page_title: The Twelve Caesars
section_title: Vitellius
hierarchical_section_title: The Twelve Caesars / Constituent works / Vitellius
caption_attribution_description: English: Male bust of the Pseudo-Vitellius type. Grey veined marble, Italian artwork of the first half of the 16th century, modern copy of an antique head of the Hadrianic era in the Grimani Collection in Venice, once thought to represent the emperor Vitellius. Français&#160;: Buste d'homme du type du pseudo-Vitellius. Marbre gris veiné, œuvre italienne du début du XVIe siècle, copie moderne d'une tête antique de la période d'Hadrien dans la collection Grimani à Venise, considéré autrefois comme un portrait de l'empereur Vitellius.
context_page_description: De vita Caesarum, commonly known as The Twelve Caesars, is a set of twelve biographies of Julius Caesar and the first 11 emperors of the Roman Empire written by Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus.
  The work, written in AD 121 during the reign of the emperor Hadrian, was the most popular work of Suetonius, at that time Hadrian's personal secretary, and is the largest among his surviving writings. It was dedicated to a friend, the Praetorian prefect Gaius Septicius Clarus.
  The Twelve Caesars was considered very significant in antiquity and remains a primary source on Roman history. The book discusses the significant and critical period of the Principate from the end of the Republic to the reign of Domitian; comparisons are often made with Tacitus, whose surviving works document a similar period.
context_section_description: In the book of the last of the short-lived emperors, Suetonius briefly describes the reign of Vitellius.
  Suetonius says that Otho killed himself while Vitellius was marching to Rome.
  This book gives an unfavorable picture of Vitellius; however it should be remembered that Suetonius' father was an army officer who had fought for Otho and against Vitellius at the first Battle of Bedriacum, and that Vespasian basically controlled history when he ascended to the throne. Anything written about Vitellius during the Flavian dynasty would have to paint him in a bad light.
  Suetonius includes a brief description of the family history of Vitellius, and related omens.
  Suetonius finally describes the assassination of Vitellius. According to Suetonius, Vitellius was dragged naked by Roman subjects, tied to a post, and had animal waste thrown at him before he was killed. However, unlike the prior two emperors, it was not the next emperor who killed Vitellius. The next emperor and his followers had been waging a war against the Jews in Judaea at the time. The death of Vitellius and subsequent ascendance of his successor ended the worst year of the early principate.
caption: Bust of Vitellius
exif: {"Image Make": "NIKON CORPORATION", "Image Model": "NIKON D200", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "DxO Optics Pro Standard 4.5 (MacOS X) W1BMVDDCW2TFUPG", "Image DateTime": "2008:01:14 16:02:40", "Image Artist": "Marie-Lan Nguyen", "Image Copyright": "Wikimedia Commons", "Image ExifOffset": "326", "GPS GPSVersionID": "[2, 2, 0, 0]", "Image GPSInfo": "3230", "Image Tag 0x9216": "[1, 0, 0, 0]", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "3342", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "5294", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/20", "EXIF FNumber": "24/5", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Aperture Priority", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "400", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2008:01:14 16:02:40", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2008:01:14 16:02:40", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "540241/125000", "EXIF ApertureValue": "452607/100000", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "2/3", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "9/2", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Spot", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire", "EXIF FocalLength": "60", "EXIF SubSecTime": "65", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "65", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "65", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "3872", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2592", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CVAPattern": "[0, 2, 0, 2, 1, 0, 2, 1]", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "1", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "90", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF GainControl": "Low gain up", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal", "EXIF SubjectDistanceRange": "0"}