I. Vitellius and his Army in Rome

THE first “Battle of Bedriacum” was fought on April 15, AD 69, and Otho slew himself next morning. The news of the victory reached his rival Vitellius at Lugdunum, where he was met by his victorious generals Caecina and Valens as well as by the fugitive leaders of the defeated army, Suetonius and Proculus. The former were suitably honoured by the new Emperor; the latter, when they pleaded that their own treachery to Otho had lost him the battle, were acquitted of the charge ofhonor and received pardon. From Lugdunum Vitellius went on his way slowly to Rome, escorted by his generals, who showed him the battle-fields and entertained him with gladiatorial shows at Cremona and Bononia. To his large and triumphant army which accompanied him was given on the march every license of plunder and debauchery, and it did not hesitate to follow the example set by its Emperor. News speedily reached Vitellius that the legions of the East, under Mucianus in Syria and Vespasian in Judaea, had accepted the fact of his victory and recognised him as Emperor. His last anxiety, therefore, was allayed, and he gladly abandoned himself and his army to the full enjoyment of the sweets of power. His mercy and his cruelty were alike capricious. Otho’s brother, Salvius Titianus, was pardoned. Galerius Trachalus, the orator, who was suspected of writing Otho’s spirited harangues for him, happily enjoyed the protection of his relative Galeria, Vitellius’ second wife. But some of the centurions of the enemy’s army, whose crime was that of military loyalty to their dead Prince, were executed in cold blood. They had not the wit of their generals to plead treachery as their reasonable apology. Thus dispensing favours to some and punishments to others, and always chiefly intent on the pleasures of the appetite, the glutton Emperor made his slothful progress to Rome. He entered the city in great state at the head of sixty thousand troops and a larger rabble of camp-followers. The troops spread themselves over the city, lodging where they liked and doing what mischief they pleased. All discipline was at an end. The officers had no control over the men, the men none over their appetites. The torrid heat of the Roman summer, the unhealthiness of the city, the self-indulgence of the troops, completed a demoralisation begun by victory and plunder. Many of the men encamped on the right bank of the Tiber, upon the low-lying plain of the “Vatican.” This flat land, now occupied by the crowded “Leonine City,” St. Peter’s and the Papal palace, has always been notoriously unhealthy; and then, when the troops new come from the cold north hastened without self-restraint to quench their raging thirst with the foul, polluted river water, disease took an ominous toll of life. Even regimental esprit de corps was suffering; for Vitellius, having disbanded all Otho’s Praetorian Guards, set to work to enrol twenty new regiments of Guards (sixteen Praetorian cohorts and four Urban, each a thousand strong). The men were chosen at haphazard, with scant regard to their merit or their services, and as a result the legions were depleted, but no really efficient corps of – Guards was created to compensate for this. Such thoughtless army reorganisation did but corrupt and spoil a fine force in its attempt to remedy an existing deficiency. Recruiting also for the legions was stopped, with intent to save money, and many of the troops were invited to accept their discharge from the ranks. The Gallic auxiliaries were sent off home, and the unruly Batavian cohorts despatched to Germany, there soon to kindle savage rebellion. Death and folly played havoc with the splendid Army of Germany, and at the end of six months’ loose living in Rome it seemed to be going to rack and ruin.

