Part 26 (1/2)
[161] See chap. 56.
[162] A distinguished officer, who successfully crushed the rebellion on the Rhine (Book IV), and became governor of Britain in 71.
[163] Vespasian's brother and younger son were both in Rome, the former still holding the office of city prefect (cp. i. 46).
[164] Casigliano.
[165] From Verona (see chap. 52).
[166] Terni.
[167] At Narnia.
[168] The two prefects of the guard.
[169] See chap. 43.
[170] Properly a festival to celebrate the first cutting of the beard. Nero forced high officials and their wives to take part in unseemly performances (ii. 62), and the festivities became a public scandal, culminating in Nero's own appearance as a lyrist.
[171] See i. 7, 8.
THE ABDICATION OF VITELLIUS AND THE BURNING OF THE CAPITOL
During these days Antonius and Varus kept sending messages to Vitellius, in which they offered him his life, a gift of money, and the choice of a safe retreat in Campania, if he would stop the war and surrender himself and his children to Vespasian. Mucia.n.u.s wrote him letters to the same effect. Vitellius usually took these offers seriously and talked about the number of slaves he would have and the choice of a seaside place. He had sunk, indeed, into such mental torpor that, if other people had not remembered that he was an emperor, he was certainly beginning to forget it himself. However, 64 it was to Flavius Sabinus, the City Prefect, that the leading men at Rome addressed themselves. They urged him secretly not to lose all share in the glory of victory. They pointed out that the City Garrison was under his own command, and that he could count on the police and their own bands of slaves, to say nothing of the good fortune of the party and all the advantage that victory gives. He must not leave all the glory to Antonius and Varus. Vitellius had nothing left but a few regiments of guards, who were seriously alarmed at the bad news which came from every quarter. As for the populace, their feelings soon changed, and if he put himself at their head, they would be just as loud in their flattery of Vespasian. Vitellius himself could not even cope with success, and disaster had positively paralysed him. The credit of ending the war would go to the man who seized the city. It was eminently fitting that Sabinus should secure the throne for his brother, and that Vespasian should hold him higher than any one else.
Age had enfeebled Sabinus, and he showed no alacrity to listen to 65 such talk as this. Some people covertly insinuated that he was jealous of his brother's success and was trying to delay its realization.
Flavius Sabinus was the elder brother and, while they were both private persons, he had been the richer and more influential. It was also believed that he had been chary in helping Vespasian to recover his financial position, and had taken a mortgage on his house and estates. Consequently, though they remained openly friendly, there were suspicions of a secret enmity between them. The more charitable explanation is that Sabinus's gentle nature shrank from the idea of bloodshed and ma.s.sacre, and that this was his reason for so constantly discussing with Vitellius the prospects of peace and a capitulation on terms. After several interviews at his house they finally came to a settlement--so the report went--at the Temple of Apollo.[172] To the actual conversation there were only two witnesses, Cluvius Rufus[173]
and Silius Italicus,[174] but the expression of their faces was watched from a distance. Vitellius was said to look abject and demoralized: Sabinus showed less sign of pride than of pity.
Had Vitellius found it no harder to persuade his friends than to 66 make his own renunciation, Vespasian's army might have marched into Rome without bloodshed. But as it was, each of his friends in proportion to his loyalty persisted in refusing terms of peace. They pointed to the danger and disgrace. Would their conqueror keep his promises any longer than he liked? However great Vespasian's self-confidence, he could not allow Vitellius to live in private. Nor would the losers acquiesce: their very pity would be a menace.[175]
'Of course,' they said, 'you are an old man. You have done with fortune, good or bad. But what sort of repute or position would your son Germanicus[176] enjoy? At present they are promising you money and a household, and the pleasant sh.o.r.es of Campania. But when once Vespasian has seized the throne, neither he nor his friends nor even his army will feel their safety a.s.sured until the rival claimant is dead. They imprisoned Fabius Valens and meant to make use of him if a crisis occurred, but they found him too great an incubus. You may be sure that Antonius and Fuscus and that typical representative of the party, Mucia.n.u.s, will have no choice but to kill you. Julius Caesar did not let Pompey live unmolested, nor Augustus Antony.[177] Do you suppose that Vespasian's is a loftier disposition? Why, he was one of your father's dependants,[178] when your father was Claudius's colleague.[179] No, think of your father's censors.h.i.+p, his three consuls.h.i.+ps,[179] and all the honour your great house has won. You must not disgrace them. Despair, at least, should nerve your courage.
The troops are steadfast; you still enjoy the people's favour. Indeed, nothing worse can happen to you than what we are eager to face of our own free will. If we are defeated, we must die; if we surrender, we must die. All that matters is whether we breathe our last amid mockery and insult or bravely and with honour.'
But Vitellius was deaf to all courageous counsel. His mind was 67 obsessed with pity for his wife and children, and an anxious fear that obstinate resistance might make the conqueror merciless towards them.
He had also a mother,[180] very old and infirm, but she had opportunely died a few days before and thus forestalled the ruin of her house. All she had got out of her son's princ.i.p.ate was sorrow and a good name. On December 17 he heard the news that the legion and the Guards at Narnia had deserted him and surrendered to the enemy. He at once put on mourning and left the palace, surrounded by his sorrowful household. His small son was carried in a little litter, as though this had been his funeral. The populace uttered untimely flatteries: the soldiers kept an ominous silence.
