is wounds in front. Even as they died they
took care to make an honourable end.

When the city was taken, Vitellius left the Palace by a back way and
was carried in a litter to his wife's house on the Aventine. If he
could lie hid during the day, he hoped to make his escape to his
brother and the Guards at Tarracina. But it is in the very nature of
terror that, while any course looks dangerous, the present state of
things seems worst of all. His fickle determination soon changed and
he returned to the vast, deserted Palace, whence even the lowest of
his menials had fled, or at least avoided meeting him. Shuddering at
the solitude and hushed silence of the place, he wandered about,
trying closed doors, terrified to find the rooms empty; until at last,
wearied with his miserable search, he crept into some shameful
hiding-place. There Julius Placidus, an officer of the Guards, found
him and dragged him out. His hands were tied behind his back, his
clothes were torn, and thus he was led forth--a loathly spectacle at
which many hurled insults and no one shed a single tear of pity. The
ignominy of his end killed all compassion. On the way a soldier of the
German army either aimed an angry blow at him, or tried to put him
out of his shame, or meant, perhaps, to strike the officer in command;
at any rate, he cut off the officer's ear and was immediately stabbed.
With the points of their swords they made Vitellius hold up his 85
head and face their insults, forcing him again and again to watch his
own statues hurtling down, or to look at the Rostra and the spot where
Galba had been killed. At last he was dragged along to the Ladder of
Sighs,[224] where the body of Flavius Sabinus had lain. One saying of
his which was recorded had a ring of true nobility. When some officer
flung reproaches at him, he answered, 'And yet I was once your
emperor.' After that he fell under a shower of wounds, and when he was
dead the mob abused him as loudly as they had flattered him in his
lifetime--and with as little reason.

Vitellius' home was at Luceria.[225] He was in his fifty-seventh 86
year, and had won the consulship, priesthoods, and a name and position
among Rome's greatest men, all of which he owed to no efforts of his
own, but solely to his father's eminence.[226] Those who offered him
the throne had not yet learnt to know him; and yet his slothful
cowardice won from his soldiers an enthusiasm which the best of
generals