071 - Otho and Vitellius

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Hello and welcome to the History of Rome, episode 71, Otho and Vitellius. On January 15, 69 AD, Otho assassinated Galba and fulfilled the prophecy that had been driving the young aristocrat for the past few months, that Galba would soon be dead and Otho would succeed him. Of course, Otho had been working under the assumption that the prophecy meant Galba would adopt him and he would ascend to the throne legitimately. But having been passed over for adoption, Otho fulfilled the prophecy by other means, violent, illegitimate means.

Otho, however, was not the only one who had an eye on the throne, nor the only one who was willing to go to violent, illegitimate lengths to seize it. In the weeks leading up to his death, Galba had been receiving reports that the legions on the Rhine, ostensibly led by Vitellius, were in full revolt. In public, Galba downplayed the danger and brushed aside worries that something was seriously amiss in the north, but when Otho finally claimed his prize and became the supreme ruler of the Roman Empire, he discovered that it was not a unified state he inherited. Not only was the revolt along the Rhine much more serious than anyone thought, it would prove to be the only issue Otho would deal with as emperor. Whatever plans he had and whatever dreams he dreamed, for the rest of his short life, Otho would be consumed with beating back the insurrection in the north and ultimately wind up dying in the attempt.

Otho had apparently been so focused on asking the prophets when he would be emperor that he forgot to ask them for how long he would be emperor, because the answer would have been, not very long, and maybe then he would have thought twice about the whole project. The funny thing is that the revolt that would eventually take Otho down had nothing to do with Otho himself. It was actually a revolt against Galba. But when word came north that Galba was dead, well, everyone was so revved up already that the treasonous event horizon was now in the rearview mirror. Nothing less than total capitulation on Otho's part would have averted their planned invasion of Italy.

Along the Rhine, the rebellious pot started boiling in the wake of Vindex's revolt. As you know, Virginius Rufus, leading the legions on the upper Rhine, put down the revolt and then refused his troops' offer to declare him emperor. The Rhine legions went back to their camps and continued their nominal support of Nero at the behest of their obviously popular commander. However, when Galba came to power, things began to get ugly. For one thing, Galba had obviously been on the side of Vindex, even if he had never come to the latter's aid. So when he marched through Gaul on his way from Spain to Italy, Galba went out of his way to praise and reward the local tribes that had risen up along with Vindex. This support came at the expense of the tribes that had fought with the Rhine legions against the insurrection. Galba then compounded this slight by ignoring the Rhine soldiers themselves when it came to doling out honors and rewards. He did not punish any of them, but it was clear that Galba was stiffing them on his way into office.

When the local auxiliaries and camp legionnaires got together and compared notes, they discovered that for the high crime of doing their duty, they had all been given the shaft. This, coupled with Galba's lingering reputation in the region from his tour there during Caligula's reign, meant that it was only with great difficulty that the commanders were able to convince the men to accept Galba as their legitimate emperor. But they never did accept Galba in their hearts. Virginius was replaced by someone Galba could trust, a decision that only exacerbated the situation.

Fontius Capito, the commander of the lower Rhine, was soon implicated in a plot to overthrow Galba and was killed by the two officers who discovered his treachery. The assassination of Capito is what led Galba to appoint the totally harmless and utterly inexperienced Vitellius as a replacement, presumably to prevent this sort of thing from happening again. But the thing about the Capito affair is that there is a great deal of plausible speculation that Capito was not fomenting revolution, that instead he had refused to go along with the plot of the two officers who eventually killed him. Because one of those officers, Fabius Valens, had a great deal to do with convincing the supposedly harmless Vitellius that he could be emperor and to lead the Rhine armies in revolt.

The other major influence on Vitellius was Aulus Caecina, who had served in Spain and was an early supporter of Galba. As a reward, he was able to skip a few places up the chain of command and was appointed legate of one of the legions on the upper Rhine. But the young, charismatic, and well-liked Caecina was also ambitious and greedy. Not long after taking up his new post, he was accused of embezzling funds and had every reason to fear that old stick-in-the-mud Galba would soon strip him of his command, or worse. As eager an opportunist as the world has ever known, Caecina determined that the only way he was escaping his predicament in one piece was to stoke the resentment of the men under his command and hopefully convince them that as the cream of the Roman legions, which everyone agreed they were, they deserved an emperor who showed them the proper respect. Caecina's motivation then in leading a revolution is clear. He was facing possible execution if Galba remained emperor.

Valens' motivation, though, is far less clear, and he seems to simply be an unscrupulous commander nearing the end of an undistinguished career who felt that he had been treated badly by the new emperor and saw a chance to pole-vault his way into power and relevancy. Perhaps it was simply a love of intrigue for intrigue's sake. However it happened, when the new year came around, both men were ready to throw off Galba's so recently saddled yoke.

On the first of January, the provincial legions renewed their solemn oaths to protect and defend the empire for the greater glory of the empire in whose name yada yada yada. This is supposed to be a mere formality, but at the prodding of Caecina, two legions on the upper Rhine refused to re-up their commitment. Despite the efforts of the few officers present who remained loyal to the emperor, the mutinous soldiers toppled statues of Galba brought in for the ceremony. Rather than swearing an oath to the emperor, the men swore allegiance to the senate and the people of Rome, and declared their intention to overthrow the usurper Galba, for the sake of, you know, liberty and stuff.

With this initial spark struck, things happened fast. Situated in what is today Cologne, Vitellius learned of the mutiny, but rather than immediately making preparations to put the clamp down on it, as would have been expected, he instead sent around word to his commanders that either they were going to have to march north and fight their comrades, or join in the mutiny themselves, and declare their own emperor to take Galba's place. Valens, who had no doubt spent the last few months whispering in Vitellius' ear, was the first commander to arrive in Cologne with his decision. He hailed Vitellius as Imperator, Vitellius accepted the salute, and just like that the revolt was off to the races. By the second or third of January, all the legions on the Rhine, probably the most formidable fighting force in the empire, had committed themselves to war with Galba.

