In the Good Graces of Four Emperors — AD 69 II: The Capitol in Flames

Why him, of all people? Suetonius has an answer. Galba said openly that no one need be feared less than men who think only of eating. The provinces’ resources would fill Vitellius’s bottomless stomach. He chose him out of contempt, not favor. (Suet. Vit. 7.1)

The new commander cannot even afford the journey. He puts his wife and children in a rented attic and rents out his own house to strangers. He takes a pearl from his mother’s ear and pawns it. Creditors wait for him by the road and barely let him pass. (Suet. Vit. 7.2; Dio 65.5.3)

On the Rhine they greet him like a gift from the gods. The son of a three-time consul, in the prime of life, easygoing and generous. Along the way he kisses ordinary soldiers. At the inns, in the mornings, he asks the muleteers whether they have had breakfast yet. (Suet. Vit. 7.3)

In the camp he agrees to every request and remits punishments. Within a month the soldiers drag him out of his bedroom one evening just as he is, in a house tunic. Someone puts into his hand the sword of the Divine Julius, taken from a shrine of Mars. With that sword in his hand they parade him through the villages. It is early January, AD 69. When he returns, the dining room catches fire from the stove. Everyone turns pale: a bad omen. And he says: “Courage! The light shines on us.” That is his entire speech to the soldiers. (Suet. Vit. 8.1–2)

He is fifty-three. He was born on September 24, AD 15. When the legions proclaimed him emperor, his mother mourned him as if he were dead. He himself had mocked astrologers back under Nero: “They know nothing, if they say that even I will become emperor.” Nero laughed. (Suet. Vit. 3.2; Dio 64.4.3)

At Lugdunum, today’s Lyon, Vitellius has the army salute his little son. The boy is six. His father holds him in his arms, wrapped in a soldier’s cloak, and gives him the name Germanicus. (Tac. 2.59; Dio 65.1.2a)

At Cremona he watches gladiator fights. Then he takes it into his head to see the field where his men won the war for him. (Tac. 2.70; Dio 65.1.3)

Tacitus sees it differently. The commanders show the emperor where the legions struck and where the cavalry did. The tribunes boast, mixing truth with fable. Some soldiers are moved to tears. Vitellius does not avert his eyes from the thousands of unburied countrymen. He offers sacrifice to the gods of the place, not knowing how close his own end is. (Tac. 2.70)

Before he reaches Rome, he still has to do something about the Guard that killed Galba and raised Otho.