Meanwhile they covered the opening to the secret passage so well that we had great difficulty finding it again. But it was finally discovered, since I had to have every hole blocked. The way I returned opened our eyes and taught us to search for outlets from the city in the most unlikely places. With promises of rewards I got the legionaries to dig them out. Nevertheless, in an entire year we found only three. But for some time after my return from Jerusalem I was afraid that the guarantees for your future were lessening. But I need not have worried. The treasure was still there when Titus captured the city, and Vespasian paid his debts.

But thus I spent a whole year in the East, uneasily circling around Vespasian before the time was ripe.

 

Book XIV

Vespasian

I made use of the intervening period to prepare my case with Vespasian in devious ways and he no doubt took the hint, but he was a cautious man. Nero died the following spring, that is, if he is dead. Within a year, Rome was ruled by three different Emperors, Galba, Otho and Vitellius. In some ways by four, if one counts the shameless coup d’etat in Rome the eighteen-year-old Domitian performed at his own father’s expense. But that was swiftly dispensed with.

It amused me that it was Otho who became Emperor after Galba. Poppaea would have been the Imperial consort after all, even had she not divorced Otho, so the prophecy was doubly confirmed. I am not superstitious, but every sensible person should occasionally keep an eye on the signs and omens.

Vitellius then took over the reins, supported by the German legions, as soon as he learned of Galba’s murder. I think the reason for Otho’s swift downfall was that he was bold enough to steal the sacred sword of your ancestor, Julius Caesar, from the Mars temple, which he had neither a legal nor a moral right to do. That right is yours, Julius Antonianus Claudius, since you are directly descended from both the Julian and Claudian lineages, as were all the Julian Emperors. Fortunately the sword was returned and was once again dedicated in the Mars temple.

 

 

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Otho’s legions were defeated at Bedriacum and Otho committed suicide, for he did not wish to prolong the civil war although he had fresh troops to draw on. His last letter was written to Nero’s widow, Statilia Messalina, and in it he regretted that he could not fulfill his promise to marry her. His body and his testimony, he said in this letter, which for a commander and an Emperor was most inappropriately emotional, he left in Statilia’s care. In this way Statilia had, within a very short time, two Imperial graves to care for.

It is enough to say of Paulus Vitellius that he had spent his early youth in Capri as companion to Emperor Tiberius. I gladly acknowledge his famous father’s services to the State, but Paulus was so depraved that his own father did not even wish to give him the office of Proconsul. He managed to secure the favors of three Emperors by his vices rather than his virtues. Nero counted him among his friends, but I was never friendly with him. Indeed, I avoided his company as far as was possible.

His only honorable action was when he defied the Senate by daring to celebrate a sacrifice to Nero on Mars field in the presence of all the colleges of priests, after which, at the banquet he gave, he asked Rome’s most famous cittern-player to sing only songs which Nero had written and composed, and applauded them as enthusiastically as he had when Nero was alive. In this way he made good the insulting letter which Propraetor Julius Vindex had written to Nero and which became the cause of the civil war. In his letter Vindex called Nero a poor cittern-player, for he knew this would offend him more than any other accusation.

In my opinion, Vitellius’ great political mistake was that he disbanded the Praetorian cohorts and had a hundred and twenty men executed, among them tribunes and centurions, who were responsible for Galba’s murder. From his point of view they deserved rewarding rather than punishing. It is no wonder that such fickleness made the legion commantlers quite justifiably doubt his reliability as an Emperor.

I do not wish to say more about the ruthless murders of so many noblemen. I shall just mention that he did not even spare certain bankers who could have been useful to him but, hoping for easy gain, had them executed and confiscated their property, without realizing that it is wiser to milk a cow than to slaughter it.

When Vitellius was reigning for the eighth month, certain information came that made me think that the moment to persuade Vespasian had come. I promised to lend him my entire fortune, with part of the treasure of the temple in Jerusalem and other war booty as the only security, to finance his accession to the throne. I referred to my twenty iron chests of gold. Naturally they did not contain my entire fortune, but I wanted him to realize how I trusted his chances.

 

 

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