who
went with the troops levied for the security of Apulia, settled at
Nuceria [691], and their descendants, a long time afterwards, returned
again to Rome, and were admitted (428) into the patrician order. On the
other hand, the generality of writers say that the founder of the family
was a freedman. Cassius Severus [692] and some others relate that he was
likewise a cobbler, whose son having made a considerable fortune by
agencies and dealings in confiscated property, begot, by a common
strumpet, daughter of one Antiochus, a baker, a child, who afterwards
became a Roman knight. Of these different accounts the reader is left to
take his choice.

II. It is certain, however, that Publius Vitellius, of Nuceria, whether
of an ancient family, or of low extraction, was a Roman knight, and a
procurator to Augustus. He left behind him four sons, all men of very
high station, who had the same cognomen, but the different praenomina of
Aulus, Quintus, Publius, and Lucius. Aulus died in the enjoyment of the
consulship [693], which office he bore jointly with Domitius, the father
of Nero Caesar. He was elegant to excess in his manner of living, and
notorious for the vast expense of his entertainments. Quintus was
deprived of his rank of senator, when, upon a motion made by Tiberius, a
resolution passed to purge the senate of those who were in any respect
not duly qualified for that honour. Publius, an intimate friend and
companion of Germanicus, prosecuted his enemy and murderer, Cneius Piso,
and procured sentence against him. After he had been made proctor, being
arrested among the accomplices of Sejanus, and delivered into the hands
of his brother to be confined in his house, he opened a vein with a
penknife, intending to bleed himself to death. He suffered, however, the
wound to be bound up and cured, not so much from repenting the resolution
he had formed, as to comply with the importunity of his relations. He
died afterwards a natural death during his confinement. Lucius, after
his consulship [694], was made governor of Syria [695], and by his
politic management not only brought Artabanus, king of the Parthians, to
give him an interview, but to worship the standards of the Roman legions.
He afterwards filled two ordinary consulships [696], and also the
censorship [697] jointly with the emperor Claudius. Whilst that (429)
prince was absent upon his expedition into Britain [698], the care of the
empire was committ