第72章 September - December, A.D. 69(23)

By this success the zeal of the people was increased. The mob of the city armed itself. Some few had military shields, the greater part seized such arms as came to hand, and loudly demanded the signal of battle. Vitellius expressed his thanks to them, and bade them sally forth to defend the capital. Then the Senate was called together, and envoys were selected to meet the armies and urge them in the name of the Commonwealth to union and peace. The reception of these envoys was not everywhere the same. Those who fell in with Petilius Cerialis were exposed to extreme peril, for the troops disdained all offers of peace. The praetor Arulenus Rusticus was wounded. This deed seemed all the more atrocious, when, over and above the insult offered to the dignity of the envoy and praetor, men considered the private worth of the man. His companions were dispersed, and the lictor that stood next to him, venturing to push aside the crowd, was killed. Had they not been protected by an escort provided by the general, the dignity of the ambassador, respected even by foreign nations, would have been profaned with fatal violence by the madness of Roman citizens before the very walls of their Country. The envoys who met Antonious were more favourably received, not because the troops were of quieter temper, but because the general had more authority.

One Musonius Rufus, a man of equestrian rank, strongly attached to the pursuit of philosophy and to the tenets of the Stoics, had joined the envoys. He mingled with the troops, and, enlarging on the blessings of peace and the perils of war, began to admonish the armed crowd. Many thought it ridiculous; more thought it tiresome;some were ready to throw him down and trample him under foot, had he not yielded to the warnings of the more orderly and the threats of others, and ceased to display his ill-timed wisdom. The Vestal virgins also presented themselves with a letter from Vitellius to Antonius. He asked for one day of truce before the final struggle, and said, that if they would permit some delay to intervene, everything might be more easily arranged. The sacred virgins were sent back with honour, but the answer returned to Vitellius was, that all ordinary intercourse of war had been broken off by the murder of Sabinus and the conflagration of the Capitol.

Antonius, however, summoned the legions to an assembly, and endeavoured to calm them, proposing that they should encamp near the Mulvian bridge, and enter the capital on the following day. His reason for delay was the fear that the soldiers, once exasperated by conflict, would respect neither the people nor the Senate, nor even the shrines and temples of the Gods. They, however, looked with dislike on all procrastination as inimical to victory. At the same time the colours that glittered among the hills, though followed by an unwarlike population, presented the appearance of a hostile array.

They advanced in three divisions, one column straight from where they had halted along the Via Flaminia, another along the bank of the Tiber, a third moved on the Colline Gate by the Via Salaria. The mob was routed by a charge of the cavalry. Then the Vitellianist troops, themselves also drawn up in three columns of defence, met the foe. Numerous engagements with various issue took place before the walls, but they generally ended in favour of the Flavianists, who had the advantage of more skilful generalship. Only that division suffered which had wound its way along narrow and slippery roads to the left quarter of the city as far as the gardens of Sallust. The Vitellianists, taking their stand on the garden-walls, kept off the assailants with stones and javelins till late in the day, when they were taken in the rear by the cavalry, which had then forced an entrance by the Colline Gate. In the Campus Martius also the hostile armies met, the Flavianists with all the prestige of fortune and repeated victory, the Vitellianists rushing on in sheer despair.

Though defeated, they rallied again in the city.