VERY different accounts are given of the origin of the Vitellian family. Some
					describe it as ancient and noble, others as recent and obscure, nay, extremely
					mean. I am inclined to think, that these several representations have been made
					by the flatterers and detractors of Vitellius, after he became emperor, unless
					the fortunes of the family varied before. There is extant a memoir addressed by
					Quintus Eulogius to Quintus Vitellius, quzestor to the Divine Augustus, in which
					it is said, that the Vitellii were descended from Faunus , king of the aborigines, and Vitellia, who was worshipped in many places as a goddess, and that
					they reigned formerly over the whole of Latium : that all who were left of the family removed out of the
					country of the Sabines to Rome , and
					were enrolled among the patricians: that some monuments of the family continued
					a long time; as the Vitellian Way, reaching from the Janiculum to the sea, and
					likewise a colony of that name, which, at a very remote period of time, they
					desired leave from the government to defend against the Aequicolae, with a force raised by their
					own family only: also that, in the time of the war with the Samnites, some of
					the Vitellii who went with the troops levied for the security of Apulia , settled at Nuceria, and their
					descendants, a long time afterwards, returned again to Rome , and were admitted into the patrician
					order. On the other hand, the generality of writers say that the founder of the
					family was a freedman. Cassius Severus and
					some others relate that he was likewise a cobbler, whose son having made a
					considerable fortune by agencies and dealings in confiscated property, begot, by
					a common strumpet, daughter of one Antiochus, a baker, a child, who afterwards
					became a Roman knight. Of these different accounts the reader is left to take
					his choice.

It is certain, however, that Publius Vitellius, of Nuceria, whether of an ancient
					family, or of low extraction, was a Roman knight, and a procurator to Augustus.
					He left behind him four sons, all men of very high station, who had the same
					cognomen, but the different praenomina of Aulus, Quintus. Publius, and
						 Lucius . Aulus died in the enjoyment
					of the consulship, which office he
					bore jointly with Domitius, the father of Nero Caesar. He was elegant to excess
					in his manner of living, and notorious for the vast expense of his
					entertainments. Quintus was deprived of his rank of senator, when, upon a motion
					made by Tiberius, a resolution passed to purge the senate of those who were in
					any respect not duly qualified for that honour. Publius, an intimate friend and
					companion of Germanicus, prosecuted his enemy and murderer, Cneius Piso, and
					procured sentence against him. After he had been made praetor, being arrested
					among the accomplices of Sejanus, and delivered into the hands of his brother to
					be confined in his house, he opened a vein with a penknife, intending to bleed
					himself to death. He suffered, however, the wound to be bound up and cured, not
					so much from repenting the resolution he had formed, as to comply with the
					importunity of his relations. He died afterwards a natural death during his
					confinement. Lucius, after his consulship, was made governor of Syria , and by his politic management not only brought Artabanus, king of the
					Parthians, to give him an interview, but to worship the standards of the Roman
					legions. He afterwards filled two ordinary consulships, and also the censorship jointly with the emperor Claudius. Whilst that prince was absent
					upon his expedition into Britain , the care of the
					empire was committed to him, being a man of great integrity and industry. But he
					lessened his character not a little, by his passionate fondness for an abandoned
					freedwoman, with whose spittle, mixed with honey, he used to anoint his throat
					and jaws, by way of remedy for some complaint, not privately nor seldom, but
					daily and publicly. Being extravagantly prone to flattery, it was he who gave
					rise to the worship of Caius Caesar as a god, when, upon his return from
						 Syria , he would not presume to
					accost him otherwise than with his head covered, turning himself round, and then
					prostrating himself upon the earth. And to leave no artifice untried to secure
					the favour of Claudius, who was entirely governed by his wives and freedmen, he
					requested as the greatest favour from Messalina, that she would be pleased to
					let him take off her shoes; which, when he had done, he took her right shoe, and
					wore it constantly betwixt his toga and his tunic, and from time to time covered
					it with kisses. He likewise worshipped golden images of Narcissus and Pallas
					among his household gods. It was he, too, who, when Claudius exhibited the
					secular games, in his compliments to him upon that occasion, used this
					expression, "May you often do the same."

