principality, and so continued until 1320, when it came under the dominion of the Lithuanians. In the 16th century it fell to Poland. Under the privileges granted to the city by the Polish sovereigns it flourished, but it soon began to suffer from the wars between Russia and Poland, during which it was thrice taken by the Russians and burned. Russia annexed it inally in 1772.
VITELLI, VITELLOZZO ( ?–1502), Italian condottiere. Together with his father, Niccolò, tyrant of Città di Castello, and his brothers, who were all soldiers of fortune, he instituted a new type of infantry armed with sword and pike to resist the German men-at-arms, and also a corps of mounted infantry armed with arquebuses. Vitellozzo took service with Florence against Pisa, and later with the French in Apulia (1496) and with the Orsini faction against Pope Alexander VI. In 1500 Vitellozzo and the Orsini made peace with the pope, and the latter's son Cesare Borgia, being determined to crush the petty tyrants of Romagna and consolidate papal power in that province, took the condottieri into his service. Vitellozzo distinguished himself in many engagements, and in 1501 he advanced against Florence, moved as much by a desire to avenge his brother Paolo, who while in the service of the republic had been suspected of treachery and put to death (1499), as by Cesare's orders. In fact, while the latter was actually negotiating with the republic, Vitelli seized Arezzo. Forced by Borgia and the French, much against his will, to give up the city, he began from that moment to nurture hostile feelings towards his master and to aspire to independent rule. He took part with the Orsini, Oliverotto da Fermo and other captains in the conspiracy of La Magione against the Borgia; but mutual distrust and the incapacity of the leaders before Cesare's energy and the promise of French help, brought the plot to naught, and Vitelli and other condottieri, hoping to ingratiate themselves with Cesare once more, seized Senigallia in his name. There they were decoyed by him and arrested while their troops were out of reach, and Vitelli and Oliverotto were strangled that same night (31st of December 1502).
See vol. iii. of E. Ricotti's Storia della compagnie di ventura (Turin, 1845). in which Domenichi's MS. Vita di Vitellozzo Vitelli is quoted; C. Yriarte, Cesar Borgia (Paris, 1889); P. Villari, Life and Times of N. Machiavelli (English ed., London, 1892); see also under Alexander VI. and Cesare Borgia.
VITELLIUS, AULUS, Roman emperor from the 2nd of January to the 22nd of December A.D. 69, was born on the 24th of September A.D. 15. He was the son of Lucius Vitellius, who had been consul and governor of Syria under Tiberius. Aulus was consul in 48, and (perhaps in 60–61) proconsul of Africa, in which capacity he said to have acquitted himself with credit. Under Galba, to the general astonishment, at the end of 68 he was chosen to command the army of Lower Germany, and here he made himself popular with his subalterns and with his soldiers by outrageous prodigality and excessive good nature, which soon proved fatal to order and discipline. Far from being ambitious or scheming, he was lazy and self-indulgent, fond of eating and drinking, and owed his elevation to the throne to Caecina and Valens, commanders of two legions on the Rhine. Through these two men a military revolution was speedily accomplished, and early in 69 Vitellius was proclaimed emperor at Colonia Agrippinensis (Cologne), or, more accurately, emperor of the armies of Upper and Lower Germany. In fact, he was never acknowledged as emperor by the entire Roman world, though at Rome the senate accepted him and decreed to him the usual imperial honours. He advanced into Italy at the head of a licentious and ruffianly soldierly, and Rome became the scene of riot and massacre, gladiatorial shows and extravagant feasting. As soon as it was known that the armies of the East, Dalmatia and Illyricum had declared for Vespasian, Vitellius, deserted by many of his adherents, would have resigned the title of emperor. It was said that the terms of resignation had actually been agreed upon with Primus, one of Vespasian's chief supporters, but the praetorians refused to allow him to carry out the agreement, and forced him to return to the palace, when he was on his way to deposit the insignia of empire in the temple of Concord. On the entrance of Vespasian's troops into Rome he was dragged out of some miserable hiding-place, driven to the fatal Gemonian stairs, and there struck down. “Yet I was once your emperor,” were the last and, as far as we know, the noblest words of Vitellius. During his brief administration Vitellius showed indications of a desire to govern wisely, but he was completely under the control of Valens and Caecina, who for their own ends encouraged him in a course of vicious excesses which threw his better qualities into the background.
