Death of Vitellius (December 20, AD 69)

On December 20 three columns of Antonius Primus entered Rome. The people watched the fighting as if it were a show at the games. Vitellius had himself carried to the Aventine, then returned to the empty palace. Dragged from his hiding place and led across the Forum, he answered a taunting tribune: “And yet I was your emperor” (Tacitus). He died on the Gemonian Stairs, where the day before the body of Flavius Sabinus had been thrown. The Senate soon granted Vespasian full power. Cassius Dio’s reckoning gives the date December 22.