n was extravagance. He built stables for
chariot-drivers, filled the arena with gorgeous shows of gladiators
and wild beasts, and fooled away his money as though he had more than
he wanted.

Moreover, Valens and Caecina celebrated Vitellius' birthday[441] 95
by holding gladiatorial shows in every quarter of Rome on a scale of
magnificence hitherto unknown. Vitellius then gratified the rabble and
scandalized all decent people by building altars in the Martian Plain,
and holding a funeral service in honour of Nero. Victims were killed
and burnt in public: the torch was applied by the Augustales, members
of the college which Tiberius Caesar had founded in honour of the
Julian family, just as Romulus similarly commemorated King Tatius.

It was not yet four months since Vitellius' victory, and yet his
freedman Asiaticus was as bad as a Polyclitus or a Patrobius,[442] or
any of the favourites whose names were hated in earlier days. At this
court no one strove to rise by honesty or capacity. There was only one
road to power. By lavish banquets, costly profusion, and feats of
gastronomy, you had to try and satisfy Vitellius' insatiable gluttony.
He himself, without thought for the morrow, was well content to enjoy
the present. It is believed that he squandered nine hundred million
sesterces[443] in these brief months. Truly it shows Rome's greatness
and misfortune, that she endured Otho and Vitellius both in the same
year, and suffered humiliation of every kind at the hands of men like
Vinius and Fabius,[444] Icelus and Asiaticus, until at last they gave
way to Mucianus and Marcellus--a change of men but not of manners.

The first news of rebellion which reached Vitellius came from 96
Aponius Saturninus,[445] who, before himself going over to Vespasian's
side, wrote to announce the desertion of the Third legion. But a
sudden crisis makes a man nervous: Aponius did not tell the whole
story. So the emperor's flattering friends began to explain it all
away: what was the defection of a single legion, while the loyalty of
the other armies remained unshaken? Vitellius himself used the same
language to the soldiers. He accused the men, who had been recently
discharged from the Guards,[446] of spreading false rumours, and kept
assuring them there was no fear of civil war. All mention of Vespasian
was suppressed, and soldiers were sent round the city to frighten
people into silence, which, of course, did more than any