Tacitus (Donne)/Chapter 6
CHAPTER VI.
'HISTORY.'
GALBA—OTHO.
Whether the year 51 or 54 A.D. be accepted as the birth-year of Tacitus, he was old enough, in either case, to have been able to watch and to retain a lively recollection of the great convulsion of the empire which followed Nero's death. If born in the later of these years he was nearly sixteen, if in the earlier he was nearly eighteen: and with the sixteenth year commenced the manhood of a Roman; and at eighteen we have already seen that Pliny had put on a lawyer's gown. The 'History' may accordingly be accounted the work of one having good opportunities for observation himself, and for making inquiry from others.
The 'History,' when perfect, extended from the arrival of Galba in Rome, on the 1st of January, 69 A.D., to the murder of Domitian in 96. If the books which are unfortunately lost bore any proportion to those extant, then we may fairly put down the number of them as thirty at the least. Unfortunately we possess only four books and the beginning of the fifth, and these comprise, and that not entirely, the events of those troubled years 69 and 70. The second chapter is a prologue to a tragic drama of the deepest dye, and prepares us for scenes of crime and calamity following one another in rapid succession.
"I am entering," writes Tacitus, "on the history of a period rich in disasters, frightful in its wars, torn by civil strife, and even in peace full of horrors. Four emperors perished by the sword. There were three civil wars: there were more with foreign enemies: there were often wars that had both characters at once. Now, too, Italy was prostrated by disasters either entirely novel, or that recurred only after a long succession of ages. Cities in Campania's richest plains were swallowed up and overwhelmed—Rome wasted by conflagrations, its oldest temples consumed, and the Capitol itself fired by the hands of citizens. Never, surely, did more terrible calamities of the Roman people, or evidence more conclusive, prove that the gods take no thought for our happiness, but only for our punishment."
In the election of a Cæsar the senate might affect to confirm the choice of the soldiers; but it was the soldiers, or at least the terror of them, who really invested with the purple robe Servius Galba. He was chosen by the Spanish legions, to whom the example had been set by those of Gaul, who had put forward as Nero's successor Vindex and Virginius Rufus. The one perished in the attempt to become Cæsar; the other, with courageous moderation, refused to be placed on that proud but perilous eminence. In their selection of Galba the soldiers to all appearance did wisely and well, for he had passed through many grades of both military and civil offices with much credit to himself. He reigned long enough and unfortunately enough to merit the description—it has become almost proverbial—that had he never been emperor no one would have doubted his capacity for empire.
He came to the throne under almost every possible disadvantage. He was old, he was ugly, bald-headed, and a gouty invalid. He kept his purse-strings tight: he spoke his mind indiscreetly: he was a slave to his freedmen and favourites: good in intention, he was infirm of purpose: a popular and humane provincial governor, he caused much blood to be spilt in Rome, not because he was cruel, but through weakness, indecision, or mere perplexity.
He came to a city peopled by his foes. The prætorians could not stomach a Cæsar chosen by the legions: they could not conceal from themselves that the fatal secret was revealed, and indeed was pervading the provinces—that a "prince might be created elsewhere than at Rome." Highly had Nero favored—nay, even flattered—his body-guards. They were the props of his throne: their tribunes, and even their centurions, were admitted to his orgies: they stood beside him in the courts of justice: they accompanied him on his journeys: he enriched them, when his own coffers were empty, with the spoils of noble houses: he relaxed their discipline: he catered for their pleasures: they led the applause when he drove his chariot in the circus, or sang and spouted in the theatre. And now a Cæsar was in their darling's place who knew not the prætorians—who had filled the capital with the ordinary legionaries, whom they had always affected to despise as the "Line." The treasury was known to be empty: the Cæsar was said to be avaricious. "He loved no plays;" he was not musical; nothing was to be expected, much to be dreaded from, this septuagenarian and worn-out martinet.
The populace were not less hostile to Galba. Next to the prætorians, they were the late emperor's warmest supporters. He was ever giving them good dinners and shows and spectacles: he did not keep himself shut up in the recesses of the palace: his hand was heavy on the senators, and the senators they hated: but he was the king of the people; and, being so, what mattered it to them if he had put to death his adoptive brother Britannicus, or that termagant his mother Agrippina, even if she were a daughter of their once much-loved Germanicus?
