The Historians' History of the World 06

The legions of the Danube under one of their generals, Antonius Primus, broke into Italy; at Cremona they beat the troops of Vitellius and then marched against the capital, which alone seemed resolved to defend the tyrant. Antonius Primus wished to spare the town. Vitellius himself was too cowardly to try to offer any powerful resistance, and as by chance a brother of Vespasian, Flavius Sabinus, was town prefect of Rome, it was easy to negotiate matters. The result was an agreement by which Vitellius agreed to abdicate in a very ignominious fashion. Only the soldiers of the emperor and all those who had taken part in his universal revels, would hear nothing of an abdication of Vitellius, and without further ceremony laid hands on Sabinus, to whom a great number of the senate, the knights, and the town-guard had already sworn allegiance, on behalf of his brother. Sabinus, with a small number of attendants, was obliged to take to flight, and retired to the Capitol. His adversaries stormed it, took Sabinus prisoner, killed his followers, and intentionally or by chance occasioned a fire, by which the temple of the Capitoline Jupiter, the most sacred building in Rome, was reduced to ashes, and some of the historical records preserved there were destroyed.

In vain did Vitellius, by earnest entreaty, try to restrain the soldiers from murdering Sabinus; he was killed in a terrible manner, whilst Domitian, one of Vespasian’s sons, who had just fled to the Capitol, to the misfortune of the empire escaped the wrath of the enemy. The rude soldiers of Vitellius conducted themselves on this occasion with the same savagery as the troops of Antonius Primus had shown a few weeks before, when after their victory they had burned down the town of Cremona and had ill treated its inhabitants in the most shocking manner. Vitellius was quite innocent of what took place in Rome, for he would gladly have submitted to any terms by which he might have saved his life. With this object, immediately after the murder of Sabinus, he sent ambassadors to Antonius Primus, and that his representations and requests might make the more impression, he sent the vestal virgins with them.

But Antonius Primus refused any further negotiations, defeated the populace and the soldiers of Vitellius in a bloody fight, which took place partly before the walls and partly in the streets of the town, and had the entire body of the conquered ruthlessly massacred. On this occasion the deep moral depravity of the Roman people showed itself in a revolting manner. The populace watched the fierce struggle between the two barbarian armies as coldly as though the usual gladiatorial displays had been taking place before them; they applauded first one side and then the other, fetched those who fled from their victorious enemy out of their hiding places, and gave them up to their adversaries to be killed.

No one was disturbed in his usual pleasures by the fight for the empire; the baths, the taverns, and other public resorts were filled with revellers and pleasure seekers, as at any other time, and, as the historian Tacitus affirms, Rome presented the hideous spectacle of a town whose inhabitants had abandoned themselves at once to all the horrors of civil war and all the vices of a decadent nation. Vitellius died as he had lived.d Seeing the city conquered, he was conveyed in a litter, by a private way at the back of the palace, to his wife’s house on Mount Aventine, with intent, if he could lie concealed during the day, to fly for refuge to his brother and the cohorts at Tarracina. Straightway, from his inherent fickleness, and the natural effects of fright, since, as he dreaded everything, whatever course he adopted was the least satisfactory, he returned to his palace, and found it empty and desolate; even his meanest slaves having made their escape, or shunning the presence of their master. The solitude and silence of the scene alarmed him; he opened the doors of the apartments, and was horror-struck to see all void and empty. Exhausted with this agonising state of doubt and perplexity, and concealing himself in a wretched hiding place, he was dragged forth by Placidus, the tribune of a cohort. With his hands tied behind him, and his garment torn, he was conducted, a revolting spectacle, through crowds insulting his distress, without a friend to shed a tear over his misfortunes. The unseemliness of his end banished all sympathy. Whether one of the Germanic soldiers who met him intended for him the stroke he made, and if he did, whether from rage or to rescue him the quicker from the mockery to which he was exposed; or whether he aimed at the tribune, is uncertain; he cut off the ear of the tribune, and was immediately despatched.[19]