Titus Vinius (c. AD 12–⁠69)

Portrait of a man of the late 1st century AD (Flavian era): marble, Walters Art Museum, Baltimore (23.205). An image of the period; no portrait of this person survives.

Vinius served as a commander under Galba in Hispania and became his closest adviser. Together with the praetorian prefect Cornelius Laco and the freedman Icelus he formed a trio that Rome nicknamed the emperor’s tutors (Suetonius, Galba 14). Suetonius calls him a man of boundless greed. According to Plutarch he shielded Tigellinus in return for bribes.

He supported Otho as Galba’s successor, and Otho was to marry his daughter (Plutarch, Galba 21). On January 15, AD 69, he was killed in the Forum by the temple of the Divine Julius (Tacitus, Histories 1.42). Tacitus writes that he was fifty-seven.

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Image: Roman sculpture; photo: Walters Art Museum, late 1st century AD, Walters Art Museum (23.205); Wikimedia Commons, public domain

Titus Vinius (c. AD 12–⁠69)

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