Nero's freedmen, again, were among Galba's foes. They indeed had been making hay while the sun shone; they had "soaked up the Cæsar's countenance, his rewards, his authorities." Now evil days had come: inquiries were being made into the modes by which they had become rich—demands were being issued for restitution of their gains. Galba needed what they had gleaned; and it was "but squeezing them and, sponges, you will be dry again." The inquiries and demands were alike vain, for the sponges were already dry; they had squandered abroad all that they had nefariously gotten. If Galba had any friends, they were in his own army, or in the senate. But, by an indiscreet though honest declaration that he was wont to "choose his soldiers, not to buy them," he had also disappointed and estranged his own partisans. To rely on the senate was to lean on a broken reed. The senatorial chiefs were none of them men of bold aspirations or vigorous resolutions.
Ill luck dogged the heels of Galba even before he reached Italy. The prefect of the prætorians, Nymphidius Sabinus, who had taken an active part in Nero's overthrow, had met his successor at Narbonne (Narbo), and, with many compliments, tendered him allegiance, accompanied with a modest request to have one of the highest offices in the State conferred on himself. The ground, however, was preoccupied by Galba's adherents, who, not unnaturally, claimed place and priority in his favors. The prefect, deeply offended by such refusal, hurried back to Rome, and tried to persuade the body-guard to proclaim him, Cæsar. This was too strong a measure even for the dissatisfied soldiery, and Nymphidius was slaughtered in the prætorian camp. But Galba, or his counsellors, pushed success too far by demanding the sacrifice of all Nymphidius's supporters who had not already destroyed themselves, and by putting to death a man of consular rank, Petronius Turpilianus, whom Nero had appointed to the command of his guards, and who was now condemned without even the formality of a trial. Such informal execution of "persons of quality" would have touched lightly an army or a populace already familiar with irregular sentences and short shrift. But Galba increased his evil repute as a man of blood when, on arriving at the Milvian Bridge in Rome, he ordered his soldiers to mow down Nero's marine battalions—they had troubled him with premature importunities—and over whose killed and wounded bodies he entered the capital.
Galba was not ambitious of empire. He had refused to accept the throne when offered him by the army on the death of Caligula; he had served Claudius faithfully as governor of Africa. The already aged veteran was prudently living in retirement, when Nero appointed him to be his legate in Spain, and for eight years he governed that province with great ability. But he was in the hands of evil ministers, and resigned himself entirely to them, and these ministers were at variance with one another: on one point alone did they agree—that at Galba's age some provision ought to be promptly made for a successor. But their harmony extended only to the general principle that Galba could not live much longer, and that there was already a formidable rival in the field.
We not unfrequently meet with persons in history whose characters it is scarcely possible to draw correctly—persons who disappoint our hopes, and exceed our expectations of them. Of this class of men was Marcus Salvius Otho. Among the most profligate of Nero's companions, the Rochester of his court, he governed the province of Lusitania for several years with much credit to himself: the most luxurious and depraved of men while prosperous, his end was that of a hardy though unfortunate soldier. Nothing in his life became him like the leaving it—he died by his own hand, an Epicurean Cato: even as Rochester, if Bishop Burnet may be trusted, departed a good Christian. It is, however, to Galba's credit that he declined following the interested advice of his ministers in the appointment of a successor. "He was actuated," Tacitus thinks, "by concern for the State, and saw that the sovereign power was wrested out of Nero's hands in vain, if if were to be transferred to Otho—a duplicate of him. In the choice of a colleague Galba appears for once to have judged for himself; and his selection, though it proved unfortunate, cannot justly be found fault with. Piso Licinianus came of an illustrious family on both sides. By the better sort in Rome he was respected, if not beloved; but his aspect and deportment savoured too much of the strictness of a primitive age. By the profligate and the frivolous he was called morose and sullen. This appointment necessarily crushed the hopes and aroused the wrath of Otho, who now began to intrigue in earnest against Galba.
All this time a storm was brewing in the north far more dangerous to the emperor, and far more disastrous to Rome and Italy, than Otho's plot. The very day on which Galba put on the consular robe—January 1, 69 A.D.—the legions of Upper Germany, when summoned to take the military oath to that emperor, tore down his images, demanded that the oath should run in the name of the senate and people, and that some other successor to Nero should be appointed. Aulus Vitellius had recently been sent by Galba as consular legate to Lower Germany, and on the very next day after this mutiny broke out, he was greeted in the camp at Cologne by the legions of Germany, or their delegates, as Imperator.