He died of palsy, the day after his seizure with it, leaving behind him two sons,
					whom he had by a most excellent and respectable wife, Sextilia. He had lived to
					see them both consuls, the same year and during the whole year also; the younger
					succeeding the elder for the last six months. The senate honoured him after his decease with a funeral at the
					public expense and with a statue in the Rostra, which had this inscription upon
					the base: "One who was stedfast in his loyalty to his prince." The emperor Aulus
					Vitellius, the son of this Lucius, was born upon the eighth of the calends of
					October [24th September], or, as some say, upon the seventh of the ides of
					September [7th September], in the consulship of Drusus Caesar and Norbanus
						Flaccus. His parents were so terrified with the
					predictions of astrologers upon the calculation of his nativity, that his father
					used his utmost endeavours to prevent his being sent governor into any of the
					provinces, whilst he was alive. His mother, upon his being sent to the
						legions and also upon his being proclaimed
					emperor, immediately lamented him as utterly ruined. He spent his youth with
					Tiberius at Capri , in all manner of
					debauchery, which course of life he never altered.

In the subsequent part of his life, being still more scandalously vicious, he
					rose to great favour at court; being upon a very intimate footing with Caius
					[Caligula], because of his fondness for chariot-driving, and with Claudius for
					his love of gaming. But he was in a still higher degree acceptable to Nero, as
					well on the same accounts, as for other services which he rendered him. When
					Nero presided in the games instituted by himself, though he was extremely
					desirous to perform amongst the harpers, yet his modesty would not permit him,
					notwithstanding the people entreated much for it. Upon his quitting the theatre,
					Vitellius fetched him back again, pretending to represent the determined wishes
					of the people, and so afforded him the opportunity of yielding to their
					entreaties.

By the favour of these three princes, he was not only advanced to the great
					offices of the state, but to the highest dignities of the sacred order; after
					which he held the proconsulship of Africa , and had the superintendence of the public works, in
					which appointment his conduct, and, consequently, his reputation, were very
					different. For he governed the province with singular integrity during two
					years, in the latter of which he acted as deputy to his brother, who succeeded
					him. But in his office in the city, he was said to pillage the temples of their
					gifts and ornaments, and to have exchanged brass and tin for gold and silver.

He took to wife Petronia , the daughter
					of a man of consular rank, and had by her a son named Petronius, who was blind
					of an eye. The mother being willing to appoint this youth her heir, upon
					condition that he should be released from his father's authority, the latter
					discharged him accordingly; but shortly after, as was believed, murdered him,
					charging him with a design upon his life, and pretending that he had, from
					consciousness of his guilt, drank the poison he had prepared for his father.
					Soon afterwards, he married Galeria Fundana, the daughter of a man of pretorian
					rank, and had by her both sons and daughters. Among the former was one who had
					such a stammering in his speech, that he was little better than if he had been
					dumb.

