The Dagger No One Wanted — AD 69 II: The Capitol in Flames

While his commanders were betraying him, Vitellius was lounging in gardens near Aricia. Tacitus compares him to lazy animals that lie motionless as long as someone feeds them. After Cremona he forbids any talk of the war, so rumors only grow. (Tac. 3.36, 3.54)

At last he goes to the army at Mevania, in Umbria. He questions others about the order of march and about reconnaissance, that is, about what a general ought to know himself. And he gets drunk. When he hears that the fleet at Misenum has also betrayed him, he returns to Rome. (Tac. 3.56–57)

At Narnia his army comes down into the valley with its standards and goes over to the victors. Primus and Mucianus write to the emperor: his life, money and a quiet estate in Campania if he lays down his arms and surrenders himself and his children into Vespasian’s hands. Vitellius starts working out how many people he will take with him and on which shore he will live. (Tac. 3.63)

Reportedly he strikes a bargain with Flavius Sabinus in the temple of Apollo. Suetonius knows the price: his life and a hundred million sesterces. The witnesses of the conversation are Cluvius Rufus and the poet Silius Italicus. From a distance only their faces can be read: Vitellius dejected and diminished, Sabinus with no air of triumph, looking at him more in pity. (Tac. 3.65; Suet. Vit. 15.2)

A few days earlier the emperor’s mother dies. Tacitus writes that from her son’s reign she had only grief and a good name. On December 18 Vitellius leaves the palace in mourning dress. All his household staff weep behind him. His little son is carried in a litter, as in a funeral procession. Before the assembled people he says a few words: he steps down for the sake of peace and the fatherland, and asks only that they remember him, his brother, his wife and his innocent children. He lifts the boy up and shows him to the people. Then he unbuckles from his side the dagger, the sign of power over the life and death of citizens, and hands it to the consul. (Tac. 3.67–68)

The consul will not take it. The crowd shouts. Vitellius wants to lay down the insignia of power in the temple of Concord and go to his brother’s house. The people block his way. Only the Sacred Way remains open, back to the palace. Tacitus sets this scene beside other endings. Caesar died suddenly, Caligula in a conspiracy, Nero was hidden by night and a country hideout. Rome had never yet seen an emperor go of his own accord, before his people and his soldiers, to surrender power. And it did not let him. (Tac. 3.68)

Meanwhile Sabinus’s house is bursting with senators and equestrians, as if the state already belonged to Vespasian. On the road his escort is stopped by the most diehard Vitellians. After a brief skirmish Sabinus falls back to the Capitol with a handful of soldiers, senators and equestrians. Even women are with them. At night he brings his children there, and his nephew, the eighteen-year-old Domitian. A winter downpour begins. (Tac. 3.69)

At dawn on December 19 he sends a centurion to Vitellius with a reproach: you have broken the agreement. The emperor blames the soldiers he cannot restrain. He advises the messenger to leave by a secret passage so that they will not kill him. (Tac. 3.70)

The Vitellians run uphill across the Forum, leaderless, each on his own. The defenders hurl roof tiles down on them from the roof of the portico. The attackers set the portico on fire. Sabinus blocks the scorched gate with statues, the memorials of his ancestors. A second assault comes from the side of the Asylum and the hundred steps of the Tarpeian Rock. The fire spreads to the porticoes beside the temples, then to the old timber of the pediment. The Capitol burns with its gates closed — as Tacitus writes, neither defended nor plundered. (Tac. 3.71)

Who started the fire? Suetonius: Vitellius himself. Cassius Dio: his soldiers. Josephus also blames Vitellius’s men. Tacitus does not decide. He even writes that it was more often said to be the besieged, who hurled firebrands onto the roofs to drive off the attackers. The captured consul Atticus confessed of his own accord. Tacitus suspects that he lied to lift the blame from Vitellius’s party. (Suet. Vit. 15.3; Dio 65.17.3; Jewish War 4.11.4; Tac. 3.71, 3.75)

Domitian hides with a temple attendant. On the advice of a freedman he puts on a linen robe and slips away among the priests’ servants. Suetonius adds that he disguised himself as a devotee of Isis and with a single companion crossed the Tiber. (Tac. 3.74; Suet. Dom. 1.2)

Sabinus does not flee. Unarmed, together with the consul Atticus, he is brought in chains before the palace. Vitellius stands on the steps and wants to plead for him. The crowd demands blood. Sabinus is killed in front of the palace, and his body is thrown onto the Gemonian Stairs. He had served the state for thirty-five years and had been city prefect for twelve. (Tac. 3.74–75)

At night Primus reaches the outskirts of Rome. Too late: Sabinus is dead, the Capitol lies in ruins. Vitellius has one day left. (Tac. 3.79)