Otho summoned it to Italy in March 69. Its advance party was committed in the battle outside Cremona; but the main body had arrived just too late to take part in a confrontation which the legionaries reasonably thought had been unnecessarily hurried and in which, but for their absence, the issue might have been different. Recriminations flew backwards and forwards. This vexation, to say nothing of the existence of three successive emperors since January, had sapped morale and discipline. Already in the interval of a month since the battle, it had been thought desirable to move the Fourteenth westwards from Bedriacum to Turin with a view to its return to Britain, which would be popular. At Turin however (it is not clear whether Vitellius or his marshals were present) trouble arose. An unhappy calculation had decided that the restive legion should be kept in check by sharing a camp with the Batavian cohorts with whom it had been inharmoniously brigaded before. The two formations were birds of a feather, but hardly turtle-doves. One day a local workman was abused by a Batavian soldier for cheating him, and a legionary who was billeted upon the townsman came to the man’s defence. The squabble spread as the two opponents were joined by their comrades, and the consequences of the riot might have been serious but for the intervention of two Praetorian cohorts on the side of the legion. When the matter was reported, Vitellius wisely separated the Batavians from the Fourteenth, adding the former to his army and ordering the latter to cross the Alps via the Little St Bernard, avoid Vienne (and presumably Lyon also) and march straight across Gaul to Boulogne, where it would embark for Britain. This movement was çarried out without further trouble, with one notable exception. As parting gesture of defiance, the Fourteenth left fires alight everywhere in Turin on the night of their departure, and a portion of the city was burnt down. The memory of this havoc, like those of many calamities in this year, was effaced by the more dreadful fate of Cremona.
The presence of two Praetorian cohorts in Turin needs some explanation. The most probable is that these were part of the three units commanded by Spurinna at Piacenza; later they had been moved to the site opposite Caecina’s bridge, involved in what appeared to be an attempt at an armistice before the battle, and then, it seems, moved westwards by the victors to form a suitable escort for Vitellius, who was expected to enter Italy by Turin. The two cohorts could well have formed the basis of a reconstituted Praetorian Guard; the fate of the others was different. Vitellius decided that the elements at Cremona, Bedriacum, Brescello and Bologna should be offered honourable discharge from the forces. This would preserve their right to an allocation of land or a money payment in lieu, while making way for the promotion of ambitious Vitellian legionaries to the better-paid formation. The Othonians handed in their arms and equipment to their commanding officers, and some of them at least settled in the district around Fréjus or possibly at Aquileia. This process had hardly been completed when in August new possibilities opened up for them.
The Batavians had had almost as chequered a career. In addition to the uncertainties caused by repeated changes of allegiance, they were swayed by a more lasting duty—that to their own people on the Island at the mouth of the Rhine. After their brief stay at Langres, they had apparently been divided between the forces of Valens and Caecina, for they are mentioned as fighting in both. Reunited by Vitellius for a few days in northern Italy, they were soon on the road again, this time once more to Upper Germany. It is hardly surprising that all these complicated moves are not always clearly reported in our sources. But they symbolize well enough the fevered convulsions of the Long Year. Together with the Batavians went a number of Gallic auxiliary units which were to be demobilized to their homes. Now that the fighting seemed over, some serious reduction in the size of the armed forces was imperative merely on financial grounds.
At Pavia, about 18 May, Vitellius received an address of welcome from a deputation of the Senate* which had left the capital almost a month before, on the official date of accession. They had already covered the 400 miles by 14 May, but had been told to wait the arrival of the court at Pavia, while the trouble at Turin was sorted out: there was no need to publicize matters unnecessarily. But the Turin turmoil was, as it happened, repeated here. This time the situation was more sinister. While Vitellius was holding a dinner party, Verginius, his potential rival, being present (on the death of Otho on 16 April he had retired from Brescello, presumably to his estate at Como, and had come down to Pavia at Vitellius’ invitation), a wrestling match between a soldier of the Fifth and a Gallic auxiliary, staged in a spirit of friendly rivalry, turned sour. The legionary took a fall, and the Gaul was unsporting enough to jeer at his opponent. The spectators joined in, and a general melée involved severe injury to two cohorts. The number of dead in what should have been a trifling dispute was a reminder that civil war had seriously sapped discipline. Meanwhile, apparently on the same evening, a slave of Verginius appeared on the scene and for reasons which escape us was accused of planning to murder Vitellius. In a manner reminiscent of the trouble over the arming of the Seventeenth (Urban) Cohort in the Castra Praetoria at Rome a few weeks before, the troops proceeded to invade the officers’ mess, clamouring for Verginius’ head. Vitellius had no doubt of his innocence, but it was with difficulty that he managed to restrain the men who now pressed for the execution of a senior statesman who had once been their commander. Indeed, Verginius more than anybody else was the target of acts of insubordination. The great man retained his aura, but the troops hated him because they felt he had slighted them; and his appearance at Vitellius’ table was proof that he was no more interested in becoming princeps than he had been a year before.