He was sent by Galba into Lower Germany, 
					contrary to his expectation. It is supposed that he was assisted in procuring
					this appointment by the interest of Titus Junius, a man of great influence at
					that time; whose friendship he had long before gained by favouring the same set
					of charioteers with him in the Circensian games. But Galba openly declared that
					none were less to be feared than those who only cared for their bellies, and
					that even his enormous appetite must be satisfied with the plenty of that
					province; so that it is evident he was selected for that government more out of
					contempt than kindness. It is certain, that when he was to set out, he had not
					money for the expenses of his journey; he being at that time so much straitened
					in his circumstances, that he was obliged to put his wife and children, whom he
					left at Rome , into a poor lodging which
					he hired for them, in order that he might let his own house for the remainder of
					the year; and he pawned a pearl taken from his mother's ear-ring, to defray his
					expenses on the road. A crowd of creditors who were waiting to stop him, and
					amongst them the people of Sineussa and Formia , whose taxes he had converted to his own use, he eluded,
					by alarming them with the apprehension of false accusations. He had, however,
					sued a certain freedman, who was clamorous in demanding a debt of him, under
					pretence that he had kicked him; which action he would not withdraw, until he
					had wrung from the freedman fifty thousand sesterces. Upon his arrival in the
					province, the army, which was disaffected to Galba, and ripe for insurrection,
					received him with open arms, as if he had been sent them from heaven. It was no
					small recommendation to their favour, that he was the son of a man who had been
					thrice consul, was in the prime of life, and of an easy, prodigal disposition.
					This opinion, which had been long entertained of him, Vitellius confirmed by
					some late practices; having kissed all the common soldiers whom he met with upon
					the road, and been excessively complaisant in the inns and stables to the
					muleteers and travellers; asking them in a morning, if they had got their
					breakfasts, and letting them see, by belching, that he had eaten his.

After he had reached the camp, he denied no man any thing he asked for, and
					pardoned all who lay under sentence for disgraceful conduct or disorderly
					habits. Before a month, therefore, had passed, without regard to the day or
					season, he was hurried by the soldiers out of his bed-chamber, although it was
					evening, and he in an undress, and unanimously saluted by the title of
						EMPEROR. He was then carried round
					the most considerable towns in the neighbourhood, with the sword of the Divine
					Julius in his hand; which had been taken by some person out of the temple of
						 Mars , and presented to him when he
					was first saluted. Nor did he return to the pretorium, until his dining-room was
					in flames from the chimney's taking fire. Upon this accident, all being in
					consternation, and considering it as an unlucky omen, he cried out, " Courage,
					boys! it shines brightly upon us." And this was all he said to the soldiers. The
					army of the Upper Province, likewise, which had before declared against Galba
					for the senate, joining in the proceedings, he very eagerly accepted the
					cognomen of Germanicus, offered him by the unanimous consent of both armies, but
					deferred assuming that of Augustus, and refused for ever that of Caesar.

Intelligence of Galba's death arriving soon after, when he had settled his
					affairs in Germany he divided his
					troops into two bodies, intending to send one of them before him against Otho,
					and to follow with the other himself. The army he sent forward had a lucky omen;
					for, suddenly, an eagle came flying up to them on the right, and having hovered
					round the standards, flew gently before them on their road. But, on the other
					hand, when he began his own march, all the equestrian statues, which were
					erected for him in several places, fell suddenly down with their legs broken;
					and the laurel crown, which he had put on as emblematical of auspicious fortune,
					fell off his head into a river. Soon afterwards, at Vienne , as he was upon the tribunal
					administering justice, a cock perched upon his shoulder, and afterwards upon his
					head. The issue corresponded to these omens; for he was not able to keep the
					empire which had been secured for him by his lieutenants.

He heard of the victory at Bedriacum, 
					and the death of Otho, whilst he was yet in Gaul , and without the least hesitation, by a single
					proclamation, disbanded all the pretorian cohorts, as having, by their repeated
					treasons, set a dangerous example to the rest of the army; commanding them to
					deliver up their arms to his tribunes. A hundred and twenty of them, under whose
					hands he had found petitions presented to Otho, for rewards of their service in
					the murder of Galba, he besides ordered to be sought out and punished. So far
					his conduct deserved approbation, and was such as to afford hope of his becoming
					an excellent prince, had he not managed his other affairs in a way more
					corresponding with his own disposition, and his former manner of life, than to
					the imperial dignity. For, having begun his march, he rode through every city in
					his route in a triumphal procession; and sailed down the rivers in ships, fitted
					out with the greatest elegance, and decorated wigh various kinds of crowns,
					amidst the most extravagant entertainments. Such was the want of discipline, and
					the licentiousness both in his family and army, that, not satisfied with the
					provision every where made for them at the public expense, they committed every
					kind of robbery and insult upon the inhabitants, setting slaves at liberty as
					they pleased; and if any dared to make resistance, they dealt blows and abuse,
					frequently wounds, and sometimes slaughter amongst them. When he reached the
					plains on which the battles were fought, some of those around him being offended at the smell of the
					carcases which lay rotting upon the ground, he had the audacity to encourage
					them by a most detestable remark, "That a dead enemy smelt not amiss, especially
					if he were a fellow-citizen." To qualify, however, the offensiveness of the
					stench, he quaffed in public a goblet of wine, and with equal vanity and
					-insolence distributed a large quantity of it among his troops. On his observing
					a stone with an inscription upon it to the memory of Otho, he said, "It was a
					mausoleum good enough for such a prince." He also sent the poniard, with which
					Otho killed himself, to the colony of Agrippina, to be dedicated to Mars. Upon the Appenine
					hills he celebrated a Bacchanalian feast.

