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by C. Suetonius Tranquillus

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Title: Aulus Vitellius (Vitellius)
The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Volume 9.

Author: C. Suetonius Tranquillus

Release Date: October 22, 2006 [EBook #6394]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Produced by Tapio Riikonen and David Widger

THE LIVES
OF
THE TWELVE CAESARS

By
C. Suetonius Tranquillus;

To which are added,

HIS LIVES OF THE GRAMMARIANS, RHETORICIANS, AND POETS.

The Translation of
Alexander Thomson, M.D.

revised and corrected by
T.Forester, Esq., A.M.

AULUS VITELLIUS.
(427)

I. Very different accounts are given of the origin of the Vitellian
family. Some describe it as ancient and noble, others as recent and
obscure, nay, extremely mean. I am inclined to think, that these several
representations have been made by the flatterers and detractors of
Vitellius, after he became emperor, unless the fortunes of the family
varied before. There is extant a memoir addressed by Quintus Eulogius to
Quintus Vitellius, quaestor to the Divine Augustus, in which it is said,
that the Vitellii were descended from Faunus, king of the aborigines, and
Vitellia [689], who was worshipped in many places as a goddess, and that
they reigned formerly over the whole of Latium: that all who were left of
the family removed out of the country of the Sabines to Rome, and were
enrolled among the patricians: that some monuments of the family
continued a long time; as the Vitellian Way, reaching from the Janiculum
to the sea, and likewise a colony of that name, which, at a very remote
period of time, they desired leave from the government to defend against
the Aequicolae [690], with a force raised by their own family only: also
that, in the time of the war with the Samnites, some of the Vitellii