From Pavia Vitellius moved eastwards to Cremona, and after attending Caecina’s gladiatorial show insisted on walking over the site of the battle. His officers were only too glad to describe and perhaps magnify their exploits. But it was a grim scene. With an unRoman and quite inexplicable disregard for the normal laws of war, the victors and the Cremonese had done little to clear up the area. It was now the second half of May.* Some forty days had elapsed since the battle. Yet the remains of horses and human beings lay unburied everywhere. The flattened trees and crops bore witness to a devastation whose magnitude and novelty seem to have blunted the sense of right and wrong. Scarcely less sinister were the laurel and roses strewn on the Postumian Way by the misdirected efforts of the Cremonese, a gesture unusually ecstatic even for a victory over a foreign foe, and macabre and repulsive when Roman had fought Roman in Italy. In such wars there were no triumphs.*
At Brescello Vitellius was shown his rival’s grave, which looked like any private person’s (said Philostratus*) and seemed one modest enough (thought Tacitus) to deserve survival. There were no verses, no appeal to the passer-by to halt and meditate on mortality. It bore the simplest of inscriptions: ‘To the spirit of Marcus Otho’. Vitellius gazed for a moment, and then curtly remarked: ‘A little grave for a little man!’ Such trifling dicta of the great were treasured, and as time passed became piquant. It is an irony of chance that while Otho’s tomb, like that of Vitellius, has perished, the stone that commemorates Piso and his wife’s devotion still survives.36 *
At Bologna it was Valens’ turn to provide a gladiatorial show, for which he had decorations brought from the capital in an endeavour to outbid his rival. From now on and with increasing frequency as the army approached Rome, it was joined by an afflux of actors, musicians and entertainers who believed, not without reason, that the talents which had been acceptable to Nero would not be unwelcome to Vitellius. The latter resembled Nero in his passion, despised and deplored by the old-fashioned, for banquets, musical recitals and plebeian entertainments. ‘Give me one of the Maestro’s melodies,’ remarked Vitellius one day to a piper, and when the man obliged with a composition by Nero, Vitellius leapt to his feet and led the applause. But Rome had had enough of musical emperors.
There were also more serious matters. It was now the very end of May and decisions would have to be taken on the implementation or revision of the list of consuls suffect* prepared by Galba and modified by Otho. Nero’s original provision had been for two six-monthly periods, providing four consuls. This had been modified and the number of magistrates, necessarily only two at a time, increased by a shortening of their terms of office. The occupants of the April to May (Othonian) period had, for obvious reasons, been allowed to retain their nominal position until their term ran out, though it is difficult to imagine what duties they could have performed. But room must be found to reward Caecina and Valens. Vitellius reduced the term of the pair due to succeed on 1 July, Arrius Antoninus and Marius Celsus, from three to two months, and here it is noteworthy that Celsus, though an Othonian commander, enjoyed sufficient prestige to secure the retention of his office, even if abbreviated. Caecina and Valens were now to succeed on 1 September, and Caecilius Simplex and Quintius Atticus on 1 November, each pair holding office for two months. The effect of this reshuffle was to promote three deserving officers—Caecina, Valens and Simplex—and to demote the relatively unimportant or undesirable ones: the mild Valerius Marinus, who would swallow any affront, Pedanius Costa, a supporter of Verginius (though the reasons alleged in public by Vitellius were different), and finally Martius Macer, who had been a thorn in the flesh of Caecina and Valens at Cremona. These adjustments were the minimum possible to cater for the situation, and Vitellius showed sound sense in rewarding good friends without making notable enemies.
