Vitellii

In the time of Suetonius it was disputed whether the origin of the Vitellii was ancient and noble, or recent and obscure, and even mean. The adulators of the emperor Vitellius and his enemies were the partizans of the two several opinions. The name of the Vitellii at least was ancient, and they were said to derive their descent from Faunus, king of the Aborigines, and Vitellia, as the name is in the text of Suetonius. (Vitell. c. l.) The family, according to tradition, went from the country of the Sabini to Rome, and was received among the Patricians. As evidence of the existence of this family (stirps), a Via Vitellia, extending from the Janiculum to the sea, is mentioned, and a Roman colonia of the same name, Vitellia, in the country of the Aequi. (Liv. 5.29, 2.39.) The name of the Vitellii occurs among the Romans who conspired to restore the last Tarquinius, and the sister of the Vitellii was the wife of the consul Brutus. (Liv. 2.4.)

Cassius Severus and others assigned the meanest origin to the Vitellii : the founder of the stock, according to them, was a freedman. Suetonius leaves the question undecided.

1. P. Vitellius, whatever his origin may have been, was a Roman eques, and a procurator of Augustus. His native place was Nuceria, but Suetonius does not say which of the places so called. He had four sons, Aulus, Quintus, Publius, and Lucius. (Sueton. Vitell. 2.)

2. A. Vitellius was consul suffectus A. D. 32, in the same year with Cn. Domitius, the father of the emperor Nero, and he died in that year. He was distinguished for the splendour of his entertainments.

3. Q. Vitellius was one of those whom Tiberius (Tacit. Annal. 2.48) removed from the senate or allowed to withdraw, on the ground of their scandalous life and the wasting of their property.

4. P. Vitellius served under Germanicus in Germany (Tac. Ann. 1.70), and he conducted the second and fourteenth legions in their return from the expedition against the Catti and other German tribes A. D. 15. He was afterwards sent with C. Antius to make the census of the Gauls. (Tac. Ann. 2.6.) Vitellius was one of the prosecutors of Cn. Piso, who was charged with the death of Germanicus, and Vitellius was eloquent in his accusation. (Tac. Ann. 3.10, 13.) He subsequently obtained the dignity of the praetorship. After the death of Sejanus, among whose friends he was, he was accused on some vague charges; while he was in custody, he asked for a penknife, with which he inflicted a slight wound on himself. The wound was not mortal, but Vitellius died shortly after from grief and vexation. (Tac. Ann. 5.8; Suet. Vitell. 100.2.) His wife Acutia was tried on the charge of Majestas, and convicted. (Tac. Ann. 6.47.)

5. L. Vitellius was father of the emperor and of the emperor's brother Lucius. Lucius, the father was a consummate flatterer, and by his arts he gained promotion. He set the example of adoring Caesar Caligula as a god, but this was done mainly to save his life. After being consul in A. D. 34, he had been appointed governor of Syria, and he had induced Artabanus, the king of the Parthians, not only to come to a conference with him, but also to make his obeisance to the signa of the legions, which were apparently marked with the Roman emperor's effigy, or were accompanied by it. (Dio Cassius, 59.27.) Vitellius had got favourable terms of peace from Artabanus. But all this only excited Caligula's jealousy, and he sent for Vitellius to put him to death. The governor saved himself by his abject humiliation and the gross flattery, which pleased and softened the savage tyrant. A story is told so extravagant as hardly to be credible, if anything were not credible of a madman like Caligula. The emperor on one occasion said that he had commerce with the moon, and asked Vitellius if he had ever seen their embraces. Vitellius, affecting profound veneration, with his eyes on the ground, and in a faint tremulous voice replied, " To you gods alone, my master, is it permitted to see one another." Nobody ever beat this, and Vitellius reigned the king of flatterers. He paid the like attention to Claudius and to Messalina. He was rewarded by being twice consul with Claudius, and censor. He and Messalina are accused of being the chief cause of the death of Valerius Asiaticus. (Tacit. Annal. 11.1-3.) After the execution of Messalina, he artfully removed the difficulty which Claudius had about celebrating his marriage with his niece Agrippina. by making it appear that the Senate and the people wished for the marriage. The Senate carried their adulation and hypocrisy so far as to say that they would compel the emperor to the marriage, if he hesitated. (Tac. Ann. 12.5, &c.) When Claudius was celebrating the Secular Games, the compliment of this outrageous flatterer was, " Saepe facias ;" which is as much as to say, " O king, live for ever." Vitellius, though one of the strong partizans of Agrippina, was accused (A. D. 52) of majestas by Junius Lupus, a senator; but the accusation only ruined the accuser. (Tac. Ann. 12.42.) Lucius died of paralysis soon after he was attacked. He saw his two sons by Sextilia consuls before he died, and indeed both of them were consuls in the same year, A. D. 48, in which the emperor Claudius and Lucius Vitellius were censors. The Senate honoured the man with a public funeral and a statue in front of the Rostra, bearing the inscription " Pietatis immobilis erga Principem." " As to L. Vitellius," says Tacitus (Tac. Ann. 6.32), " I am not ignorant that he had a bad name in Rome, and that many scandalous things were said of him, but in the administration of the provinces he showed the virtues of a former age."

6. L. Vitellius, the son of Lucius, and the brother of Aulus, afterwards emperor, was consul in A. D. 48. He was one of those who advised the death of Caecina (Tac. Hist. 3.37); and he is accused of taking off Junius Blaesus by poison. When A. Vitellius quitted Rome for the camp in the Apennines, Lucius was left to defend the city ; but on the news of Tarracina being occupied by the partizans of Vespasian, the emperor sent his brother Lucius with six cohorts and five hundred horse to put down the insurrection in Campania. Lucius took Tarracina (Tac. Hist. 3.76, &c.), and made a great slaughter. If he had marched to Rome after this success, he might have made a formidable resistance to the party of Vespasian, for Lucius was a man of great activity and energy. But the feeble conduct of the emperor at Rome soon brought the contest to an end. Lucius was on his march from Tarracina to Rome, when he surrendered to the party of Vespasian, and was taken to the city and put to death. (Tac. Hist. 4.2; D. C. 65.22.) [G.L]