At last he entered the City with trumpets sounding, in his general's cloak, and
					girded with his sword, amidst a display of standards and banners; his attendants
					being all in the military habit, and the arms of the soldiers unsheathed. Acting
					more and more in open violation of all laws, both divine and human, he assumed
					the office of Pontifex Maximus, upon the day of the defeat at the Allia; ordered the magistrates to be
					elected for ten years of office; and made himself consul for life. To put it out
					of all doubt what model he intended to follow in his government of the empire,
					he nmade his offerings to the shade of Nero in the midst of the Campus Martius , and with a full assembly of
					the public priests attending him. And at a solemn entertainment, he desired a
					harper who pleased the company much, to sing something in praise of Domitius;
					and upon his beginning some songs of Nero's, he started up in presence of.the
					whole assembly, and could not refrain from applauding him, by clapping his
					hands.

After such a commencement of his career, he conducted his affairs, during the
					greater part of his reign, entirely by the advice and direction of the vilest
					amongst the players and charioteers, and especially his freedman Asiaticus. This
					fellow had, when young, been engaged with him in a course of riotous living,
					but, being at last quite tired of the occupation, ran away. His master, some
					time after, caught him at Puteoli ,
					selling a liquor called Posca, and put him in chains, but soon released him, and retained
					him in his former capacity. Growing weary, however, of his rough and stubborn
					temper, he sold him to a strolling-fencing-master; after which, when the fellow
					was to have been brought up to play his part at the conclusion of an
					entertainment of gladiators, he suddenly carried him off, and at length, upon
					his being advanced to the government of a province, gave him his freedom. The
					first day of his reign, he presented him with the gold rings at supper, though
					in the morning, when all about him requested that favour in his behalf, he
					expressed the utmost abhorrence of putting so great a strain upon the equestrian
					order.

He was chiefly addicted to the vices of luxury and cruelty. He always made three
					meals a day, sometimes four; breakfast, dinner, and supper, and a drunken revel
					after all. This load of victuals he could well enough bear, from a custom to
					which he had enured himself, of frequently vomiting. For these several meals he
					would make different appointments at the houses of his friends on the same day.
					None ever entertained him at less expense than four hundred thousand
						sesterces. The most famous was a set entertainment given him by his
					brother, at which, it is said, there were served up no less than two thousand
					choice fishes, and seven thousand birds. Yet even this supper he himself outdid,
					at a feast which he gave upon the first use of a dish which had been made for
					him, and which, for its extraordinary size, he called " The Shield of Minerva."
					In this dish there were tossed up together the livers of char-fish, the brains
					of pheasants and peacocks, with the tongues of flamingos, and the entrails of
					lampreys, which had been brought in ships of war as far as from the Carpathian
					Sea, and the Spanish Straits. He was not only a man of an insatiable appetite,
					but would gratify it likewise at unseasonable times, and with any garbage that
					came in his way; so that, at a sacrifice, he would snatch from the fire flesh
					and cakes, and eat them upon the spot. When he travelled, he did the same at the
					inns upon the road, whether the meat was fresh dressed and hot, or what had been
					left the day before, and was half-eaten.

