第47章 March - August, A.D. 69(24)

Thus utterly regardless of all law human and divine, with freedmen and friends as reckless as himself, he lived as if he were among a set of drunkards. Still at the consular elections he was present in company with the candidates like an ordinary citizen, and by shewing himself as a spectator in the theatre, as a partisan in the circus, he courted every breath of applause from the lowest rabble. Agreeable and popular as this conduct would have been, had it been prompted by noble qualities, it was looked upon as undignified and contemptible from the remembrance of his past life. He habitually appeared in the Senate even when unimportant matters were under discussion; and it once happened that Priscus Helvidius, the praetor elect, had spoken against his wishes. Though at the moment provoked, he only called on the tribunes of the people to support his insulted authority, and then, when his friends, who feared his resentment was deeper than it appeared, sought to appease him, he replied that it was nothing strange that two senators in a Commonwealth should disagree: he had himself been in the habit of opposing Thrasea. Most of them laughed at the effrontery of such a comparison, though some were pleased at the very circumstance of his having selected, not one of the most influential men of the time, but Thrasea, as his model of true glory.

He had advanced to the command of the Praetorian Guard Publius Sabinus, a prefect of the cohort, and Julius Priscus, then only a centurion. It was through the influence of Caecina and Valens that they respectively rose to power. Though always at variance, these two men left no authority to Vitellius. The functions of Empire were discharged by Caecina and Valens. They had long before been led to suspect each other by animosities scarcely concealed amid the cares of the campaign and the camp, and aggravated by unprincipled friends and a state of society calculated to produce such feuds. In their struggles for popularity, in their long retinues, and in the vast crowds at their levees, they vied with each other and challenged comparison, while the favour of Vitellius inclined first to one, and then to the other. There can never be complete confidence in a power which is excessive. Vitellius himself, who was ever varying between sudden irritation and unseasonable fondness, they at once despised and feared. Still this had not made them less keen to seize on palaces and gardens and all the wealth of the Empire, while a sad and needy throng of nobles, whom with their children Galba had restored to their country, received no relief from the compassion of the Emperor. By an edict which gratified the leading men of the State, while it approved itself even to the populace, Vitellius gave back to the returned exiles their rights over their freedmen, although servile ingenuity sought in every way to neutralise the boon, concealing money in quarters which either obscurity or rank rendered secure. Some freedmen had made their way into the palace of the Emperor, and thus became more powerful even than their patrons.

Meanwhile the soldiers, as their numbers overflowed the crowded camp, dispersed throughout the porticoes, the temples, and the whole capital, did not know their own headquarters, kept no watch, and ceased to brace themselves by toil. Amidst the allurements of the city and all shameful excesses, they wasted their strength in idleness, and their energies in riot. At last, reckless even of health, a large portion of them quartered themselves in the notoriously pestilential neighbourhood of the Vatican; hence ensued a great mortality in the ranks. The Tiber was close at hand, and their extreme eagerness for the water and their impatience of the heat weakened the constitutions of the Germans and Gauls, always liable to disease. To make matters worse, the organisation of the service was deranged by unprincipled intrigue and favour. Sixteen Praetorian and four city cohorts were being raised, each to consist of a thousand men. In this levy Valens ventured to do more than his rival on the pretence of his having rescued Caecina himself from peril. Doubtless his arrival had restored the fortunes of the party, and his victory had reversed the unfavourable rumours occasioned by his tardy advance. The entire army too of Lower Germany was attached to him; this circumstance, it is thought, first made the allegiance of Caecina waver.

Much however as Vitellius indulged his generals, his soldiers enjoyed yet greater licence. Every one chose his own service.

However unfit, he might, if he preferred it, be enrolled among the soldiers of the capital. Soldiers again of good character were allowed, if they so wished, to remain with the legions, or in the cavalry; and this was the choice of many who were worn out with disease, or who shrank from the unhealthiness of the climate. But the main strength of the legions and cavalry was drafted from them, while the old glory of the Praetorian camp was destroyed by these 20,000 men indiscriminately taken rather than chosen out of the whole army. While Vitellius was haranguing the troops, the men called out for the execution of Asiaticus, and of Flavius and Rufinus, the Gallic chieftains, because they had fought for Vindex. He never checked these cries; for to say nothing of the cowardice natural to that feeble soul, he was aware that the distribution of a donative was imminent, and, having no money, he lavished everything else on the soldiers. A contribution in the form of a tax was exacted from the freedmen of former Emperors in proportion to the number of their slaves. Vitellius himself, thinking only how to squander, was building a stable for his charioteers, was filling the circus with shows of gladiators and wild beasts, and fooling away his money as if he had the most abundant supplies.