Meanwhile the Emperor played at “constitutional government,” and devoted his more serious thoughts to problems of the palate. When he was at Lugdunum, it was said, men heard the roads which led to the city ringing with the hurrying feet of those who came carrying the dainties of all lands to whet his appetite, his “foul insatiable maw!” But the capital offered him nobler opportunities of delicacies, and during his few months’ stay in Rome he is said to have spent nine hundred millions of sesterces. He had at least the merit of a consistency of taste, whether the object of his extravagance was large or small. Nero had built a palace for his soul’s delight, famous and hated as the “Golden House”. For it he had clothed the squalid slopes and dusty purlieus of the Esquiline with woodland glades and garden greenery, refreshed them with cool waters and with quiet shade, and made the arid desert of Rome’s hovels blossom as the rose. Otho, the “second Nero”, had added to its beauties and extent.Vitellius complained at it: he felt himself cramped by such a meagre abitation.But if he himself could not roam as widely as a fitting pleasaunce might have suffered him, no such limits could fetter the activity of his mind’s intelligence. A new recipe for hotch-potch was the child of that intelligence, planned on so vast imperial a scale that no mere potter could fashion a dish large enough to contain it. The silversmith alone succeeded where the potter failed, and his silver dish remained an object of wonder to succeeding generations until the thrifty Hadrian melted it down for coin. In drunkenness and revelling, in gluttony and foulness, the Emperor Vitellius spent his few months of rule. And all the while his splendid army was decaying and its two victorious generals grew more jealous each of the other every day. “Truly it was to the State’s good that Vitellius was vanquished”.

2. The Gathering of the Storm

Meanwhile heavy storm-clouds were gathering on the far horizon to east and to north-east. Vitellius’ treatment of the victorious army was senseless enough, even though he believed all danger of further war at an end; but his method of dealing with the vanquished army was not of such wisdom as to warrant such a belief. Some small efforts indeed were made to remove the defeated legions from the neighbourhood of Italy. The First Adjutrix legion, which had fought gallantly for Otho in the recent battle, was sent to Spain. The veteran Fourteenth legion was known to be in a most dangerous temper. Only a detachment of the regiment had taken an active part in the war, and this had stood its ground to the last outside Cremona in the centre of a ring of foes. The legion as a whole had not been defeated, and indignantly disowned a share in the blame for the defeat. It was promptly ordered to return to its old quarters in Britain. At the time it lay at Turin, fretting and rebellious, quarrelling as usual with the ferocious Batavian cohorts attached to it. So anxious was the Government to dispose of it without the chance of further friction of any kind, that the Batavians were finally detached from it and sent off to Germany, and it itself was bidden avoid the town of Vienne on its march through Gaul. The townsfolk of this city had always wished Vitellius so ill that it was feared the legionaries might be encouraged to make a stand here and refuse obedience any more. Hence they were made to march by the Little St. Bernard Pass over the Graian Alps to Montmelian and thence, instead of pursuing the usual route by Grenoble to Vienne, to strike away to Chambery,and so direct to Lyons. These prudent precautions were of avail, and the legion arrived in Britain. It had done no damage on the way, except that it had left its camp-fires burning on the night when it marched from Turin, and by some means or other, thanks to this, part of the unlucky colony was burnt to the ground. This was a small price to pay for riddance of the legion. Its Batavian comrades also duly reached their homeland on the lower Rhine. But fortune had not separated the cohorts and the legion for long. The folly of the Roman Government had sent the Batavians, now proud and experienced troops, back to their tribesmen to add fuel to their discontent and strength to their plots. The “Indian Mutiny” of Roman history was, within a few months, the result. Then when the tide of massacres and Roman defeats at last was ebbing, and Vespasian’s Government set grimly to work to crush the mutineers, the men of the Fourteenth legion came gleefully from oversea to take vengeance upon their ancient enemies and old-time false comrades for all the insults endured at their hands.

These events were quickly to happen. But for the moment Vitellius had rid Italy of two of the “conquered legions”. With this, however, his stock of wisdom was exhausted. The Guards and the Danube army had also belonged to Otho’s strength. These he now treated with less prudence. The Guards were disbanded, with the exception of two cohorts which had done good service in helping to overawe the Batavians while these were still in camp with the Fourteenth legion at Turin. Though the disbandment was well managed, the cohorts being separated before the order was issued, and though the men were given the customary rewards on retiring from the service (a treatment indeed which was more generous than perhaps they had any right to expect), yet they regretted the loss of their career, and gladly seized the chance of taking up arms again, which Vespasian’s rising so soon gave to them. These...