CHAP. LX.

VESPASIAN AND TITUS.

49

nominally acquiesced in the claims of Galba, of Otho, of Vitellius in succession; but they had made no active movement in support of any one of them. The rapidity with which one after another had disappeared from the scene might convince them that none had any firm foundation for his power. Mucianus was by nature sluggish, and devoid of personal ambition; but the plebeian Vespasian was inspired with a fanatical belief in his own good fortune, and under the influence of Oriental diviners, and of their glowing presage of a political saviour, became filled with the idea that he was destined for empire. Mucianus was not unwilling to concede to him the first place, and lend him all his own influence; the Syrian legionaries, glad of the prospect of returning to U.c.822. Rome, received him with enthusiasm. On the 1st of A.D. 69. July the soldiers proclaimed him imperator, to which the titles of Cæsar and Augustus were speedily added. Mucianus undertook to lead one division of the whole force into Italy; Vespasian remained for a time in Syria to maintain the frontiers, and concert measures of alliance with the foreign states beyond them; to Titus was intrusted the conduct of the war in Palestine.

Mucianus moved slowly under the usual pressure, from the want of means and preparations made in advance. He was obliged to levy contributions on the cities through which he passed, declaring that "money is the sinews of civil war;" but he preserved discipline among his followers, and his progress was not marked by the excesses which so often alienated the provinces from the armies of the republic. He was joined by three Illyrian legions, which had been recently summoned to Italy by Nero, and now devoted themselves to the chief in whom they recognized the avenger of Otho, the friend of Nero. The seeds of further defection were sown by letters to the troops in Spain and Gaul, and particularly to the Fourteenth Legion, which had been marched all the way from Britain, had fought for Otho, and was now sent back by Vitellius as not to be trusted by him. To be dismissed to distant quarters in a barbarous island was a penalty and an affront.

At the moment that the Syrian legions were proclaiming Vespasian, Vitellius was making his entry as emperor into Rome. The account we receive of his conduct there continues inconsistent as before. His behavior in the Senate, the Forum, and the theatre is described as modest and becoming. He was assiduous in attending the discussions of the fathers, and suffered himself to be opposed and contradicted in debate, even when obliged to demand the protection of the tribunes. But this outward moderation was set down to weak compliance. He left the affairs of

state to be actually managed by Valens and Cæcina with the grossest oppression and extortion, while he surrendered himself wholly to the grossest debauchery. Within the few months of his power he spent nine hundred millions of sesterces (seven millions of pounds sterling) in vulgar and brutal sensuality. Meanwhile the prætorians were disbanded, the police of the city was neglected. The legionaries chose their own quarters at will, inflicting the greatest hardship upon the citizens, till they were found to suffer from intemperance. A portion of them were drafted into the prætorian camp; the rest complained of this preference, and demanded fresh indulgences. The reign of freedmen recommenced. Asiaticus and Polycletus recalled the memory of Pallas and Narcissus, of Felix and Helius, and others who had disgraced the principate of Claudius and Nero. The degradation of Rome was complete; and never yet perhaps had she sunk so low in luxury and licentiousness as in the few months which followed the death of Otho.

Three legions of Vespasian had crossed the Italian Alps under Antonius Primus, who led the van of the whole army of Mucianus. Vitellius, harassed by the revolt of more than one of his divisions, had sent forward both Valens and Cæcina, with all the troops they could muster, to meet him. But Valens lingered behind under the plea of illness; Cæcina covertly meditated defection. Their forces were indeed formidable in numbers, but Primus might rely upon the influences he could employ against them when the armies encountered in the lower districts of the Cisalpine. He boldly challenged them to the combat, refusing to halt even at the instance of his own chief, and his confidence was rewarded by a hard-won victory on the plain of Bedriacum. Cremona fell into his hands, a place of great strength, in which, no doubt, the treasures of the harassed neighborhood had been deposited, and, whether by mistake or of set purpose, it was given over to plunder and burning, as in the worst days of Marius and Sulla.

Vitellius was still at Rome grovelling in his beastly indulgences, refusing to credit the account of his disasters, but wreaking his fears and jealousies upon the best of the nobles within his reach. The Flavian generals sent him back their prisoners, that he might learn the truth from their mouths. Vitellus saw, interrogated, and straightway slaughtered them. A brave centurion extorted his leave to visit the scene of warfare and ascertain the state of affairs; but spurned on his return by his infuriated chief, he threw himself indignantly on his sword. This self-deception. could not long continue. Vitellius at last quitted the city at the head of the prætorians, but he was assailed by fresh disasters on

CHAP. LX. BURNING OF THE CAPITOLINE TEMPLE

497

all sides. Primus crossed the Apennines to encounter him, while the populations of Central Italy-the Marsians, Pelignians, and Samnites rose against him; and the Campanians were hardly held in check by the bands of gladiators at Capua. The two armies confronted one another in the valley of the Nar. Valens, who had been captured, was now slain, and the sight of his head so terrified the Vitellians that they yielded without a blow. Primus deigned to offer terms to Vitellius, which were confirmed by Mucianus. It is difficult to account for this indulgence, which the defenceless emperor greedily accepted, preferring to retire quietly into private life. But he too easily yielded to the instances of some of his adherents in the city, who regarded with horror the approach of the legions which had sacked Cremona. He made his escape back to Rome, and allowed himself to be put at the head of a desperate faction, who drove the favorers of Vespasian, under his brother Sabinus, into the Capitol. The Vitellians could do no more than watch the outlets during the day; at night Sabinus found means of communicating with the Flavian guards beyond the walls. Next day the Vitellians made a disorderly attack upon the place of refuge, which retained the name of a fortress, but was without any regular means of defence. They mounted the ascent from the Forum and reached the gate on the Clivus. The Flavians strove to repel them by flinging stones from the roof above. The Vitellians, in their turn, threw burning missiles into the colonnades and houses above them, and thus drove the defenders from point to point, but still could not effect an entrance. Climbing to the tops of the houses, they flung blazing torches into the Sacred Temple itself, and the august sanctuary of the Roman people was consumed in the raging conflagration.

