30 1 Now a new difficulty again confronted the Flavian troops in the city’s high walls, its towers of masonry, its iron-barred gates, and the soldiers who were brandishing their weapons. Furthermore the civil population of Cremona was large and attached to the party of Vitellius, while a great part of Italy had gathered there to attend a market which fell at this time. This great number strengthened the defenders, but the possible booty encouraged the assailants. Antonius ordered his troops quickly to set fire to the finest buildings outside the town, in the hope that the people of Cremona might be moved by the loss of their property to change their allegiance. The roofs of the houses near the walls, and particularly those which rose above the city ramparts, he filled with his bravest troops; these dislodged the defenders with beams, tiles, and firebrands.
31 1 The legions were already forming a “tortoise,” while others were beginning to hurl spears and stones, when the spirit of the Vitellians gradually slackened. The higher a man’s rank, the readier he was to yield to fortune for fear that if Cremona also were captured by assault, there would be no more pardon, but that the whole rage of the victors would fall not on the penniless mob, but on the tribunes and centurions, whose murder meant gain. The common soldiers, however, having no thought for the future and being better protected by their humble position, continued their resistance. They wandered through the streets or concealed themselves in houses, but did not beg for peace even when they had given up fighting. The chief officers removed the name and statues of Vitellius from headquarters; they took off Caecina’s fetters — for even at that time he was kept a prisoner — and begged him to plead their cause. When he haughtily refused they besought him with tears; all these brave men, and this was the uttermost of their ills, invoked the aid of a traitor. Presently they displayed hangings and fillets on the walls as signs of their submission. After Antonius had ordered his men to cease firing, they brought out their standards and eagles; a sad line of unarmed men followed, their eyes cast upon the ground. The victorious troops stood about, heaping insults upon them and threatening them with blows; later when the defeated troops offered their faces to every indignity, and without a spark of courage left in them were ready to suffer anything, the victors began to remember that these were the troops who had recently shown moderation after they had won at Bedriacum. Yet when Caecina appeared, in the rôle of consul, dressed in the toga praetexta and escorted by his lictors who put aside the crowd before him, the victors’ rage blazed forth: they taunted him with arrogance, cruelty, and — so hateful are crimes — even with perfidy. Antonius interposed, gave him a guard, and sent him to Vespasian.
32 1 In the meantime the people of Cremona were buffeted about among the troops, and there came near being a massacre, when the commanders by their appeals succeeded in calming the soldiers. Then Antonius called them together and spoke in warmest eulogy of the victors; the conquered he addressed in kindly terms; but he said nothing for or against Cremona. The troops, prompted not only by their ingrained desire for plunder, but also by their old hatred, were bent on destroying the people of the town. They believed that they had helped the party of Vitellius in the war with Otho as well; and later the common people of the town (for the mob always has an insolent nature) had insulted and taunted the soldiers of the Thirteenth legion who had been left behind to finish the amphitheatre. The troops’ anger was increased by other causes as well: Caecina had given an exhibition of gladiators there; the town had twice been the seat of war; the townspeople had provided food for the Vitellians when they were actually in battle-line; and some women had been killed who had been carried by their zeal for Vitellius’s side into the very battle; besides this the market season had filled the colony, always rich, with a greater show of wealth. Now the other commanders were little noticed; but fame and fortune had made Antonius conspicuous to the eyes of all. He hurried to some baths to wash away the blood with which he was covered. When he complained of the temperature, a voice was heard saying that they would soon be hot enough. This answer of some slave turned all the odium of what followed on Antonius, as if he had given the signal to burn Cremona, which was indeed at that moment in flames.
33 1 Forty thousand armed men burst into the town; the number of camp-followers and servants was even greater; and they were more ready to indulge in lust and cruelty. Neither rank nor years protected anyone; their assailants debauched and killed without distinction. Aged men and women near the end of life, though despised as booty, were dragged off to be the soldiers’ sport. Whenever a young woman or a handsome youth fell into their hands, they were torn to pieces by the violent struggles of those who tried to secure them, and this in the end drove the despoilers to kill one another. Individuals tried to carry off for themselves money or the masses of gold dedicated in the temples, but they were assailed and slain by others stronger than themselves. Some, scorning the booty before their eyes, flogged and tortured the owners to discover hidden wealth and dug up buried treasure. They carried firebrands in their hands, and when they had secured their loot, in utter wantonness they threw these into the vacant houses and empty temples. In this army there were many passions corresponding to the variety of speech and customs, for it was made up of citizens, allies, and foreigners; no two held the same thing sacred and there was no crime which was held unlawful. For four days did Cremona supply food for destruction. When everything sacred and profane sank into the flames, there stood solitary outside the walls the temple of Mefitis, protected by either its position or its deity.