The news of this movement in Germany hurried on the adoption. It was conferred with dignity by Galba, it was received with becoming modesty and reverence by Piso, and with plausible and perhaps sincere expressions of his desire to fulfil the important duties imposed on him. Galba conducted him to the prætorian camp, but as he did not promise a donative, his speech to the soldiers aggravated his former unpopularity. The way was now prepared for Otho. To the disappointed guards a notorious prodigal was far more welcome than a frugal emperor. On the morning of the 15th of January, Galba was present at a sacrifice, and Otho in attendance on him. The entrails of the victims betokened risk to the emperor—"in his own household there lurked a foe." That foe, it had been prearranged, was summoned by a freedman to keep an appointment with a surveyor of works. With this excuse he quitted the emperor's presence and hurried to the place of tryst already agreed on—the Golden Milestone beneath the Capitol in front of the Roman Forum. It may have been by chance, it may have been by design, to prevent premature alarm in the city, that only three-and-twenty common soldiers there saluted Otho as "emperor." Certainly he had expected more, since, dismayed at the thin attendance, he seems for a moment to have wavered in his purpose. But his partisans, better informed, drew their swords, thrust him into a litter, and bore him off to the prætorian camp.
Arrived at the camp, the commander on that day—one Julius Martialis, a tribune—it is uncertain whether he were an accomplice, or merely alarmed at so unlooked-for a visit—opened the gates, and admitted the pretender into the enclosure. There the other tribunes and centurions, regarding their own safety alone, and perhaps sharing in the delusion of Martialis—that this feeble body of traitors to Galba was but an advanced guard of numerous and powerful conspirators—forgot at once their duty and their military oath, and joined in, or at least connived at, an enterprise of whose aim they were still uncertain, and of the existence of which they had been ignorant a few minutes before. In fact, the privates alone seem to have been in the secret; but, as had often happened, and was often to happen again, they were too powerful for their officers. The condensed phrase of the historian alone conveys the pith and marrow of the plot. "Two common soldiers" (mānipulares) "engaged to transfer the empire of the Roman people—and they did transfer it."
Otho meanwhile had bought the imperial guards. He attended at Galba's supper-table, gave handsome presents to the cohort on duty, and consoled the disappointed among the soldiers with gifts of land or money. The unconscious emperor, busy with his sacrifice, was really importuning the gods of an empire that was now another's. Piso harangued the troops: but the appeal of a stoical Cæsar was addressed to deaf ears: the greater number of his hearers at once dispersed; the few who remained faithful to the two Cæsars were feeble or wavering; the populace and the slaves clamoured with discordant shouts for Otho's death and the destruction of the conspirators. But what could a few domestic servants, a few frightened knights and senators, and an unarmed rabble, do against the prætorians, now advancing on the city? It was to little purpose that Galba's friends stood by him when he himself was undecided, when his ministers were wrangling with each other, and when every moment brought the conspirators nearer. The murder of Galba can only be described in the words of Tacitus—at least in those of his ablest English translators.[1]
"Galba was hurried to and fro with every movement of the surging crowd;" the feeble old man, attended by only one half-armed cohort, had come down from the Palatine hill to the Forum; "the halls and temples all around were thronged with spectators of this mournful sight. Not a voice was heard from the better class of people or even from the rabble. Everywhere were terror-stricken countenances, and ears turned to catch every sound. It was a scene neither of agitation nor of repose, but there reigned the silence of profound alarm and profound indignation. Otho, however, was told that they were arming the mob. He ordered his men to hurry on at full speed and to anticipate the danger. Then did Roman soldiers rush forward like men who had to drive a Vologeses or Pacorus from the ancestral throne of the Arsacidæ, not as though they were hastening to murder their aged and defenceless emperor. In all the terror of their arms, and at the full speed of their horses, they burst into the Forum, thrusting aside the crowd and trampling on the senate. Neither the sight of the Capitol, nor the sanctity of the overhanging temples, could deter them from committing a crime which any one succeeding to power must avenge."
"When this armed array was seen to approach, the standard-bearer of the cohort that escorted Galba tore off and dashed upon the ground Galba's effigy. At this signal the feeling of all the troops declared itself plainly for Otho. The Forum was deserted by the flying populace. Weapons were pointed against all who hesitated. Near the lake of Curtius, Galba was thrown out of his litter and fell to the ground, through the alarm of his bearers. His last words have been variously reported, according as men hated or admired him. Some have said that he asked in a tone of entreaty what wrong he had done, and begged a few days for the payment of the donative. The more general account is, that he voluntarily offered his neck to the murderers, and bade them haste and strike, if it seemed to be for the good of the commonwealth. To those who slew him it mattered not what he said. About the actual murderer nothing is clearly known. The soldiers foully mutilated his arms and legs, for his breast was protected, and in their savage ferocity inflicted many wounds even on the headless trunk."
