Cologne

Floor mosaic from Roman Cologne (the Dionysus mosaic, 3rd century AD), Römisch-Germanisches Museum. An image related to this place, not a view from the period.

Colonia Agrippinensis, today’s Cologne on the Rhine. It was the chief town of the Ubii, where Agrippina the Younger was born; Tacitus writes that she arranged for a colony of veterans to be settled there and the town was named after her (Annals 12.27). This was the residence of the governor of Lower Germany, Aulus Vitellius. On the night of January 1, AD 69, while he sat at dinner, the standard-bearer of the Fourth Legion brought him news that the legions of Upper Germany had thrown down the images of Galba. On January 2 the legate Fabius Valens arrived with cavalry and hailed Vitellius as emperor, and the legions of the whole province followed him. The inhabitants offered horses, weapons and money (Tacitus, Histories 1.56–57). The place appears in the episode AD 69 I.

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