Suetonius, a Roman official writing in the early second century, composed The Twelve Caesars, short lives from Julius Caesar through Domitian. This is Vitellius, the third man to hold the purple in the civil-war year 69, after the Julio-Claudians — Julius Caesar’s family — were already gone.

The Rhine army makes an emperor of a court survivor who had lived near Caligula, Claudius, and Nero. Suetonius’s ruling vice is gluttony: feasts while civil war drains the state, a body turned into insult. Vitellius courts Nero’s memory for the crowd. Vespasian’s eastern armies — Egypt’s grain, Syria’s steel — move against him. A second fight at Cremona in northern Italy breaks his hold. His end is public humiliation and death in Rome. Gifts of money and dinners without a victory buy only contempt. Against that squalor the Flavians will brand Vespasian as thrift and work. With Vitellius dead, a municipal Italian wears the purple.