By C. Suetonius Tranquillus; To which are added, his Lives of the
Grammarians, Rhetoricians, and Poets.
Translation by Alexander Thomson, M.D.; Revised and corrected by T.Forester, Esq., A.M.
Annotation of text copyright ©2007 David Trumbull, Agathon Associates. All Rights Reserved.
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Vitellius, A.D. 15-69; ruled A.D. 69
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AULUS VITELLIUS.
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,
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,
with a force raised by their own family only: also
that, in the time of the war with the Samnites, some of the Vitellii who went
with the troops levied for the security of Apulia, settled at Nuceria,
and their descendants, a long time afterwards,
returned again to Rome, and were admitted into the patrician order. On the
other hand, the generality of writers say that the founder of the family was a
freedman. Cassius Severus 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.
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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,
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,
was made governor of Syria /1/,
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,
and also the censorship jointly with the emperor Claudius. Whilst that
prince was absent upon his expedition into Britain,
the care of the empire was committed to him, being a
man of great integrity and industry. But he lessened his character not a little,
by his passionate fondness for an abandoned freedwoman, with whose spittle,
mixed with honey, he used to anoint his throat and jaws, by way of remedy for
some complaint, not privately nor seldom, but daily and publicly. Being
extravagantly prone to flattery, it was he who gave rise to the worship of Caius
[Caligula] Caesar as a god, when, upon his return from Syria, he would not presume to
accost him any otherwise than with his head covered, turning himself round, and
then prostrating himself upon the earth. And to leave no artifice untried to
secure the favour of Claudius, who was entirely governed by his wives and
freedmen, he requested as the greatest favour from Messalina, that she would be
pleased to let him take off her shoes; which, when he had done, he took her
right shoe, and wore it constantly betwixt his toga and his tunic, and from time
to time covered it with kisses. He likewise worshipped golden images of
Narcissus and Pallas among his household gods. It was he, too, who, when
Claudius exhibited the secular games, in his compliments to him upon that
occasion, used this expression, "May you often do the same."
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III. He died of palsy, the day after his seizure with it, leaving behind him
two sons, whom he had by a most excellent and respectable wife, Sextilia. He had
lived to see them both consuls, the same year and during the whole year also;
the younger succeeding the elder for the last six months.
The senate honoured him after his decease with a
funeral at the public expense, and with a statue in the Rostra, which had this
inscription upon the base: "One who was steadfast in his loyalty to his prince."
The emperor Aulus Vitellius, the son of this Lucius, was born upon the eighth of
the calends of October [24th September], or, as some say, upon the seventh of
the ides of September [7th September], in the consulship of Drusus Caesar and
Norbanus Flaccus. His parents were so terrified with the
predictions of astrologers upon the calculation of his nativity, that his father
used his utmost endeavours to prevent his being sent governor into any of the
provinces, whilst he was alive. His mother, upon his being sent to the legions,
and also upon his being proclaimed emperor,
immediately lamented him as utterly ruined. He spent his youth amongst the
catamites of Tiberius at Capri, was himself constantly stigmatized with the name
of Spintria /2/,
and was supposed to have been the occasion of his
father's advancement, by consenting to gratify the emperor's unnatural lust.
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IV. In the subsequent part of his life, being still most scandalously
vicious, he rose to great favour at court; being upon a very intimate footing
with Caius [Caligula], because of his fondness for chariot-driving, and with
Claudius for his love of gaming. But he was in a still higher degree acceptable
to Nero, as well on the same accounts, as for a particular service which he
rendered him. When Nero presided in the games instituted by himself, though he
was extremely desirous to perform amongst the harpers, yet his modesty would not
permit him, notwithstanding the people entreated much for it. Upon his quitting
the theatre, Vitellius fetched him back again, pretending to represent the
determined wishes of the people, and so afforded him the opportunity of yielding
to their in treaties.
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V. By the favour of these three princes, he was not only advanced to the
great offices of state, but to the highest dignities of the sacred order; after
which he held the proconsulship of Africa, and had the superintendence of the
public works, in which appointment his conduct, and, consequently, his
reputation, were very different. For he governed the province with singular
integrity during two years, in the latter of which he acted as deputy to his
brother, who succeeded him. But in his office in the city, he was said to
pillage the temples of their gifts and ornaments, and to have exchanged brass
and tin for gold and silver.