He delighted in the infliction of punishments, and even those which were capital,
					without any distinction of persons or occasions. Several noblemen, his
					schoolfellows and companions, invited by him to court, he treated with such
					flattering caresses, as seemed to indicate an affection short only of admitting
					them to share the honours of the imperial dignity; yet he put them all to death
					by some base means or other. To one he gave poison with his own hand, in a cup
					of cold water which he called for in a fever. He scarcely spared one of all the
					usurers, notaries, and publicans, who had ever demanded a debt of him at
						 Rome , or any toll or custom upon
					the road. One of these, while in the very act of saluting him, he ordered for
					execution, but immediately sent for him back; upon which all about him
					applauding his clemency, he commanded him to be slain in his own presence,
					saying, "I have a mind to feed my eyes." Two sons who interceded for their
					father, he ordered to be executed with him. A Roman knight, upon his being
					dragged away for execution, and crying out to him, " You are my heir," he
					desired to produce his will: and finding that he had made his freedman joint
					heir with him, he commanded that both he and the freedman should have their
					throats cut. He put to death some of the common people for cursing aloud the
					blue party in the Circensian games; supposing it to be done in contempt of
					himself, and the expectation of a revolution in the government. There were no
					persons he was more severe against than jugglers and astrologers; and as soon as
					any one of them was informed against, he put him to death without the formality
					of a trial. He was enraged against them, because, after his proclamation by
					which he commanded all astrologers to quit Rome , and Italy also,
					before the calends [the first] of October, a bill was immediately posted about
					the city, with the following words :-" TAKE NOTICE: The Chaldaeans also decree that Vitellius Germanicus
					shall be no more, by the day of the said calends." He was even suspected of
					being accessary to his mother's death, by forbidding sustenance to be given her
					when she was unwell; a German witch, whom he held to be oracular, having told
					him, "That he would long reign in security if he survived his mother." But
					others say, that being quite weary of the state of affairs, and apprehensive of
					the future, she obtained without difficulty a dose of poison from her son.

In the eighth month of his reign, the troops both in Moesia and Pannonia 
					revolted from him; as did likewise, of the armies beyond sea, those in
						 Judaea and Syria , some of which swore allegiance to
					Vespasian as emperor in his own presence, and others in his absence. In order,
					therefore, to secure the favour and affection of the people, Vitellius lavished
					on all around whatever he had it in his power to bestow, both publicly and
					privately, in the most extravagant manner. He also levied soldiers in the city,
					and promised all who enlisted as volunteers, not only their discharge after the
					victory was gained, but all the rewards due to veterans who had served their
					full time in the wars. The enemy now pressing forward both by sea and land, on
					one hand he opposed against them his brother with a fleet, the new levies, and a
					body of gladiators, and in another quarter the troops and generals who were
					engaged at Bedriacum. But being beaten or betrayed in every direction, he agreed
					with Flavius Sabinus, Vespasian's brother, to abdicate, on condition of having
					his life spared, and a hundred millions of sesterces granted him; and he
					immediately, upon the palace-steps, publicly declared to a large body of
					soldiers there assembled, " that he resigned the government, which he had
					accepted reluctantly;" but they all remonstrating against it, he deferred the
					conclusion of the treaty. Next day, early in the morning, he came down to the
					forum in a very mean habit, and with many tears repeated the declaration from a
					writing which he held in his hand; but the soldiers and people again
					interposing, and encouraging him not to give way, but to rely on their zealous
					support, he recovered his courage, and forced Sabinus, with the rest of the
					Flavian party, who now thought themselves secure, to retreat into the Capitol,
					where he destroyed them all by setting fire to the temple of Jupiter , whilst he beheld the contest and the
					fire from Tiberius's house, where he was
					feasting. Not long after, repenting of what he had done, and throwing the blame
					of it upon others, he called a meeting, and swore "that nothing was dearer to
					him than the public peace;" which oath he also obliged the rest to take. Then
					drawing a dagger from his side, he presented it first to the consul, and, upon
					his refusing it, to the magistrates, and then to every one of the senators; but
					none of them being willing to accept it, he went away, as if he meant to lay it
					up in the temple of Concord; but some crying out to him, "You are Concord," he
					came back again, and said that he would not only keep his weapon, but for the
					future use the cognomen of Concord.