June saw the move southward towards Rome. Providentially the leguminous and corn harvests were near, and at some cost to the farmers upon the route, the army could march comfortably upon a stomach filled by Nature. In the latter part of the month it was at Grotta Rossa.
As you leave the capital and cross the Tiber by the Ponte Milvio, the Flaminian Way divides from the Cassian and turns north-eastwards to traverse the valley bottom for three miles before reaching a line of pink cliffs that hem in the road between themselves and the Tiber. The pine-crowned bluff at the south end forms an ideal lookout tower from which the sinuous river, the Monte Mario, the Monti Parioli, the Monte Sacro and the north-eastern suburbs north of the Quirinal are clearly visible. The pink cliffs provide the last obvious halting point before Rome. Upon these heights and at their foot a host of unparalleled size lay camped: 60,000 armed men, an even greater number of servants and camp followers, entertainers and shopkeepers, a large crowd of the city populace and a number of grandees who had thought it prudent—and indeed it was customary—to go out to greet the approaching emperor. The atmosphere was almost that of a carnival or fair. Practical jokers managed to hide the belts of some of the troops, and then kept asking them ‘whether they were fit for action?’ The soldiers were not used to being jeered at, and failing to appreciate childish humour, attacked the unarmed mob, sword in hand. Among the casualties was a father of one of the soldiers, who was killed in the company of his son. When his identity was realized, a sense of shock brought the pointless slaughter to an end.
However, the actual entry was well stage-managed and made a brave show. Vitellius, ever mindful of creature comforts, made sure that the army was properly fed in the morning to prevent the danger of looting. On reaching the Milvian Bridge he himself mounted a white charger and led his army in the full panoply of a general as far as the boundary of the city, which crossed the Flaminian Way a little to the north of the modern Piazza del Popolo. Here he dismounted and correctly assumed the white, bordered toga of a Roman civilian magistrate—theoretically the emperor was such in Rome—and marched at the head of his troops in good order. The front of the column displayed four legionary eagles (those of I Italica from Lyon, V Alaudae from Vetera, XXI Rapax from Windisch and XXII from Mainz: two each from the armies of Caecina and Valens), surrounded by the four vexilla (banners) representing the other legions supplying drafts only (XV from Vetera, XVI from Neuss, I from Bonn and IV from Mainz*), together with the emblems of twelve cavalry regiments. The main mass of the infantry and cavalry followed, and after them thirty-four auxiliary cohorts grouped according to their recruitment area (Gaul, Batavia, Germany), and variously uniformed. In front of the eagles went the legionary commanders, camp commandants, staff officers and senior centurions. The legionary centurions marched with their men in full uniform, all wearing their decorations. The detailed description that has survived from the newspapers of the time shows what an impression this entry made: an army fit for an emperor, said some; but others wondered if the emperor would be fit for his army.
After parading through the streets—the Via Flaminia (at its southern end, Broad Street) led straight to the Capitol and the old Forum—the men were distributed throughout the city in bivouacs and billets, as Galba’s had been. But now the pressure was very much greater. The piazzas, the gardens, the places of resort were full. Once installed, however roughly, the sightseeing troops made mostly for the Forum Romanum to see the exact spot by the fig tree where Galba had been murdered. No doubt Vitellius had presented his men to their own imagination as an army exacting vengeance upon the regicide Otho: it was important that they should appear to themselves and to others as liberators. But in the streets the outlandish uniform of some of the auxiliaries, their shaggy hides and strange lances, were a curiosity. Units which formed the first line of defence on the distant Roman frontiers had seldom or never been seen in the capital. The burly warriors were jostled by the crowd or pushed over; sometimes they slipped on a broken paving stone or neglected cobble. When this happened the answer was abuse, fisticuffs and, finally, resort to arms. The officers, too, added to the confusion by dashing about here, there and everywhere with armed escorts. Rome had sunk from the status of a law-giving capital to that of an overcrowded garrison town.37
Vitellius with his immediate entourage walked up to the Capitol. There he embraced Sextilia and honoured her with the title reserved for the mother (or the wife) of an emperor: ‘Augusta’. The old lady was no doubt as little impressed by this as she had been when, on learning that her son was now called ‘Germanicus’, she drily remarked: ‘He’s still Aulus to me, and I’m his mother.’ But it was a proper gesture, and acceptable to the public. A sacrifice to Jupiter Best and Greatest was performed. Not in theory a triumph—for none such could be celebrated in a civil war—the occasion came near to being one in splendour, marking the completion of the progress from Germany to Rome, and the translation of general into emperor. From Brescello Vitellius had sent the dagger with which Otho had killed himself to the Temple of Mars at Cologne, for it was from this temple that in the January days he had been given a sword which had once, they said, belonged to the great Julius. It remained to be seen whether he who had now taken the sword would not also perish by it. The precedents were not entirely encouraging. The fate of Julius and others of his successors may have been in Vitellius’ mind later on when, sorting the secret documents in the palace, he came across papers which Otho, despite his precautions at Brescello, had forgotten to destroy: petitions from more than 120 individuals demanding a reward for services rendered on the fatal fifteenth day of January. Vitellius gave instructions that all the petitioners were to be rounded up and put to death. Few tears were wasted on them. The punishment was deserved, however false some of the claims, and precautions were necessary. It was the traditional way in which rulers seek to protect their lives or secure vengeance for their deaths.