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VI. He took to wife Petronia, the daughter of a man of consular rank, and had
by her a son named Petronius, who was blind of an eye. The mother being willing
to appoint this youth her heir, upon condition that he should be released from
his father's authority, the latter discharged him accordingly; but shortly
after, as was believed, murdered him, charging him with a design upon his life,
and pretending that he had, from consciousness of his guilt, drank the poison he
had prepared for his father. Soon afterwards, he married Galeria Fundana, the
daughter of a man of pretorian rank, and had by her both sons and daughters.
Among the former was one who had such a stammering in his speech, that he was
little better than if he had been dumb.
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VII. He was sent by Galba into Lower Germany,
contrary to his expectation. It is supposed that he
was assisted in procuring this appointment by the interest of Titus Junius, a
man of great influence at that time; whose friendship he had long before gained
by favouring the same set of charioteers with him in the Circensian games. But
Galba openly declared that none were less to be feared than those who only cared
for their bellies, and that even his enormous appetite must be satisfied with
the plenty of that province; so that it is evident he was selected for that
government more out of contempt than kindness. It is certain, that when he was
to set out, he had not money for the expenses of his journey; he being at that
time so much straitened in his circumstances, that he was obliged to put his
wife and children, whom he left at Rome, into a poor lodging which he hired for
them, in order that he might let his own house for the remainder of the year;
and he pawned a pearl taken from his mother's ear-ring, to defray his expenses
on the road. A crowd of creditors who were waiting to stop him, and amongst them
the people of Sineussa and Formia, whose taxes he had converted to his own use,
he eluded, by alarming them with the apprehension of false accusation. He had,
however, sued a certain freedman, who was clamorous in demanding a debt of him,
under pretence that he had kicked him; which action he would not withdraw, until
he had wrung from the freedman fifty thousand sesterces. Upon his arrival in the
province, the army, which was disaffected to Galba, and ripe for
insurrection, received him with open arms, as if he had been sent them from
heaven. It was no small recommendation to their favour, that he was the son of a
man who had been thrice consul, was in the prime of life, and of an easy,
prodigal disposition. This opinion, which had been long entertained of him,
Vitellius confirmed by some late practices; having kissed all the common
soldiers whom he met with upon the road, and been excessively complaisant in the
inns and stables to the muleteers and travellers; asking them in a morning, if
they had got their breakfasts, and letting them see, by belching, that he had
eaten his.
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VIII. After he had reached the camp, he denied no man any thing he asked for,
and pardoned all who lay under sentence for disgraceful conduct or disorderly
habits. Before a month, therefore, had passed, without regard to the day or
season, he was hurried by the soldiers out of his bed-chamber, although it was
evening, and he in an undress, and unanimously saluted by the title of EMPEROR.
He was then carried round the most considerable towns
in the neighbourhood, with the sword of the Divine Julius in his hand; which had
been taken by some person out of the temple of Mars, and presented to him when
he was first saluted. Nor did he return to the pretorium, until his dining-room
was in flames from the chimney's taking fire. Upon this accident, all being in
consternation, and considering it as an unlucky omen, he cried out, "Courage,
boys! it shines brightly upon us." And this was all he said to the soldiers. The
army of the Upper Province likewise, which had before declared against Galba for
the senate, joining in the proceedings, he very eagerly accepted the cognomen of
Germanicus, offered him by the unanimous consent of both armies, but deferred
assuming that of Augustus, and refused for ever that of Caesar.
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IX. Intelligence of Galba's death arriving soon after, when he had settled
his affairs in Germany he divided his troops into two bodies, intending to send
one of them before him against Otho, and to follow with the other himself. The
army he sent forward had a lucky omen; for, suddenly, an eagle came flying up to
them on the right, and having hovered round the standards, flew gently
before them on their road. But, on the other hand, when he began his own march,
all the equestrian statues, which were erected for him in several places, fell
suddenly down with their legs broken; and the laurel crown, which he had put on
as emblematical of auspicious fortune, fell off his head into a river. Soon
afterwards, at Vienne, as he was upon the tribunal administering justice, a
cock perched upon his shoulder, and afterwards upon his head. The issue
corresponded to these omens; for he was not able to keep the empire which had
been secured for him by his lieutenants.
