Vitellius | Page 7

"an incendiary and glutton." They also upbraided him with the defects of his person, for he was monstrously tall, and had a face usually very red with hard-drinking, a large belly, and one thigh weak, occasioned by a chariot running against him, as he was attending upon Caius [716], while he was driving. At length, upon the Scalae Gemoniae, he was tormented and put to death in lingering tortures, and then dragged by a hook into the Tiber.
XVIII. He perished with his brother and son [717], in the fifty-seventh year of his age [718], and verified the prediction of those who, from the omen which happened to him at Vienne, as before related [719], foretold that he would be made prisoner by some man of Gaul. For he was seized by Antoninus Primus, a general of the adverse party, who was born at Toulouse, and, when a boy, had the cognomen of Becco [720], which signifies a cock's beak.
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(440) After the extinction of the race of the Caesars, the possession of the imperial power became extremely precarious; and great influence in the army was the means which now invariably led to the throne. The soldiers having arrogated to themselves the right of nomination, they either unanimously elected one and the same person, or different parties supporting the interests of their respective favourites, there arose between them a contention, which was usually determined by an appeal to arms, and followed by the assassination of the unsuccessful competitor. Vitellius, by being a parasite of all the emperors from Tiberius to Nero inclusively, had risen to a high military rank, by which, with a spirit of enterprise, and large promises to the soldiery, it was not difficult to snatch the reins of government, while they were yet fluctuating in the hands of Otho. His ambition prompted to the attempt, and his boldness was crowned with success. In the service of the four preceding emperors, Vitellius had imbibed the principal vices of them all: but what chiefly distinguished him was extreme voraciousness, which, though he usually pampered it with enormous luxury, could yet be gratified by the vilest and most offensive garbage. The pusillanimity discovered by this emperor at his death, forms a striking contrast to the heroic behaviour of Otho.
FOOTNOTES:
[689] Faunus was supposed to be the third king who reigned over the original inhabitants of the central parts of Italy, Saturn being the first. Virgil makes his wife's name Marica--
Hunc Fauna, et nympha genitum Laurente Marica Accipimus.--Aen. vii. 47.
Her name may have been changed after her deification; but we have no other accounts than those preserved by Suetonius, of several of the traditions handed down from the fabulous ages respecting the Vitellian family.
[690] The Aequicolae were probably a tribe inhabiting the heights in the neighbourhood of Rome. Virgil describes them, Aen. vii. 746.
[691] Nuceria, now Nocera, is a town near Mantua; but Livy, in treating of the war with the Samnites, always speaks of Luceria, which Strabo calls a town in Apulia.
[692] Cassius Severus is mentioned before, in AUGUSTUS, c. lvi.; CALIGULA, c. xvi., etc.
[693] A.U.C. 785.
[694] A.U.C. 787.
[695] He is frequently commended by Josephus for his kindness to the Jews. See, particularly, Antiq. VI. xviii.
[696] A.U.C. 796, 800.
[697] A.U.C. 801.
[698] A.U.C. 797. See CLAUDIUS, c. xvii.
[699] A.U.C. 801.
[700] A.U.C. 767; being the year after the death of the emperor Augustus; from whence it appears that Vitellius was seventeen years older than Otho, both being at an advanced age when they were raised to the imperial dignity.
[701] He was sent to Germany by Galba.
[702] See TIBERIUS, c. xliii.
[703] Julius Caesar, also, was said to have exchanged brass for gold in the Capitol, Junius, c. liv. The tin which we here find in use at Rome, was probably brought from the Cassiterides, now the Scilly islands. whence it had been an article of commerce by the Phoenicians and Carthaginians from a very early period.
[704] A.U.C. 821.
[705] A.U.C. 822.
[706] Vienne was a very ancient city of the province of Narbonne, famous in ecclesiastical history as the early seat of a bishopric in Gaul.
[707] See OTHO, c. ix.
[708] See OTHO, c. ix.
[709] Agrippina, the wife of Nero and mother of Germanicus, founded a colony on the Rhine at the place of her birth. Tacit. Annal. b. xii. It became a flourishing city, and its origin may be traced in its modern name, Cologne.
[710] A dies non fastus, an unlucky day in the Roman calendar, being the anniversary of their great defeat by the Gauls on the river Allia, which joins the Tiber about five miles from Rome. This disaster happened on the 16th of the calends of August [17th July].
[711] Posca was sour wine or vinegar mixed with water, which was used by the Roman soldiery as their common drink. It