It will not be necessary to dwell long on the remainder of Otho's story, since he did little memorable during his short reign until the last moments of his life. "Uneasy lay the head that wore the crown." The last rites to Galba were scarcely paid; the acclamations that greeted Otho both in the senate and the camp were still ringing in all ears, when he found that he had reason to tremble. "From the moment," says Dean Merivale, "that he stepped through an emperor's blood into the palace of the Cæsars, Otho was made aware that he in his turn must fight if he would retain his newly acquired honours." In swift succession, messengers followed one another, bringing him tidings of the progress of sedition in Gaul, and of the formidable attitude assumed by Vitellius at the head of the armies on the Rhine.
And who was this third candidate for the purple? Had it been worth while to murder Galba in order that Otho might succeed? Would it be worth the expense of more blood and treasure to despatch Otho, and replace him by a rival of whom no good report had ever reached the capital? Dear as Nero by his vices and cruelties had cost the senate and the people, and one or two of the provinces, yet at present the empire appeared to have lost rather than gained by his removal. It was bad for a score or two of statesmen and generals to perish yearly by the executioner's hands, or by suicide—that common refuge of despair; but it was worse for thousands to be mown down by the swords of infuriated soldiers, in a few weeks or even a few days. Aulus Vitellius, indeed, was not utterly evil. He was not wholly abandoned to the vices and pleasures of the city. He had gained for himself some reputation in letters and in eloquence; he had served with great credit for uprightness as proconsul and legate in Africa. On his march from the Rhine he displayed some generosity in saving unpopular officers from the fury of the legions, among them Virginius Rufus; and some modesty in at first deferring to accept the title of Augustus, and positively refusing that of Cæsar. His mother and his wife also helped to invest him with some vicarious merit. Both these matrons were examples of moderation in prosperity. Sextilia, like Cromwell's mother, looked with fear and distrust on her son's elevation, refused all public honours herself, and replied to the first letter he addressed to her under his new title of Germanicus, that her son was named Vitellius, and she knew of no other. This high-minded woman died shortly after his accession, seems to have been spared the spectacle of his gross and vulgar excesses, and certainly did not witness his shameful end. His wife Galeria bore herself as the spouse of a simple senator, and humanely protected the children of Flavius Sabinus, Vespasian's brother, from the daggers of the Vitellians. Like Galba, too, Vitellius committed no crime in aspiring to the throne; it was forced upon him by the tribunes and centurions at Cologne.
It is pleasant to encounter virtuous women in the annuals of a period soiled by the names of a Poppæa, a Messalina, and an Agrippina; we have therefore given a passing notice of the wife and mother of Vitellius. Of himself there is nothing more to be said on the score of virtue. "Tacitus," says Gibbon, "fairly calls him a hog," and in truth he was a most valiant trencherman. As soon as, perhaps even before, his arrangements were completed for despatching his legions from the Rhine to the Tiber, he appears to have thought that the highest privilege he had attained by his sudden promotion was that of keeping the most expensive table ever known in Roman annals. But Vitellius allowed not a day to pass unsignalised by the pomp and circumstance of his dinner. During his whole progress from Cologne to Italy—it was necessarily a slow one, since he needed many hours for refreshment and digestion—the lands through which he passed were ransacked, the rivers and the seas were swept, for delicacies for his table. "The leading men of the various States were ruined by having to furnish his entertainments, and the States themselves reduced to beggary." Such a commander could neither be respected nor enforce discipline. The Gauls suffered severely, but not so much as Italy, from the presence of the Vitellians. The evils of war are terrible, but not so terrible, says the historian, as was the march of the German legions. The soldiers, dispersed through the municipal towns and colonies, were robbing and plundering and polluting every place with violence and lust. Everything, lawful or unlawful, they were ready to seize or to sell, sparing nothing, sacred or profane. Some persons under the soldiers' garb murdered their private enemies. The soldiers themselves, who knew the country well, marked out rich estates and wealthy owners for plunder, or for death in case of resistance; their commanders were in their power, and dared not check them."