See Tacitus, Histories; Suetonius, Vitellius; Dio Cassius lxv.; Merivale, Hist. of the Romans under the Empire, chs. 56, 57; H. Schiller, Geschichte der römischen Kaiserzeit, i. pt. 1; W. A. Spooner's ed. of the Histories of Tacitus (introduction); B. W. Henderson, Civil War and Rebellion in the Roman Empire, A.D. 69–70 (1908).
VITERBO, a city and episcopal see of the province of Rome, Italy, 54 m. by rail N.N.W. of Rome, 1073 ft. above sea-level. Pop. (1901) 17,344 (town), 21,258 (commune). It lies on the old high road between Florence and Rome, and besides the railway to Rome it has a branch line (25 m.) going N.E. to Attigliano, on the railway from Rome to Florence. It is picturesquely surrounded by luxuriant gardens, and enclosed by walls and towers, which date partly from the Lombard period. The streets are paved with large lava blocks, of which the town is also built. It has many picturesque medieval towers and other edifices (the Palazzo degli Alessandri is perhaps the most interesting), for which indeed it is one of the best towns in central Italy, and some elegant fountains; among the latter may be mentioned the Gothic Fontana Grande (1279, restored in 1424) and Fontana della Rocca by Vignola (1566). The citadel (Rocca) itself, erected by Cardinal Albornoz in 1345, is now a barrack. The Palazzo Patrizi is a building of the early Renaissance in the Florentine style. The cathedral, a fine basilica, of the 12th (?) century, with columns and fantastic capitals of the period, originally flat-roofed and later vaulted, with 16th-century restorations, contains the tomb of Pope John XXI., and has a Gothic campanile in black and white stone. It is more probable that it was S. Silvestro (now Chiesa del Gesù) and not the cathedral that, in 1271, was the scene of the murder, on the steps of the high altar, during public worship, of Henry, son of Richard of Cornwall, by Guy de Montfort (see Dante, Inf. xii. 118). In front of the cathedral Pope Adrian IV. (Nicholas Breakspear) compelled the emperor Frederick I. to hold his stirrup as his vassal. The old episcopal palace with a double loggia built on to it (recently restored to its original form) is a Gothic building of the 13th century, in which numerous conclaves have been held. The church of S. Rosa exhibits the embalmed body of that saint, a native of Viterbo, who died in her eighteenth year, after working various miracles and having distinguished herself by her invectives against Frederick II. (1251), some ruins of whose palace, destroyed after his death, exist. S. Francesco, a Gothic church (before 1256), contains the fine Gothic tombs of Popes Clement IV. and Adrian V., and has an external pulpit of the 15th century. The town also contains a few small Romanesque churches (S. Maria Nuova, S. Andrea, S. Giovanni in Zoccoli, S. Sisto, &c.) and several other Gothic churches. S. Maria della Cella is noteworthy among the former as having one of the earliest campanili of any size in Italy (9th century). The town hall, with a medieval tower and a 15th-century portico, contains some Etruscan sarcophagi from sites in the neighbourhood, and a few good paintings. At one corner of the picturesque square in front of it is a Roman sarcophagus with a representation of the hunt of Meleager, with an inscription in honour of the fair Galiana, to win whom, it is said, a Roman noble laid siege to Viterbo in 1135. Close by is the elegant Gothic façade of S. Maria della Salute, in white and red marble with sculptures. The Gothic cloisters of S. Maria della Ventà just outside the town are strikingly beautiful. The church contains frescoes by Lorenzo da Viterbo (1469) and a fine majolica pavement. A mile and a half to the north-east