34 1 Such was the fate of Cremona in the two hundred and eighty-sixth year after its foundation. It was established in the consulship of Tiberius Sempronius and Publius Cornelius, at the time when Hannibal was threatening Italy, to be a bulwark of defence against the Transpadane Gauls and to prevent any possible invasion over the Alps. The large number of colonists sent there, the advantages given by its navigable streams, the fertility of its land, as well as the connections established with other peoples by intermarriage and alliance, all combined to make the colony increase and prosper; untouched in foreign wars, it found misfortune in civil strife. Antonius, ashamed of his atrocious crime, as public indignation grew, issued a proclamation forbidding anyone to keep a citizen of Cremona captive. In fact, the common feeling of all Italy had already made the soldiers’ booty valueless, for all Italians loathed the idea of buying slaves like these. The soldiers then began to kill their captives; when this became known, they were secretly ransomed by their relatives and kin. Later the remnant of the people returned to Cremona; the fora and the temples were restored by the munificence of its citizens; and Vespasian encouraged such action.
35 1 However, the infection that pervaded the bloodstained ground did not allow the army to encamp long by the ruins of this dead city. The Flavian forces moved to the third milestone; the straggling and terrified Vitellians were reorganized, each man under his own colours; and the defeated legions were distributed through Illyricum to keep them from any doubtful action, for civil war was not yet over. The Flavian leaders then despatched messengers to carry the news to Britain and to Spain; to Gaul they sent Julius Calenus, a tribune, and to Germany Alpiniusº Montanus, a prefect of a cohort. The latter being a Trevir and Calenus an Aeduan, but both Vitellians, they were despatched to advertise the Flavians’ victory. At the same time the Flavian forces occupied the passes of the Alps, for they suspected Germany of preparing to help Vitellius.
36 1 A few days after Caecina had left Rome, Vitellius, having succeeded in driving Fabius Valens to the war, began to conceal his anxieties by giving himself up to pleasures. He took no steps to provide weapons, he did not try to inspire his troops by addressing them or by having them drilled, nor did he appear before the people. He kept hidden in the shade of his gardens, like those lazy animals that lie inactive and never move so long as you give them abundant food. The past, the present, and the future alike he had dismissed completely from his mind. He was actually lounging in indolence in the woods at Aricia when he
was startled by the report of the treachery of Lucilius Bassus and of the revolt of the fleet at Ravenna. Shortly afterwards the report that Caecina had gone over to Vespasian but had been arrested by his troops caused Vitellius both delight and sorrow. It was the joy rather than the anxiety that had the greater influence on his sluggish spirit. In high exultation he rode back to the city, and in a crowded assembly extolled to the skies the devoted loyalty of his soldiers; then he ordered the arrest of Publilius Sabinus, prefect of the Praetorian guard, because he was Caecina’s friend, appointing Alfenus Varus in his place.
37 1 Later he addressed the senate in a grandiloquent speech, and was himself extolled by the senate with most elaborate flattery. Lucius Vitellius took the lead in proposing severe measures directed against Caecina; then the rest with feigned indignation, because, “as consul he had betrayed the State, as general his emperor, as a friend the one who had loaded him wealth and honours,” under the form of complaints in behalf of Vitellius expressed their own resentment. But in no speech was there any attack on the Flavian leaders. While the senators blamed the troops for their errors and lack of wisdom, they carefully and cautiously avoided mentioning Vespasian’s name; and indeed there was one senator found to wheedle from Vitellius the one day of Caecina’s consulship that was left — a thing which brought many a sneer on both giver and receiver. On the thirty-first of October Rosius Regulus entered and gave up his office. The learned noted that never before had one consul succeeded another unless the office had first been declared vacant or a law duly passed. There had indeed been a consul for a single day once before: that was the case of Caninius Rebilus in the dictatorship of Gaius Caesar, when Caesar was in haste to pay the rewards of civil war.