Otho did not answer the expectations of his partisans in Rome. He was no longer the Otho of the Neronian time. He deferred his pleasures to a more convenient season: he moulded his new life to accord with the duties and dignity of his new position. Yet he got little credit by the change, for men not unnaturally thought that his virtues were a mask for the moment, and that, if he returned victorious, his vices would revive. Perhaps they were wrong in their apprehensions. No indolence or riot disgraced Otho's march. "He wore a cuirass of iron, and was to be seen in front of the standards, on foot, rough and negligent in dress, and utterly unlike what common report had pictured him." In a few preliminary skirmishes the fortunes of the Othonian and Vitellian armies were pretty evenly balanced. But the emperor had hurried into the field with very insufficient forces; he seems, indeed, from the first to have despaired of the issue. His excesses in early life had enfeebled, not his courage, but his power of will. He had indecently exulted when the head of Piso was shown to him, but the spectre of Galba is said to have haunted him in the solitude of the night after the murder. Within twenty hours after his usurpation, he began to presage his own fall. In one thing he did not share the vices of Nero; he thirsted not for blood, for those whom he put to death were victims to the wrath of the prætorians or of the populace.
And so, indifferent to life and desponding of success, Otho went forth to do battle for his throne without awaiting the legions which had declared for him in Pannonia, Dalmatia, and Mæsia. The prætorian guards were the kernel of his forces, but they were more than overmatched by the Vitellian legions trained in the German wars. The guards were indeed corrupted by the luxuries of Rome, and regardless of discipline. Like many French regiments in 1870, they elected their own officers, and obeyed or disobeyed them as they pleased. Spies, too, from the camp of the Vitellius, had found their way into Rome, and whispered to many who resented Galba's murder, that if his destroyer were slain or deposed, there would be another donative from his conqueror.
The battle which decided Otho's fate was fought at Bedriacum, a small town or hamlet situated between Verona and Cremona. At first fortune seemed to smile on the Othonians; a successful charge on their part broke the enemy's line, and one of his eagles was taken by them. But this, so far from discouraging, infuriated the Vitellians, and determined victory in their favour. Cæcina and Valens, their commanders, proved themselves valiant and able officers, whereas Otho's generals early quitted the field. The slaughter was dreadful. "In civil wars," says Tacitus, "no prisoners are reserved for sale." The Vitellians were not merely better led and disciplined, but their reserves were large, and any chance of retrieving defeat by a second combat was made vain by the insubordination of the vanquished, who laid all the blame of discomfiture on their commanders, and threatened them with death.
Otho was not present in the action. His soldiers demanded, his two best officers advised, him to remain with the legions, or to defer a battle. They urged that fortune, the gods, and the genius (the guardian angel of pagan belief) of Otho must be crowned by victory. "The day" on which their counsel was accepted "first gave the death-blow to the Othonian cause."
Otho, now at Brocello (Brixellum), a few miles distant from Bedriacum, was awaiting without fear or drooping spirit—for his mind, in case of reverse, had long been made up—the report of the battle. Vague and discordant rumours at first reached his ear. But at last increasing troops of fugitives brought sure intelligence that all was lost. The soldiers who had accompanied him, without waiting to hear his opinion, exhorted him not to despair, but to try again "the fortune of the die." They themselves were ready to brave every danger; there were forces still in reserve: the Mæsian and Pannonian legions would join them in a few days. Flattery, they said, had done its worst in urging him to leave the army, in hurrying on the unfortunate engagement. But it was not the voice of flatterers that now implored him to take heart, and to lead them against the enemy. The soldiers who were near him fell at his feet and clasped his knees: those at a distance stretched forth their hands in token of assent. Plotius Firmus, who commanded a detachment of the body-guard, joined his prayer to those of the legions. "The noble mind," he said, "battles with adversity: it is the craven spirit that capitulates at once. Your soldiers, Cæsar, have undergone much, yet do not despond: abandon not an army devoted to your cause; renounce not men as generous as they are brave."
They spoke to deaf ears. Otho had weighed all circumstances: the end was at hand: ambition in him was dead: he had been dazzled by the purple and its gold trappings: they had brought him only anxious days and sleepless nights: he had revelled with Nero: he had enjoyed some repose in his Lusitanian province: he had helped Galba to a throne; he had hurled him from it. He had shed blood enough already, he had tasted the extremes of luxury and "fierce civil strife," and all was vanity. He addressed to his faithful guards some words of gratitude, but he left none of his hearers in doubt as to his fixed purpose to have done with wars and with life—presently and for ever.
