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The Roman citizens might groan under the tyranny, from which they could not hope to escape, of the unrelenting Tiberius, the furious Caligula, the profligate and cruel Nero, the beastly Vitellius, and the timid, inhuman Domitian; but order was maintained, and it was not until Commodus, the son of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, the philosopher, succeeded to the authority that his father had exercised for the benefit of the Roman Empire that the army fully realised, and did not fail to exercise, the power it had always possessed.
It was Rome, not the provinces, that Nero and Caligula represented in their day; the time was transitional; you may call Otho and Vitellius the first bungling shots of the provinces at having a hand in things at the center; wholesome Vespasian was their first representative emperor: Nerva and those that followed him represented equally the provinces and a regenerated Rome.
In the table drawn up by Casley in his appendix to the Royal library, not one volume in Otho is seen to be intact; 16 are marked defective, 55 as lost, burnt, or defaced so as not to be distinguishable. Vitellius was the next greatest sufferer, 46 volumes being preserved, 28 defective, and 34 seriously damaged.
He shall rend you, as with a harrow; He shall scatter the remains of your bodies from the tops of the mountains!" Of which conqueror was he speaking? Was it Vitellius? Only the Romans could bring about such an extermination. The people began to cry out: "Enough! enough! let him speak no more!"
These overtures at first were responded to by Vitellius with equivocating civilities; which soon, however, turned into an interchange of angry words; and letters passed between the two, conveying bitter and shameful terms of reproach, which were not false indeed, for that matter, only it was senseless and ridiculous for each to assail the other with accusations to which both alike must plead guilty.
Galba, succeeding to the purple upon the suicide of Nero, dismissed the Batavian life-guards to whom he owed his elevation. He is murdered, Otho and Vitellius contend for the succession, while all eyes are turned upon the eight Batavian regiments. In their hands the scales of empire seem to rest. They declare for Vitellius, and the civil war begins.
It is not certain that he ever settled at Rome; his modest ambition seems to have been content with provincial celebrity. What the subjects of his prize poetry were we have no means of ascertaining, but we know that he wrote a short epic on the wars between Vespasian and Vitellius and contemplated writing another on the eruption of Vesuvius.
She asked him to dinner with a lot of other people, and made him take her in, though there were two Neapolitan dukes among the guests. The food was first-rate; she had told the cook to do his best, and she really thought the entrée would have made Vitellius sit up. It was perfect. Well, afterwards she asked Avenel to play, and he just smiled and said he could not.
So they raised armies on both sides, and prepared for war, and sent their generals to fight instead of themselves; and when they had joined battle, all Herod's army was destroyed by the treachery of some fugitives, who, though they were of the tetrarchy of Philip, joined with Aretas's army.. So Herod wrote about these affairs to Tiberius, who being very angry at the attempt made by Aretas, wrote to Vitellius to make war upon him, and either to take him alive, and bring him to him in bonds, or to kill him, and send him his head.
In the very centre of Gaul, between the Loire and the Allier, a peasant, who has kept in history his Gallic name of Marie or Maricus, formed a band, and scoured the country, proclaiming national independence. He was arrested by the local authorities and handed over to Vitellius, who had him thrown to the beasts.
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