He advised the senate to send deputies, accompanied by the Vestal Virgins, to
					desire peace, or, at least, time for consultation. The day after, while he was
					waiting for an answer, he received intelligence by a scout, that the enemy was
					advancing. Immediately, therefore, throwing himself into a small litter, borne
					by hand, with only two attendants, a baker and a cook, he privately withdrew to
					his father's house, on the Aventine 
					hill, intending to escape thence into Campania . But a groundless report being circulated, that the
					enemy was willing to come to terms, he suffered himself to be carried back to
					the palace. Finding, however, nobody there, and those who were with him stealing
					away, he girded round his waist a belt full of gold pieces, and then ran into
					the porter's lodge, tying the dog before the door, and piling up against it the
					bed and bedding.

By this time the forerunners of the enemy's army had broken into the palace, and
					meeting with nobody, searched, as was natural, every corner. Being dragged by
					them out of his cell, and asked " who he was ?" (for they did not recognize
					him), "and if he knew where Vitellius was ?" he deceived them by a falsehood.
					But at last being discovered, he begged hard to be detained in custody, even
					were it in a prison; pretending to have something to say which concerned
					Vespasian's security. Nevertheless, he was dragged half-naked into the forum,
					with his hands tied behind him, a rope about his neck, and his clothes torn,
					amidst the most contemptuous abuse, both by word and deed, along the Via Sacra;
					his head being held back by the hair, in the manner of condemned criminals, and
					the point of a sword put under his chin, that he might hold up his face to
					public view; some of the mob, meanwhile, pelting him with dung and mud, whilst
					others called him " an incendiary and glutton." They also upbraided him with the
					defects of his person, for he was monstrously tall, and had a face usually very
					red with hard-drinking, a large belly, and one thigh weak, occasioned by a
					chariot running against him, as he was attending upon Caius, while he was driving. At length, upon the
					Scalae Gemoniae, he was tormented and put to death in lingering tortures, and
					then dragged by a hook into the Tiber .

He perished with his brother and son, in the fifty-seventh year of his age, and verified the prediction of those who,
					from the omen which happened to him at Vienne , as before related, 
					foretold that he would be made prisoner by some man of Gaul . For he was seized by Antoninus Primus, a
					general of the adverse party, who was born at Toulouse , and, when a boy, had the cognomon of Becco, which
					signifies a cock's beak.

Remarks on Vitellius 
				 AFTER the extinction of the race of the Caesars, the possession of the imperial
					power became extremely precarious; and great influence in the army was the means
					which invariably led to the throne. The soldiers having arrogated to themselves
					the right of nomination, they either unanimously elected one and the same
					person, or different parties supporting the interests of their respective
					favourites, there arose between them a contention, which was usually determined
					by an appeal to arms, and followed by the assassination of the unsuccessful
					competitor. Vitellius, by being a parasite of all the empelors from Tiberius to
					Nero inclusively, had arisen to a high military rank, by which, with a spirit of
					enterprise, and large promises to the soldiery, it was not difficult to snatch
					the reins of government, while they were yet fluctuating in the hands of Otho.
					His ambition prompted to the attempt, and his boldness was crowned with success.
					In the service of the four preceding emperors, Vitelliis had imbibed the
					principal vices from them all: but what chiefly distinguished him was extreme
					voraciousness, which, though he usually pampered it with enormous luxury, could
					not yet be gratified by the vilest and most offensive garbage. The pusillanimity
					discovered by this emperor at his death forms a striking contrast to the heroic
					behaviour of Otho.