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X. He heard of the victory at Bedriacum /3/,
and the death of Otho, whilst he was yet in Gaul, and
without the least hesitation, by a single proclamation, disbanded all the
pretorian cohorts, as having, by their repeated treasons, set a dangerous
example to the rest of the army; commanding them to deliver up their arms to his
tribunes. A hundred and twenty of them, under whose hands he had found petitions
presented to Otho, for rewards of their service in the murder of Galba, he
besides ordered to be sought out and punished. So far his conduct deserved
approbation, and was such as to afford hope of his becoming an excellent prince,
had he not managed his other affairs in a way more corresponding with his own
disposition, and his former manner of life, than to the imperial dignity. For,
having begun his march, he rode through every city in his route in a triumphal
procession; and sailed down the rivers in ships, fitted out with the greatest
elegance, and decorated with various kinds of crowns, amidst the most
extravagant entertainments. Such was the want of discipline, and the
licentiousness both in his family and army, that, not satisfied with the
provision every where made for them at the public expense, they committed every
kind of robbery and insult upon the inhabitants, setting slaves at liberty as
they pleased; and if any dared to make resistance, they dealt blows and abuse,
frequently wounds, and sometimes slaughter amongst them. When he reached the
plains on which the battles were fought, some of those around him being offended at the smell
of the carcases which lay rotting upon the ground, he had the audacity to
encourage them by a most detestable remark, "That a dead enemy smelt not amiss,
especially if he were a fellow-citizen." To qualify, however, the offensiveness
of the stench, he quaffed in public a goblet of wine, and with equal vanity and
insolence distributed a large quantity of it among his troops. On his observing
a stone with an inscription upon it to the memory of Otho, he said, "It was a
mausoleum good enough for such a prince." He also sent the poniard, with which
Otho killed himself, to the colony of Agrippina,
to be dedicated to Mars. Upon the Appenine hills he
celebrated a Bacchanalian feast.
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XI. At last he entered the City with trumpets sounding, in his general's
cloak, and girded with his sword, amidst a display of standards and banners; his
attendants being all in the military habit, and the arms of the soldiers
unsheathed. Acting more and more in open violation of all laws, both divine and
human, he assumed the office of Pontifex Maximus, upon the day of the defeat at
the Allia /4/; ordered the magistrates to be elected for ten years of
office; and made himself consul for life. To put it out of all doubt what model
he intended to follow in his government of the empire, he made his offerings to
the shade of Nero in the midst of the Campus Martius, and with a full assembly
of the public priests attending him. And at a solemn entertainment, he desired a
harper who pleased the company much, to sing something in praise of Domitius;
and upon his beginning some songs of Nero's, he started up in presence of the
whole assembly, and could not refrain from applauding him, by clapping his
hands.
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XII. After such a commencement of his career, he conducted his affairs,
during the greater part of his reign, entirely by the advice and direction of
the vilest amongst the players and charioteers, and especially his freedman
Asiaticus. This fellow had, when young, been engaged with him in a course of
mutual and unnatural pollution, but, being at last quite tired of the
occupation, ran away. His master, some time after, caught him at Puteoli,
selling a liquor called Posca, and put him in chains, but soon released him, and
retained him in his former capacity. Growing weary, however, of his rough and
stubborn temper, he sold him to a strolling fencing-master; after which, when
the fellow was to have been brought up to play his part at the conclusion of an
entertainment of gladiators, he suddenly carried him off, and at length, upon
his being advanced to the government of a province, gave him his freedom. The
first day of his reign, he presented him with the gold rings at supper, though
in the morning, when all about him requested that favour in his behalf, he
expressed the utmost abhorrence of putting so great a stain upon the equestrian
order.
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XIII. He was chiefly addicted to the vices of luxury and cruelty. He always
made three meals a day, sometimes four: breakfast, dinner, and supper, and a
drunken revel after all. This load of victuals he could well enough bear, from a
custom to which he had enured himself, of frequently vomiting. For these several
meals he would make different appointments at the houses of his friends on the
same day. None ever entertained him at less expense than four hundred thousand
sesterces. The most famous was a set entertainment given him by
his brother, at which, it is said, there were served up no less than two
thousand choice fishes, and seven thousand birds. Yet even this supper he
himself outdid, at a feast which he gave upon the first use of a dish which had
been made for him, and which, for its extraordinary size, he called "The Shield
of Minerva." In this dish there were tossed up together the livers of char-fish,
the brains of pheasants and peacocks, with the tongues of flamingos, and the
entrails of lampreys, which had been brought in ships of war as far as
from the Carpathian Sea, and the Spanish Straits. He was not only a man of an
insatiable appetite, but would gratify it likewise at unseasonable times, and
with any garbage that came in his way; so that, at a sacrifice, he would snatch
from the fire flesh and cakes, and eat them upon the spot. When he travelled, he
did the same at the inns upon the road, whether the meat was fresh dressed and
hot, or what had been left the day before, and was half-eaten.