38 1 The death of Junius Blaesus, becoming known at the time, caused much gossip. The story, as we learn it, is this. When Vitellius was seriously ill in the gardens of Servilius, he noticed that a tower near by was brilliantly lighted at night. On asking the reason he was told that Caecina Tuscus was giving a large dinner at which Junius Blaesus was the guest of honour; and his informants went on to exaggerate the elaborate preparations made for this dinner and to speak of the guests’ extravagant enjoyment. There was no lack of men ready to accuse Tuscus and others; but they blamed Blaesus most severely because he spent his days in pleasure while his emperor was sick. When the people, who have a keen eye for the angry moods of princes, saw that Vitellius was exasperated and that Blaesus could be destroyed, Lucius Vitellius was assigned the rôle of informant. His hatred for Blaesus sprang from base jealousy, for, stained as he was by every infamy, Blaesus surpassed him by his eminent reputation. So now, bursting into the emperor’s bedroom, Lucius embraced the son of Vitellius and fell on his knees. When Vitellius asked the reason for his trepidation, Lucius replied that he had no personal fear and was not anxious for himself, but that it was on behalf of his brother and his brother’s children that he brought his prayers and tears. “There is no point,” he said, “in fearing Vespasian, whose approach is blocked by all the German legions, by all the brave and loyal provinces, and in short by boundless stretches of sea and land. The enemy against whom you must be on your guard is in the city, in your own bosom: he boasts that the Junii and Antonii are his ancestors; and, claiming imperial descent, he parades before the soldiers his courtesy and magnificence. Everyone’s thoughts are attracted to him, while you, failing to distinguish between friend and foe, cherish a rival who watches his emperor’s distress from a dinner-table. To pay him for his unseasonable joy, he should suffer a night of sorrow and doom, that he may know and feel that Vitellius is alive and emperor, and furthermore that, if any misfortune happens to him, he still has a son.”
39 1 Anxiously hesitating between crime and the fear that, if delayed, the death of Blaesus might bring prompt ruin or, if openly ordered, a storm of hate, Vitellius decided to resort to poison. He gave the public reason to believe in his guilt by his evident joy when he went to see Blaesus. Moreover, he was heard to make a brutal remark, boasting — and I shall quote his very words — that he had “feasted his eyes on the sight of his enemy’s death-bed.” Blaesus was a man not only of distinguished family and of refinement, but also of resolute loyalty. Even while the position of Vitellius was still unshaken, he had been solicited by Caecina and the party leaders who already despised the emperor, but he persisted in rejecting their advances. Honourable, opposed to revolution, moved by no desire for sudden honours, least of all for the principate, he could not escape being regarded as worthy of it.
40 1 Fabius Valens in the meantime, with his long effeminate train of concubines and eunuchs, moved on too slowly for a general going out to war. On his way he heard from messengers who came in haste, that Lucius Bassus had betrayed the fleet at Ravenna to the Flavians. Yet if he had hurried, he might have stopped Caecina, who was still wavering; or at least he could have reached the legions before the decisive battle. Some advised him to take his most trusty men and, avoiding Ravenna, to push on by secret roads to Hostilia or Cremona; others favoured summoning the praetorian cohorts from Rome and then breaking through with a strong force. But Valens by useless delay wasted in discussion the time for action; later he rejected both the plans proposed, and in following a middle course — the worst of all policies in times of doubt — he showed neither adequate courage nor foresight.
41 1 He wrote to Vitellius asking for help. Three cohorts and a squadron of cavalry from Britain came in response, a force whose size was ill-suited either to escape observation or to force a passage. But even in such a crisis Valens did not avoid the infamy of snatching illicit pleasures and polluting with adulteries and debaucheries the homes of those who entertained him: he had power, money, and, as fortune failed, the lust of the last hour. When the foot and horse finally arrived, the folly of his plan became evident, because he could not make his way through the enemy’s lines with so small a band, no matter how faithful, and, in fact, they did not bring a loyalty that was wholly unshaken. Still shame and awe in the presence of their commander held them back; but these are weak restraints over men who are fearful of danger and regardless of disgrace. Accordingly, in his alarm, he sent the cohorts on to Ariminum, and ordered the squadron of cavalry to protect his rear. He himself turned aside into Umbria with a few companions whose loyalty had not been changed by adversity, and from Umbria he moved into Etruria. There, hearing the result of the battle at Cremona, he formed a plan which was not cowardly and which would have been formidable if it had only succeeded: he proposed to seize some ships, land somewhere on the coast of the province of Narbonne, and then rouse the Gallic provinces, the armies, and the tribes of Germany — in fact to begin a new war.
