Aulus Vitellius Germanicus Imperator Augustus,
September 24th, 15AD.
When Nero lost control of power and what was left of his mind in 68AD, it didn't come as much of a surprise. The problem with the rules about who could be emperor was that there were no rules about who could be emperor. No, seriously. There was no legal or constitutional framework that dictated who could be emperor, who was suitable to be emperor, who would be the next emperor or even whether there should be an emperor at all. Emperors existed purely because they had the ability to bash anyone who might not want them to be emperor over the head with something heavy and throw them in the Tiber. Or, rather, they had enough soldiers on their side who would do the bashing for them.
Augustus was to blame for all this by putting the framework in place whereby he would be emperor because he said so, and the next bloke along, Tiberius in his case, would be emperor also because he said so. Because Augustus was a god and he put the system in place, nobody was brave enough to stand up and say "Wait a minute.... why do we even have an emperor in the first place?" because by doing so, you'd have to openly admit that the mighty Augustus had got everything wrong and that the 'perfect' Roman system was a load of old bollocks.
By adopting Tiberius, Augustus inadvertently put in place a hereditary system that said the heir didn't even have to be related to the last guy. It could be, literally, anyone as long as they were of sufficient breeding and had enough people behind them to do the bashing and the drowning. Once you add on half a century of posh people inter-breeding with each other and get to the time of Nero, half of Rome was full of people who were related in some way to Augustus, were rich and had, potentially, a gang of blokes ready to bash people and throw them in the Tiber. Nero might have been wildly paranoid, but everywhere he looked, there were people just as qualified to be the emperor as he was. Add in the fact that he had no heir, and by the Summer of 68, his paranoia had become rampant.
A smarter and more adept emperor would have solved all his problems with a judicious murdering spree, thereby thinning the herd of potential threats and unfriendly Senators and then throwing lots of money at the Legions to ensure their loyalty. Nero, however, was a bit of an idiot who had convinced himself that the fates had conspired against him and he was doomed. Which, ironically, sealed his doom. Had he been less determined to die, he wouldn't have died.
The year following the death of Nero became known as the Year of the Four Emperors, mainly because it was a year-long and there were four emperors in it. The first of them, Galba, was the first to move against Nero and would have been crushed had Nero not spent his time lolling about in his villa being useless and trying his best to die a tragic death. Galba didn't last long - none of them did - and was replaced by a chap called Otho, whose best claim to the throne was that he had been close to Nero (Nero was very popular with the people, see?) The final emperor that year was the first sensible one Rome had had for a while, a chap called Vespasian, and he ruled for 10 years, but in between Otho and Vespasian came our birthday boy, Aulus Vitellius.
Aulus Vitellius was born on 24 September 15, in Nuceria Alfaterna, Campania. He was the son of Lucius Vitellius and his wife Sextilia, and had one brother, who was also named Lucius Vitellius. In his younger years, he had been friends with Caligula due to their shared love of chariot racing. A chariot accident when he was young left Vitellius with a limp.
His first wife, Petronia, was the daughter of an ex-consul. They had a son, Aulus Vitellius Petronianus, who was blind in one eye. Junior was the heir of his mother and grandfather, but Vitellius had him killed in 69 so he alone would inherit that fortune. What a charmer. He married again in the year 50, a woman named Galeria Fundana and they had two children, a son, who was named as heir and was given the title Germanicus, and a daughter, Vitellia.
He had a pretty ordinary political career. He was consul in 48 and then governor of Africa in either 60 or 61. In 68, to general bewilderment, Galba made Vitellius the commander of the legions in Germania Inferior who loved him, largely because he let them all get shitfaced whenever they wanted, didn't make them work too hard because he was a lazy bastard and gave them lots of money. However, the German legions were also quite ambitious and had seen how easily Galba had won power by simply making a lot of noise and looking threatening. There were rumblings that they wanted the same.
The German legions refused to renew allegiance to Galba. Instead, at Cologne, on the 2nd of January, 69AD, they proclaimed Vitellius the new emperor. The legions of Britain, Gaul and Raetia (Switzerland, basically) soon swore for Vitellius, too. Vitellius and his experienced (and drunk and quite savage) legions marched south for Rome, but by the time they got to a place called Bedriacum, he found not Galba waiting for him, but Otho, who had deposed Galba a little earlier.
In the ensuing battle, Otho's troops were no match for Vitellius' hardened German legions. Otho took his own life, ostensibly to prevent further bloodshed, but mostly because it was either that or someone was going to bash him over the head and throw him in the Tiber. The Senate wholeheartedly agreed that Vitellius had been their choice all along and declared him emperor in April of 69.
He didn't last long. He had ‘ends up in the Tiber’ written all over him.
He was lazy, he liked to drink too much, and he starved his own mother to death in order to fulfil a prophecy. Normal emperor-type shit. He was cruel and he indulged in banquets four times a day. The writer Suetonius wrote about one such banquet:
… 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 pike, 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 Parthia and the Spanish Straits.
All this, of course, is later propaganda put about to disparage his name, but he was clearly useless.
In July, word reached Rome that Vespasian had been declared emperor by the governor of Egypt and he was on his way to Rome - or at least his armies were - and that he had the whole of the roll-call of the Eastern legions, fresh from destroying the Jews in Judea and the Temple in Jerusalem. Several of Vitellius' legions, seeing the writing on the wall, tried to defect, unsuccessfully, and so, when the two armies met, again at Bedriacum, Vespasian's men won a crushing victory. Vespasian himself was nowhere near the fighting, so he could legitimately claim that he had won without spilling any Roman blood.
Vitellius tried to surrender, but the Praetorian Guard wouldn't have any of that kind of shit. They forced him to return to the palace and waited for what was about to happen.
Vespasian’s men entered Rome and the defenders, mostly citizens, that were left put up a brave struggle, throwing sticks, stones and roof tiles at the invaders.
Fifty thousand died.
Vitellius was finally tracked down hiding in his bedroom and initially, the soldiers didn’t recognise him, so he pretended to be someone else. When they figured out who he was, he begged for mercy, pretending that he had some 'vital information' for Vespasian and that he should be held until the new emperor could arrive in Rome. They were not in the mood for clemency. Suetonius tells us what happened next:
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 ... while he was driving.
They dragged him to the Gemonian Stairs, the place where traitors went to die, where he was tortured. His last words were “Yet I was once your emperor!” Which was pushing it a bit. He was emperor for eight months.
Then he was hacked to pieces, his head stuck on a spike and paraded around town, and his body dragged by a hook and thrown into the Tiber.
I told you he would end up in the Tiber.
His brother and son were murdered also, because fuck them too, although they did let his wife fish the pieces out of the river and give them a burial.
Thanks for reading! To share this article, please click the button below. If you’d like to help us out by making a donation via Kofi, anything would be gratefully received! Click the donation button to help out. It accepts PayPal and all the usual sources. You’re welcome to read for free and to share as much as you like, but this is a full-time job now, so if anyone would like to help out, it would be really appreciated. There are paid subs, too, for which you get cool exclusive stuff (with more stuff coming soon!)
Hope you enjoyed the article. Thanks, everyone!
I had not heard of any of the Four Emperors besides Vespasian before this. Probably the fact that the others ruled far less than a year made them less important to historians.