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XIV. He delighted in the infliction of punishments, and even those which were
capital, without any distinction of persons or occasions. Several noblemen, his
school-fellows and companions, invited by him to court, he treated with such
flattering caresses, as seemed to indicate an affection short only of admitting
them to share the honours of the imperial dignity; yet he put them all to death
by some base means or other. To one he gave poison with his own hand, in a cup
of cold water which he called for in a fever. He scarcely spared one of all the
usurers, notaries, and publicans, who had ever demanded a debt of him at Rome,
or any toll or custom upon the road. One of these, while in the very act of
saluting him, he ordered for execution, but immediately sent for him back; upon
which all about him applauding his clemency, he commanded him to be slain in his
own presence, saying, "I have a mind to feed my eyes." Two sons who interceded
for their father, he ordered to be executed with him. A Roman knight, upon his
being dragged away for execution, and crying out to him, "You are my heir," he
desired to produce his will: and finding that he had made his freedman joint
heir with him, he commanded that both he and the freedman should have their
throats cut. He put to death some of the common people for cursing aloud the
blue party in the Circensian games; supposing it to be done in contempt of
himself, and the expectation of a revolution in the government. There were no
persons he was more severe against than jugglers and astrologers; end as soon as
any one of them was informed against, he put him to death without the formality
of a trial. He was enraged against them, because, after his proclamation by
which he commanded all astrologers to quit home, and Italy also, before the
calends [the first] of October, a bill was immediately posted about the city,
with the following words:—"TAKE NOTICE: The Chaldaeans also decree that Vitellius Germanicus
shall be no more, by the day of the said calends." He was even suspected of
being accessary to his mother's death, by forbidding sustenance to be given her
when she was unwell; a German witch, whom he held to be oracular, having told him, "That he
would long reign in security if he survived his mother." But others say, that
being quite weary of the state of affairs, and apprehensive of the future, she
obtained without difficulty a dose of poison from her son.
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XV. In the eighth month of his reign, the troops both in Moesia and Pannonia
revolted from him; as did likewise, of the armies beyond sea, those in Judaea
and Syria, some of which swore allegiance to Vespasian as emperor in his own
presence, and others in his absence. In order, therefore, to secure the favour
and affection of the people, Vitellius lavished on all around whatever he had it
in his power to bestow, both publicly and privately, in the most extravagant
manner. He also levied soldiers in the city, and promised all who enlisted as
volunteers, not only their discharge after the victory was gained, but all the
rewards due to veterans who had served their full time in the wars. The enemy
now pressing forward both by sea and land, on one hand he opposed against them
his brother with a fleet, the new levies, and a body of gladiators, and in
another quarter the troops and generals who were engaged at Bedriacum. But being
beaten or betrayed in every direction, he agreed with Flavius Sabinus,
Vespasian's brother, to abdicate, on condition of having his life spared, and a
hundred millions of sesterces granted him; and he immediately, upon the
palace-steps, publicly declared to a large body of soldiers there assembled,
"that he resigned the government, which he had accepted reluctantly;" but they
all remonstrating against it, he deferred the conclusion of the treaty. Next
day, early in the morning, he came down to the Forum in a very mean habit, and
with many tears repeated the declaration from a writing which he held in
his hand; but the soldiers and people again interposing, and encouraging him not
to give way, but to rely on their zealous support, he recovered his courage, and
forced Sabinus, with the rest of the Flavian party, who now thought themselves
secure, to retreat into the Capitol, where he destroyed them all by setting fire
to the temple of Jupiter, whilst he beheld the contest and the fire from
Tiberius's house, where he was feasting. Not long after, repenting of
what he had done, and throwing the blame of it upon others, he called a meeting,
and swore "that nothing was dearer to him than the public peace;" which oath he
also obliged the rest to take. Then drawing a dagger from his side, he presented
it first to the consul, and, upon his refusing it, to the magistrates, and then
to every one of the senators; but none of them being willing to accept it, he
went away, as if he meant to lay it up in the temple of Concord; but some crying
out to him, "You are Concord," he came back again, and said that he would not
only keep his weapon, but for the future use the cognomen of Concord.