But this incident came later. In the evening of the day of entry into Rome, Lucius gave a state banquet for his imperial brother, at which the gossips averred that 2,000 fish and 7,000 game birds were served. On the following day Aulus addressed the Senate and the People. The latter shouted and yelled approval, compelling him to accept the title ‘Augustus’, so far refused. The other titles (except that of Caesar) he took at intervals, and that of Pontifex Maximus at some date before 18 July. The consular elections were carried out according to the plan already established and with observation of the proper ritual. One of Vitellius’ first actions, on getting hold of such money as was available in the treasury, was to send a donative to Hordeonius Flaccus for payment to the troops left in Germany: this had been promised and its discharge was some consolation to them for not enjoying the spoils of victory in Italy.
Vitellius’ attitude to the Senate was as conciliatory as Otho’s had been, and for the same reason. He made a habit of attending its meetings even when the agenda were trivial. On one occasion the irritating praetor designate Helvidius Priscus proposed a course of action which conflicted with Vitellius’ previously expressed wish. This was a direct challenge, and the emperor was at first indignant. Then, thinking better of it, he passed the matter off with an affable snub: ‘There’s nothing new in a difference of opinion between two senators on politics. I often made it a point of honour to voice my opposition to Thrasea.’ The reference was to a much greater man than Priscus—his father-in-law Thrasea Paetus—and neatly suggested the relative importance of the two opposition senators and the fact that Vitellius had no wish to gag debate. And even Helvidius could not find fault when an imperial edict ordered that no astrologer should remain in any part of Italy after 1 October (the victims retorted by prophesying Vitellius’ own death). These practitioners had long been a scourge and their predictions in a superstitious age might be feared by authority as self-fulfilling.
Of Vitellius’ policy towards the empire as a whole it is difficult to form any opinion. Between the date of his arrival in Rome in late June and the advent in the capital of news of the proclamation of Vespasian at Alexandria only some few weeks intervened, weeks inevitably filled with pressing short-term problems. Thereafter all considerations were overshadowed by the certainty of renewed conflict. But it is obvious that whatever his faults—amplified by the Flavian scribblers—Vitellius retained the favour of many senators and of a numerous section of the city populace almost to the end. What he seems to have lost by August was the agreement of his lieutenants Caecina and Valens in his support. This weakness was to contribute substantially to his defeat. It sprang partly from jealous rivalry between the pair of kingmakers and partly, especially on Caecina’s side, from the conviction that, while Vitellius had done well enough as a popular figurehead during the first six or seven months of the year, the prospects for this inexperienced commander were poor in a long struggle with the conqueror of Judaea (for as such Vespasian already appeared), backed by the diplomacy of Mucianus and Titus and the resources of the East. And their own futures, even granted success and harmony, seemed hardly assured when they contemplated the emperor’s forceful brother Lucius and his designing wife. What had been a reasonable gamble in January, or even in June, began to appear much less alluring in August.
