The Gemonian Stairs

Stairs on the slope of the Capitol, leading up from the Forum beside the prison (the Carcer). The bodies of the executed were thrown onto them so that the crowd could abuse them, and then dragged to the Tiber. This was how Sejanus ended in AD 31: Dio writes that his body lay here for three days (Tiberius episode). In December AD 69 the body of Flavius Sabinus, Vespasian’s brother, killed in front of the palace, was thrown here. A day later Vitellius was dragged to the same spot. Tacitus recorded his last words to a mocking tribune: “Yet I was your emperor.” Suetonius adds that the body was dragged with a hook to the Tiber. The place appears in the episode AD 69 II, in the chapters “The Dagger No One Wanted” and “The Gemonian Stairs”.