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XVI. He advised the senate to send deputies, accompanied by the Vestal
Virgins, to desire peace, or, at least, time for consultation. The day after,
while he was waiting for an answer, he received intelligence by a scout, that
the enemy was advancing. Immediately, therefore, throwing himself into a small
litter, borne by hand, with only two attendants, a baker and a cook, he
privately withdrew to his father's house, on the Aventine hill, intending to
escape thence into Campania. But a groundless report being circulated, that the
enemy was willing to come to terms, he suffered himself to be carried back to
the palace. Finding, however, nobody there, and those who were with him stealing
away, he girded round his waist a belt full of gold pieces, and then ran into
the porter's lodge, tying the dog before the door, and piling up against it the
bed and bedding.
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XVII. By this time the forerunners of the enemy's army had broken into the
palace, and meeting with nobody, searched, as was natural, every corner. Being
dragged by them out of his cell, and asked "who he was?" (for they did not
recognize him), "and if he knew where Vitellius was?" he deceived them by a
falsehood. But at last being discovered, he begged hard to be detained in
custody, even were it in a prison; pretending to have something to say which
concerned Vespasian's security. Nevertheless, he was dragged half-naked into the
Forum, with his hands tied behind him, a rope about his neck, and his clothes
torn, amidst the most contemptuous abuse, both by word and deed, along the Via
Sacra; his head being held back by the hair, in the manner of condemned
criminals, and the point of a sword put under his chin, that he might hold up
his face to public view; some of the mob, meanwhile, pelting him with dung and
mud, whilst others called him "an incendiary and glutton." They also upbraided
him with the defects of his person, for he was monstrously tall, and had a face
usually very red with hard-drinking, a large belly, and one thigh weak,
occasioned by a chariot running against him, as he was attending upon Caius [Caligula],
while he was driving. At length, upon the Scalae
Gemoniae, he was tormented and put to death in lingering tortures, and then
dragged by a hook into the Tiber.
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XVIII. He perished with his brother and son, in the fifty-seventh year of his age,
and verified the prediction of those who, from the
omen which happened to him at Vienne, as before related,
foretold that he would be made prisoner by some man of
Gaul. For he was seized by Antoninus Primus, a general of the adverse party, who
was born at Toulouse, and, when a boy, had the cognomen of Becco,
which signifies a cock's beak.
Here Ends the Life of Vitellius, from The Twelve Caesars
by Suetonius
Dr. Alexander Thomson,
Essay appended to Suetonius's Vetillius .
After the extinction of the race of the Caesars, the possession of the
imperial power became extremely precarious; and great influence in the army was
the means which now invariably led to the throne. The soldiers having arrogated
to themselves the right of nomination, they either unanimously elected one and
the same person, or different parties supporting the interests of their
respective favourites, there arose between them a contention, which was usually
determined by an appeal to arms, and followed by the assassination of the
unsuccessful competitor. Vitellius, by being a parasite of all the emperors from
Tiberius to Nero inclusively, had risen to a high military rank, by which, with
a spirit of enterprise, and large promises to the soldiery, it was not difficult
to snatch the reins of government, while they were yet fluctuating in the hands
of Otho. His ambition prompted to the attempt, and his boldness was crowned with
success. In the service of the four preceding emperors, Vitellius had imbibed
the principal vices of them all: but what chiefly distinguished him was extreme
voraciousness, which, though he usually pampered it with enormous luxury, could
yet be gratified by the vilest and most offensive garbage. The pusillanimity
discovered by this emperor at his death, forms a striking contrast to the heroic
behaviour of Otho.
NOTES.
/1/
He is frequently commended by Josephus for his kindness to the Jews. See,
particularly, Antiq. VI. xviii.
/2/
See Suetonius, Tiberius, 43.
/3/
See Suetonius, Otho, 9.
/4/
A dies non fastus, an unlucky day in the Roman calendar, being the anniversary
of their great defeat by the Gauls on the river Allia, which joins the Tiber
about five miles from Rome. This disaster happened on the 16th of the calends of
August (17th July). For an account of the battle, see Plutarch,
Life of Camillus, 18.
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