Page:Tacitus; (IA tacituswilliam00donnrich).pdf/137

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'HISTORY'—OTHO.
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bility of fortune, to pity and to tears. Vitellius did not turn away his eyes—did not shudder to behold the unburied corpses of so many thousands of his countrymen; nay, in his exultation, in his ignorance of the doom which was so close upon himself, he actually instituted a religions ceremony in honour of the tutelary gods of the place."

It was said that Vitellius expressed a brutal pleasure at the spectacle. He called for bowls of wine—he circulated them freely among his suite and soldiers—he declared that "the corpse of an enemy smells always well, particularly that of a fellow-citizen." We will now leave him in Rome, where he was of course greeted by the shouts of the populace, the flattery of the upper classes, and innumerable applications for places and favours. Well had Tiberius said of his Roman subjects, that they were "born to be slaves."