Vitellius’s Last Day

December 20, AD 69: Rome falls into Flavian hands, and Vitellius lives through his last day. His route traced on a plan of the city.

Transcript

December twentieth. Rome celebrates the Saturnalia, the year’s merriest feast.

Three Flavian columns enter the city: along the Via Flaminia, along the bank of the Tiber and from the Colline Gate.

People line the streets and watch the fighting as if at the games. They cheer first one side, then the other.

The last of Vitellius’s soldiers hold out longest, in the Praetorian camp.

The emperor is carried in a litter to his wife’s house on the Aventine. Then he returns to the palace.

The palace is empty. Even the lowliest slaves have fled.

Vitellius wanders through the rooms and tries the locked doors.

A tribune drags him out. They lead him through the Forum in a torn robe,

past the Rostra and the spot where Galba had died eleven months earlier.

The tribune mocks him. And he answers in one sentence:

“And yet I was your emperor.”