From the soldiers he turned to his weeping friends. Calm and untroubled himself, with a serene countenance, with a firm voice, he besought them to be calm and resigned. He advised all to quit the town without loss of time, and to make their terms with the conqueror. For all who were willing to depart he provided boats and carriages. From his papers and letters he selected all such as might, under a new Cæsar, be injurious to the writers of them—all that expressed duty towards himself or ill-will to Vitellius—and committed them to the flames. "For the general good," he said, "I am a willing victim. For myself, I have won ample renown, and I leave to my family an illustrious name." Towards the close of day he called for cold water, and having quenched his thirst, ordered two daggers to be brought him. He tried the points of both, and laid one of them under his pillow. Once more assuring himself that all who wished had left the town, he passed the night in quiet. At the dawn of day, he stabbed himself through the heart. One wound sufficed, but his dying groans caught the ears of his freedmen and slaves. They rushed into his chamber, and among them Plotius Firmus. In compliance with his earnest request, his body was burnt without delay. The ghastly spectacle of Galba's and Piso's heads fixed on lances and exhibited to a brutal soldiery and populace was doubtless present to his mind when ordering this speedy passage to the funeral pyre. The corpse was borne to it by the prætorians "with praises and tears, covering his wound and his hands with kisses." Some killed themselves near the pyre—"not moved," says Tacitus, "by remorse or by fear, but by the desire to emulate his glory, and by love of their prince." "Over his ashes was built a tomb, unpretending, and therefore likely to stand." He ended his life in the thirty-seventh year of his age, and had reigned just three months. Rarely, if ever, does history present an example of swifter retribution for treachery and treason.
The Vitellian generals moved in three divisions. Valens advanced through Gaul, and so by the Mont Genèvre into Italy; Cæcina through the eastern cantons of Switzerland, and over the Great St Bernard; while Vitellius followed more leisurely in the rear of his legates. Every district through which they respectively passed was ravaged; villages, and sometimes large towns, were sacked or burnt; but the richer land south of the Alps was the principal sufferer. The soldiers of Otho, it was said, had exhausted Italy, but it was desolated by the Vitellians. The fierce warriors of the north, Romans only in name, fell without remorse on the borough-towns and colonies, and, as it were, rehearsed on their march the licence they hoped to indulge in at Rome. From Pavia Vitellius proceeded to Cremona, and thence diverged from his route to cross the plain of Bedriacum, in order to behold the scene of the recent victory. The aspect of the field of battle, and the brutality of the victor, are thus described by Tacitus:—
"It was a hideous and a horrible sight. Not forty days had passed since the battle, and there lay mangled corpses, severed limbs, the putrefying forms of men and horses. The soil was saturated with gore; and, what with levelled trees and crops, horrible was the desolation. Not less revolting was that portion of the road which the people of Cremona had strown with laurel-leaves and roses, and on which they had raised altars, and sacrificed victims, as if to greet some barbarous despot—festivities in which they delighted for the moment, but which were afterwards to work their ruin. Valens and Cæcina were present, and pointed out the various localities of the field of battle, showing how from one point the columns of the legions had rushed to the attack; how from another the cavalry had charged; how from a third the auxiliary troops had turned the flank of the enemy. The tribunes and prefects extolled their individual achievements, and mixed together fictions, facts, and exaggerations. The common soldiers also turned aside from the line of march with joyful shouts, recognised the various scenes of conflict, and gazed with wonder on the piles of weapons and the heaps of slain. Some indeed there were whom all this moved to thoughts of the mutability of fortune, to pity and to tears. Vitellius did not turn away his eyes—did not shudder to behold the unburied corpses of so many thousands of his countrymen; nay, in his exultation, in his ignorance of the doom which was so close upon himself, he actually instituted a religions ceremony in honour of the tutelary gods of the place."
It was said that Vitellius expressed a brutal pleasure at the spectacle. He called for bowls of wine—he circulated them freely among his suite and soldiers—he declared that "the corpse of an enemy smells always well, particularly that of a fellow-citizen." We will now leave him in Rome, where he was of course greeted by the shouts of the populace, the flattery of the upper classes, and innumerable applications for places and favours. Well had Tiberius said of his Roman subjects, that they were "born to be slaves."
- ↑ Church and Brodribb.