The assault, the defence, the conflagration were watched by Vitellius from the palace opposite, by the people from the Forum and Velabrum beneath, as well as from the summit of every hill. The citizens were keenly reminded of the sack of Rome by the Gauls, for the soldiers of Vitellius came from Gaul, and were mostly of Gaulish extraction. But the Gauls under Brennus had burned the city only; it was reserved for these later barbarians to destroy the temple of the Roman divinities. The fugitives within the precincts were dismayed. Sabinus lost all presence of mind, and made no further attempt at defence. The Gauls and Germans burst in with yells of triumph, and put to the sword all that could not escape. Domitian, the younger son of Vespasian, who had taken refuge in the holy precincts, contrived to slip away in disguise. Sabinus was seized, and Vitellius dared not protect him. Lucius, brother of Vitellius, who commanded some

troops for him in the neighborhood, might now have marched boldly to Rome and taken possession of it. But he lost the critical moment, while Primus was advancing slowly but surely, in constant communication with Mucianus, who was also moving to his support. The Flavian legions as they approached the walls advanced in three divisions, and attacked three gates of the city. The Vitellians went forth to meet them at all points, soldiers and rabble mingled together, without plan or order. At one point they held the assailants at bay; but in the centre and on the right the Flavians carried everything before them, and drove their opponents from the Campius Martius into the city. The victors entered pell-mell with the vanquished, for the gates of Rome now stood, it seems, always open; and the combat was renewed from street to street, the populace looking gayly on, applauding or hooting as in the theatre, and helping to drag the fugitives from the shops and taverns for slaughter. The rabble of the city threw themselves into the defenceless houses, and snatched their plunder even from the hands of the soldiers. Rome had witnessed the conflicts of armed men in the streets under Sulla and Cinna, but never before such a hideous mixture of levity and ferocity.

Through all these horrors the Flavians forced their way, and drove the Vitellians to their last stronghold, the camp of the prætorians. The lines of this enclosure, formed by a solid wall, were strenuously attacked and desperately defended. The assailants had brought with them the engines requisite for a siege, and now set themselves to their task with determination. They cleared the battlements with catapults, raised mounds to the level of the ramparts, or applied torches to the gates. Then bursting into the camp they put every man still surviving to the sword. Vitellius, on the taking of the city, had escaped from the palace to a private dwelling on the Aventine; but under some restless impulse he returned and roamed through his deserted halls, dismayed at the solitude and silence, yet shrinking from every sound and the presence of a human being. At last he was discovered, half hidden behind a curtain, and ignominiously dragged forth. With his hands bound, his dress torn, he was hurried along, amid the scoffs of the multitude, and exposed to the assaults of the passing soldiery. Wounded and bleeding, he was urged on at the point of the lance; his head was kept erect by a sword held beneath to compel him to show himself, and to witness the demolition of his statues. At last, after every form of insult, he was despatched with many wounds at the Gemoniæ, to which he had been thus brutally dragged. The death of Vitellius, on the 21st of December, finally cleared the field for Vespasian, to whom, though still far distant, the senators hastened to decree all the honors and pre

CHAP. LXI.

THE CONQUEST OF BRITAIN.

499

rogatives of empire. Primus and Mucianus adhered faithfully to him, and paid their court to his son Domitian, as his acknowledged representative. The most high-minded of the senators, Helvidius Priscus, a noted disciple of the Stoics, pro- v.c. 823. posed that the national temple should be rebuilt by the A.D. 70. nation, but that Vespasian should be invited, as the first of the citizens, to take a prominent part in the restoration. Vespasian and Titus were appointed consuls at the commencement of the new year, and to a civil strife of eighteen months soon succeeded a stable pacification.

CHAPTER LXI.

Continuation of the conquest of Britain.-The Druids destroyed by Suetonius Paulinus.--Revolt and victories of Boadicea.-Her death, and subjugation of the Southern Britons.-The Romans advance northward.-Mutiny of the Gaulish auxiliaries in the camps on the Rhine under Claudius Civilis.-Mucianus and Domitian visit Gaul.-The mutiny suppressed.Story of Sabinus and Eponina.-The movement not national.—Account of the relations of Rome with Palestine.―Judæa finally annexed to the province of Syria.—Caligula threatens to place his statue in the Temple of Jerusalem.-Claudius humors the scruples of the people.-Cruelty and oppression of the procurators under Nero.-General rebellion of the Jews. -The Jewish war.-Vespasian and Titus.-Siege and fall of Jerusalem.

THE pacification of Italy and the city was not extended throughout the frontiers except by the complete subjugation of three important provinces. Rome was not thoroughly mistress of her vast empire until she had completed the conquest of the Britons, enforced submission of her own mutinous auxiliaries in Gaul, and broken the spirit of the restless people of Judæa. Our history has been for the most part confined to the city from which it takes its title; but for these critical episodes, however distant their scene, a short digression must be permitted.

1. After the defeat of Caractacus, the southern part of the island of Britain, from the Stour to the Exe and Severn or Wye, formed a compact and organized province, excepting only the dependent kingdom of the Regni, in Sussex. Beyond the Stour the territory of the Iceni constituted another extraneous dependency. The government of the province was administered from Camulodunum (Colchester), in which a military colony had been established. Londinium, though neither colonized nor fortified, had already become a place of commercial resort, and a great trade