On that day there was no one so indifferent to the tragedy of 68 human life as to be unmoved by this spectacle. A Roman emperor, yesterday master of the inhabited world, had left the seat of his authority, and was now pa.s.sing through the streets of the city, through the crowding populace, quitting the throne. Such a sight had never been seen or heard of before. The dictator, Caesar, had been the victim of sudden violence; Caligula of a secret conspiracy. Nero's had been a stealthy flight to some obscure country house under cover of night. Piso and Galba might almost be said to have fallen on the field of battle. But here was Vitellius--before the a.s.sembly of his own people, his own soldiers around him, with women even looking on--uttering a few sentences suitable to his miserable situation. He said it was in the interest of peace and of his country that he now resigned. He begged them only to retain his memory in their hearts and to take pity on his brother, his wife, and his little innocent children. As he said this, he held out his son to them and commended him, now to individuals, now to the whole a.s.sembly. At last tears choked his voice. Turning to the consul, Caecilius Simplex,[181] who was standing by, he unstrapped his sword and offered to surrender it as a symbol of his power over the life and death of his subjects. The consul refused. The people in the a.s.sembly shouted 'No'. So he left them with the intention of depositing the regalia in the Temple of Concord and then going to his brother's house. But he was faced with a still louder uproar. They refused to let him enter a private house, and shouted to him to return to the palace. They blocked every other way and only left the road leading into the Via Sacra open.[182] Not knowing what else to do, Vitellius returned to the palace.
A rumour of his abdication had preceded him, and Flavius Sabinus 69 had sent written instructions to the Guards'[183] officers to keep the men in hand. Thus the whole empire seemed to have fallen into Vespasian's lap. The chief senators, the majority of the knights, and the whole of the city garrison and the police came flocking to the house of Flavius Sabinus. There they heard the news of the popular enthusiasm for Vitellius and the threatening att.i.tude of the German Guards.[184] But Sabinus had gone too far to draw back, and when he showed hesitation, they all began to urge him to fight, each being afraid for his own safety if the Vitellians were to fall on them when they were disunited and consequently weaker. However, as so often happens on these occasions, every one offered to give advice but few to share the danger. While Sabinus' Body Guard were marching down by the Fundane reservoir[185] they were attacked by some of the most determined Vitellians. The surprise was unpremeditated, but the Vitellians got the best of an unimportant skirmish. In the panic Sabinus chose what was at the moment the safest course, and occupied the summit of the Capitol,[186] where his troops were joined by a few senators and knights. It is not easy to record their names, since after Vespasian's victory crowds of people claimed credit for this service to the party. There were even some women who endured the siege, the most famous of them being Verulana Gratilla, who had neither children nor relatives to attract her, but only her love of danger.[187]
The Vitellians, who were investing them, kept a half-hearted watch, and Sabinus was thus enabled to send for his own children and his nephew Domitian at dead of night, dispatching a courier by an unguarded route to tell the Flavian generals that he and his men were under siege, and would be in great straits unless they were rescued.
All night, indeed, he was quite unmolested, and could have escaped with perfect safety. The Vitellian troops could face danger with spirit, but were much too careless in the task of keeping guard; besides which a sudden storm of chilly rain interfered with their sight and hearing.
At daybreak, before the two sides commenced hostilities, Sabinus 70 sent Cornelius Martialis, who had been a senior centurion, to Vitellius with instructions to complain that the conditions were being violated; that he had evidently made a mere empty show of abdication, meant to deceive a number of eminent gentlemen. Else why had he gone from the meeting to his brother's house, which caught the eye from a conspicuous position overlooking the Forum, and not rather to his wife's on the Aventine. That was the proper course for a private citizen, anxious to avoid all pretension to supreme authority. But no, Vitellius had returned to the palace, the very stronghold of imperial majesty. From there he had launched a column of armed men, who had strewn with innocent dead the most crowded quarter of Rome, and even laid violent hands upon the Capitol. As for Sabinus himself, the messenger was to say, he was only a civilian, a mere member of the senate. While the issue was being decided between Vespasian and Vitellius by the engagement of legions, the capture of towns, the capitulation of cohorts; even when the provinces of Spain, of Germany, of Britain, had risen in revolt; he, though Vespasian's brother, had still remained faithful to his allegiance, until Vitellius, unasked, began to invite him to a conference. Peace and union, he was to remind him, serve the interest of the losers, and only the reputation of the winners. If Vitellius regretted their compact, he ought not to take arms against Sabinus, whom he had treacherously deceived, and against Vespasian's son, who was still a mere boy. What was the good of killing one youth and one old man? He ought rather to march out against the legions and fight for the empire on the field. The result of the battle would decide all other questions.
Greatly alarmed, Vitellius replied with a few words in which he tried to excuse himself and throw the blame on his soldiers. 'I am too una.s.suming,' he said, 'to cope with their overpowering impatience.' He then warned Martialis to make his way out of the house by a secret pa.s.sage, for fear that the soldiers should kill him as an amba.s.sador of the peace to which they were so hostile. Vitellius himself was not in a position to issue orders or prohibitions; no longer an emperor, merely an excuse for war.
Martialis had hardly returned to the Capitol when the furious 71 soldiery arrived. They had no general to lead them: each was a law to himself. Their column marched at full speed through the Forum and past the temples overlooking it. Then in battle order they advanced up the steep hill in front of them, until they reached the lowest gates of the fortress on the Capitol. In old days there was a series of colonnades at the side of this slope, on the right as you go up.
Emerging on to the roof of these, the besieged overwhelmed the Vitellians with showers of stones and tiles. The attacking party carried nothing but swords, and it seemed a long business to send for siege-engines and missiles. So they flung torches into the nearest[188] colonnade and, following in the wake of the flames, would have burst through the burnt gates of the Capitol, if Sabinus had not torn down all the available statues--the monuments of our ancestors'