42 1 Valens’ departure made the troops at Ariminum anxious and timid. Cornelius Fuscus brought up his land forces and sent light men-of-war along the neighbouring coast and thereby cut the garrison off by land and sea. The Flavians now held the plains of Umbria and that part of Picenum that is washed by the Adriatic; in fact, all Italy was divided between Vespasian and Vitellius by the range of the Apennines. Fabius Valens sailed from the harbour of Pisa, but was forced by calm or by head winds to put in at the port of Hercules Monoecus. Marius Maturus, procurator of the Maritime Alps, was not far from here; he was still faithful to Vitellius, not having yet abandoned his oath of allegiance to him although all the districts round about were hostile. He received Valens kindly, and persuaded him by his advice not to risk entering Narbonese Gaul. At the same time the fidelity of the rest was shaken by their fears.
43 1 There was reason for this, since the imperial agent, Valerius Paulinus, a vigorous soldier and a friend of Vespasian even before his great fortune befell him, had bound the neighbouring communities by an oath of allegiance to him. Paulinus had also called out all the veterans who had been discharged by Vitellius, but now freely took up arms again; and he kept a garrison in Forum Julii, which controls the sea here, while his authority was increased by the fact that Forum Julii was his native city and that he was esteemed
by the praetorians, whose tribune he had once been. Also the people of the district, moved by zeal for a fellow-townsman and by hope of his future power, did their best to help his party. When these preparations, which were effective and were exaggerated by rumour, were reported again and again to the Vitellians, whose minds were already in doubt, Fabius Valens returned to his ships with four soldiers of the bodyguard, three friends, and three centurions; Maturus and the rest chose to remain and take the oath of fidelity to Vespasian. But while the sea seemed to Valens safer than shores or cities, he was still doubtful of the future and saw more clearly what to avoid than what to trust. An adverse storm drove him to the Stoechadae islands belonging to the Massilians, where he was captured by some light galleys which Paulinus sent after him.
44 1 Now that Valens was captured everything turned to the victor’s advantage. The movement in Spain was begun by the First legion Adjutrix, which was devoted to the memory of Otho and so hostile to Vitellius. This legion drew the Tenth and Sixth after it. The Gallic provinces did not hesitate. In Britain a favourable sentiment inclined toward Vespasian, because he had been put in command of the Second legion there by Claudius and had distinguished himself in the field. This secured the island for him, but only after some resistance on the part of the other legions, in which there were many centurions and soldiers who owed their promotions to Vitellius, and so hesitated to change from an emperor of whom they had already had some experience.
45 1 Inspired by these differences between the Roman forces and by the many rumours of civil war that reached them, the Britons plucked up courage under the leadership of Venutius, who, in addition to his natural spirit and hatred of the Roman name, was fired by his personal resentment toward Queen Cartimandua. She was ruler over the Brigantes, having the influence that belongs to high birth, and she had later strengthened her power when she was credited with having captured King Caratacus by treachery and so furnished an adornment for the triumph of Claudius Caesar. From this came her wealth and the wanton spirit which success breeds. She grew to despise her husband Venutius, and took as her consort his squire Vellocatus, whom she admitted to share the throne with her. Her house was at once shaken by this scandalous act. Her husband was favoured by the sentiments of all the citizens; the adulterer was supported by the queen’s passion for him and by her savage spirit. So Venutius, calling in aid from outside and at the same time assisted by a revolt of the Brigantes themselves, put Cartimandua into an extremely dangerous position. Then she asked the Romans for protection, and in fact some companies of our foot and horse, after meeting with indifferent success in a number of engagements, finally succeeded in rescuing the queen from danger. The throne was left to Venutius; the war to us.
Complete Works of Tacitus (Delphi Classics) (Delphi Ancient Classics Book 24) Page 31
