The Works of Tacitus
tr. by Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb
[1864-1877]
Tacitus: History Book 3 [80]
80. By this success the zeal of the people was increased. The mob of the city
armed itself. Some few had military shields, the greater part seized such arms
as came to hand, and loudly demanded the signal of battle. Vitellius expressed
his thanks to them, and bade them sally forth to defend the capital. Then the
Senate was called together, and envoys were selected to meet the armies and
urge them in the name of the Commonwealth to union and peace. The reception
of these envoys was not everywhere the same. Those who fell in with Petilius
Cerialis were exposed to extreme peril, for the troops disdained all offers
of peace. The praetor Arulenus Rusticus was wounded. This deed seemed all the
more atrocious, when, over and above the insult offered to the dignity of the
envoy and praetor, men considered the private worth of the man. His companions
were dispersed, and the lictor that stood next to him, venturing to push aside
the crowd, was killed. Had they not been protected by an escort provided by
the general, the dignity of the ambassador, respected even by foreign nations,
would have been profaned with fatal violence by the madness of Roman citizens
before the very walls of their Country. The envoys who met Antonious were more
favourably received, not because the troops were of quieter temper, but because
the general had more authority.
81. One Musonius Rufus, a man of equestrian rank, strongly attached to the
pursuit of philosophy and to the tenets of the Stoics, had joined the envoys.
He mingled with the troops, and, enlarging on the blessings of peace and the
perils of war, began to admonish the armed crowd. Many thought it ridiculous;
more thought it tiresome; some were ready to throw him down and trample him
under foot, had he not yielded to the warnings of the more orderly and the threats
of others, and ceased to display his ill-timed wisdom. The Vestal virgins also
presented themselves with a letter from Vitellius to Antonius. He asked for
one day of truce before the final struggle, and said, that if they would permit
some delay to intervene, everything might be more easily arranged. The sacred
virgins were sent back with honour, but the answer returned to Vitellius was,
that all ordinary intercourse of war had been broken off by the murder of Sabinus
and the conflagration of the Capitol.
82. Antonius, however, summoned the legions to an assembly, and endeavoured
to calm them, proposing that they should encamp near the Mulvian bridge, and
enter the capital on the following day. His reason for delay was the fear that
the soldiers, once exasperated by conflict, would respect neither the people
nor the Senate, nor even the shrines and temples of the Gods. They, however,
looked with dislike on all procrastination as inimical to victory. At the same
time the colours that glittered among the hills, though followed by an unwarlike
population, presented the appearance of a hostile array. They advanced in three
divisions, one column straight from where they had halted along the Via Flaminia,
another along the bank of the Tiber, a third moved on the Colline Gate by the
Via Salaria. The mob was routed by a charge of the cavalry. Then the Vitellianist
troops, themselves also drawn up in three columns of defence, met the foe. Numerous
engagements with various issue took place before the walls, but they generally
ended in favour of the Flavianists, who had the advantage of more skilful generalship.
Only that division suffered which had wound its way along narrow and slippery
roads to the left quarter of the city as far as the gardens of Sallust. The
Vitellianists, taking their stand on the garden-walls, kept off the assailants
with stones and javelins till late in the day, when they were taken in the rear
by the cavalry, which had then forced an entrance by the Colline Gate. In the
Campus Martius also the hostile armies met, the Flavianists with all the prestige
of fortune and repeated victory, the Vitellianists rushing on in sheer despair.
Though defeated, they rallied again in the city.
83. The populace stood by and watched the combatants; and, as though it had
been a mimic conflict, encouraged first one party and then the other by their
shouts and plaudits. Whenever either side gave way, they cried out that those
who concealed themselves in the shops, or took refuge in any private house,
should be dragged out and butchered, and they secured the larger share of the
booty; for, while the soldiers were busy with bloodshed and massacre, the spoils
fell to the crowd. It was a terrible and hideous sight that presented itself
throughout the city. Here raged battle and death; there the bath and the tavern
were crowded. In one spot were pools of blood and heaps of corpses, and close
by prostitutes and men of character as infamous; there were all the debaucheries
of luxurious peace, all the horrors of a city most cruelly sacked, till one
was ready to believe the Country to be mad at once with rage and lust. It was
not indeed the first time that armed troops had fought within the city; they
had done so twice when Sulla, once when Cinna triumphed. The bloodshed then
had not been less, but now there was an unnatural recklessness, and men’s pleasures
were not interrupted even for a moment. As if it were a new delight added to
their holidays, they exulted in and enjoyed the scene, indifferent to parties,
and rejoicing over the sufferings of the Commonwealth.
84. The most arduous struggle was the storming of the camp, which the bravest
of the enemy still held as a last hope. It was, therefore, with peculiar energy
that the conquerors, among whom the veteran cohorts were especially forward,
brought to bear upon it at once all the appliances which have been discovered
in reducing the strongest cities, the testudo, the catapult, the earth-work,
and the firebrand. They repeatedly shouted “that all the toil and danger they
had endured in so many conflicts would be crowned by this achievement. The capital
has been restored to the Senate and people of Rome, and their temples to the
Gods; but the soldier’s peculiar distinction is in the camp; this is his country,
and this his home; unless this be recovered forthwith, the night must be passed
under arms.” On the other hand the Vitellianists, though unequal in numbers
and doomed to defeat, could yet disturb the victory, delay the conclusion of
peace, and pollute both hearth and altar with blood; and they clung to these
last consolations of the vanquished. Many, desperately wounded, breathed their
last on the towers and ramparts. When the gates were torn down, the survivors
threw themselves in a body on the conquerors, and fell to a man, with their
wounds in front and their faces turned towards the foe, so anxious were they
even in their last hours to die with honour. When the city had been taken, Vitellius
caused himself to be carried in a litter through the back of the palace to the
Aventine, to his wife’s dwelling, intending, if by any concealment he could
escape for that day, to make his way to his brother’s cohorts at Tarracina.
Then, with characteristic weakness, and following the instincts of fear, which,
dreading everything, shrinks most from what is immediately before it, he retraced
his steps to the desolate and forsaken palace, whence even the meanest slaves
had fled, or where they avoided his presence. The solitude and silence of the
place scared him; he tried the closed doors, he shuddered in the empty chambers,
till, wearied out with his miserable wanderings, he concealed himself in an
unseemly hiding-place, from which he was dragged out by the tribune Julius Placidus.
His hands were bound behind his back, and he was led along with tattered robes,
a revolting spectacle, amidst the invectives of many, the tears of none. The
degradation of his end had extinguished all pity. One of the German soldiers
met the party, and aimed a deadly blow at Vitellius, perhaps in anger, perhaps
wishing to release him the sooner from insult. Possibly the blow was meant for
the tribune. He struck off that officer’s ear, and was immediately dispatched.
85. Vitellius, compelled by threatening swords, first to raise his face and
offer it to insulting blows, then to behold his own statues falling round him,
and more than once to look at the Rostra and the spot where Galba was slain,
was then driven along till they reached the Gemoniae, the place where the corpse
of Flavius Sabinus had lain. One speech was heard from him shewing a spirit
not utterly degraded, when to the insults of a tribune he answered, “Yet I was
your Emperor.” Then he fell under a shower of blows, and the mob reviled the
dead man with the same heartlessness with which they had flattered him when
he was alive.
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