The financial state of the country can have been no better than it was under Nero or Galba, and in view of the April campaign probably a good deal worse. A tax was imposed upon an unpopular class, the wealthy freedmen, who were made to pay according to the number of their slaves, but this could not have yielded much of a return immediately. In the circumstances it is understandable that Vitellius could do little for the exiles allowed home by Galba and inadequately recompensed by the action of the committee set up by him. However, the emperor was able to make a modest contribution at no expense to himself. He restored to the victims their rights (which had lapsed on exile) over their freedmen, including the right to receive financial support from them in case of need. Some freedmen, however, tried to stultify the concession by hiding money acquired during their own period of servitude and their patrons’ absence in disguised banking accounts. Others had joined the imperial civil service in the intervening period. It was felt that, as liberti Caesaris, they were likely to be unapproachable by their former masters and in some cases more powerful than they.
To the Roman mob Vitellius was acceptable enough. He knew the importance of keeping himself in the public eye, frequently attended the theatre, and was passionately devoted to racing. Before and after Nero’s reign, the Greens (Prasini) had enjoyed a long period of success, which had perhaps contributed to Vitellius’ financial difficulties. For he himself was an eager partisan of the Blues (Veneti) and wore their colour and assisted in grooming their horses, behaviour unusual in an emperor. Despite the depletion of the treasury, he seems to have found money to extend their stables. But it is hard to imagine a more remarkable form of flattery than that which prompted the Brethren of the Fields (according to their minutes for a date in June preceding Vitellius’ arrival) to decree a small sacrifice in honour of a victory by the emperor’s favourite faction.38
From June to September the city of Rome was even more overcrowded with troops than in January, and little seems to have been done—or perhaps could be done in the height of summer—to keep them busy and in training. The problems of discipline that inevitably arise when numbers of soldiers are quartered over wide areas of a large capital were not solved. Many men, in default of better accommodation (though the park of Nero’s Golden House, for which Vitellius expressed contempt, must surely have been pressed into service), encamped in the low-lying Vatican district west of the Campus Martius. The northerners were not used to the oppressive climate of a Roman summer, and sought coolness by swimming in the Tiber. But the temperature drops quite severely at night. They suffered from chills, and almost certainly from malaria, endemic in Italy, to which as newcomers they could put up little resistance.39
Sickness made many long for a return to the north. But for those who were willing to face the Italian climate, there were rich pickings. Vitellius decided to form sixteen Praetorian and four Urban Cohorts, each of 1,000 (instead of 500) men, with excellent pay and prospects. The vacancies were rapidly taken up; but a process whereby 20,000 men were removed from an army only three times that size was regarded with serious misgivings. These fears were perhaps excessive, for it is clear from subsequent events that by this measure Vitellius bound to himself a large body of totally devoted and desperate men who could be relied on to fight to the last for their emperor and their privileges.
But the good times were drawing quickly to an end. By early August confidential news must have reached Vitellius of the proclamation of Vespasian as emperor made at Alexandria on 1 July and of his acceptance by the legions of Judaea and Syria in the course of the next fortnight. Even before this, Aponius Saturninus, the governor of Moesia, had reported disaffection in the Third Legion, which until recently had served under Mucianus; and the name of Vespasian had perhaps been canvassed by it since the April advance to Aquileia. The governor, his own sympathies not entirely clear, had failed to report the matter as frankly as he might have done, and courtiers played down the danger. Still, Vitellius had to take it seriously and concealment would eventually be out of the question if the grain ships failed to arrive from Egypt. In a speech to the troops the emperor found it prudent to assert that false information was being spread by the dismissed Othonian Praetorians in the north: in fact, he added, there was no danger of a renewed civil war. Any reference to Vespasian was banned, and military police patrolled the capital to break up gatherings of gossipers. The attempt to suppress rumour inevitably stimulated it.
On 7 September* Vitellius celebrated his birthday. A public holiday was, of course, declared, and enjoyed with éclat for two days. Gladiatorial shows were put on and festivities organized throughout Rome on an unprecedented scale. To the delight of the rabble and the dismay of sober Romans, the emperor arranged a belated memorial service for Nero. Altars were set up in the Campus Martius and victims offered at the public expense. Less than four months had elapsed since Vitellius entered Italy and the lavish sequence of shows began, but it was believed that Vitellius’ freedman Asiaticus had already outdone the efforts of previous ministers. At such a court, it was asked, who could gain distinction by honesty and hard work ?
In these same days the Flavian invasion began, and Antonius Primus led a brisk thrust through Friuli and Veneto.