Except that they never would get their war with Galba. Two weeks after Vitellius had been declared Imperator by his men, word came that Galba had been assassinated, and that Otho was the new emperor. But by this point, events along the Rhine had gone way beyond simple revenge. The commanders had the brass ring in their sights, and their men saw no downside in moving forward until the whole empire was theirs to gorge themselves on.

Life in a legionary camp along the Rhine river was no picnic. So when they learned that the man who had gotten them all fired up in the first place was dead, well, unless Otho planned to step aside in favor of Vitellius when they all arrived in Rome, the new emperor was in the same place as the old emperor, namely, in their way.

Back in Rome, Otho arrived at the palace following his coup, and began running through Galba's personal correspondence. Mostly boring stuff, taxes, petitions, favors, and hello, what's this? The Rhine legions are in full revolt, have declared Vitellius emperor, and are readying to march on Rome? Well, I think I know what I'm doing today.

Otho first attempted to reason with Vitellius, and the two engaged in an increasingly acrimonious correspondence that had both promising money, influence, and property, in exchange for the other abandoning his illegitimate claim to the throne. Neither backed down, and the negotiations, if they could even be described as such, went nowhere. Otho had the support of the Praetorian Guard and the Senate in Rome, and assurances from governors across the central and eastern empire that they backed him. But unfortunately, all of this amounted to very little when it came to countering an invasion from the north.

At his immediate disposal, Otho had the Praetorian cohorts, the remains of the legion Galba had decimated, and a collection of parade-ready soldiers used mostly for show. While he corresponded with Vitellius, Otho conscripted around 2,000 gladiators and gathered up an undefined number of cavalry, but nothing he had on hand would be able to stand a chance against what Vitellius was sending south. Otho's only hope lay in the Balkans, and he ordered the legions stationed there to pack up their winter camps and head forthwith to northern Italy. Otho was hoping to join with them and then march through the Alps to face down Vitellius before the latter could reach Italy, but by the middle of February, his intelligence reported that the Vitellian forces were already on the march.

While Vitellius stayed behind to oversee the now dangerously under-garrisoned border with Germania, Valens and Caecina each led separate columns south. Valens was to come in from the west and Caecina the east. Quickly, Otho abandoned the idea of marching through the Alps and determined that he would need to make his stand at the Po River. He ordered the forces at his disposal, maybe 10,000 troops, to march north to the Po Valley and delay the advancing battalions long enough for the Balkan reinforcements to arrive. At the same time, Otho sent a maritime force up the western coast of Italy to Gaul. The idea seems to have been for this navy to attack the local coastal communities aligned with Vitellius, hopefully forcing Valens, leading the larger of the two columns, to halt his march and come to their aid.

If this was in fact the plan, there is some debate about what exactly this maritime expedition was actually up to. They were moderately successful. They raised enough hell that Valens broke off an attachment from his column to defend the communities, and a brief battle was fought, the first of what was now officially a civil war near a place known as the Forum Julii. The Othonian forces won the initial encounter, but were driven back after a counterattack. The two sides then hunkered down in a mutual stalemate. This opening encounter of the war was inconclusive, but ultimately irrelevant, as it slowed Valens down little, and occurred outside of what would prove to be the main eastern theater of the war.

On that front, helped by a mild winter and a smaller force, Cassina was making much faster progress south. Though Cassina and Valens were technically on the same side, the two detested each other, and were engaged in a fierce, if unspoken competition to reach Italy first, defeat Otho first, and enter Rome first. The official plan was for them to cross the Alps at the same time and meet up on the other side, but Cassina paid no attention to this and plowed ahead, regardless of where Valens might be at. He emerged into northern Italy in March, and went to work securing everything north of the Po River.

A detachment of Otho's advance force already occupied the important city of Placentia on the southern banks of the Po, so Cassina took up residence in Cremona on the northern bank. Prudence dictated that Cassina hold Cremona and wait for Valens, but believing that his veterans would make short work of Otho's outnumbered and soft parade units, Cassina decided to immediately take Placentia by force. But in two days of intense fighting, Otho's forces successfully repelled the assault, forcing Cassina to abandon the attempt.

The rest of the advanced Othonian army had been accamped at Verona, awaiting the imminent arrival of the Balkan legions. Indeed, an advance force of about 2,000 had already arrived. But when they heard of the assault on Placentia, they rushed to relieve their comrades. But before they could arrive, Cassina had already been beaten off, so they set up camp at Bedreacum, about 30 miles east of Cremona on the north side of the river.

Humiliated by his defeat at Placentia, and hoping to regain the upper hand before Valens arrived, Cassina schemed up an ambush he hoped would help him do just that. Leading a small detachment of infantry and cavalry down the road between Cremona and Bedreacum, he hid the infantry in the trees alongside the road, and then sent out the cavalry to engage in one of the oldest military tricks in the book. Attack the enemy's camp, pretend to be driven off, and lead the pursuing force into a trap. Cassina expected this to be a morale booster more than anything else, but things quickly got out of hand. The Othonian forces had already learned of Cassina's plan by way of Vitellian deserters. So when Cassina's cavalry arrived, the Othonians marched out in full force, now somewhere north of 13,000 troops, to overwhelm the trap. Though Cassina was tricked into attacking what he soon discovered to be the entire opposing army, delays and hassles trying to properly form up the mostly rookie Othonian troops allowed Cassina to call in reinforcements and extract himself from the debacle.

By the time of the failed ambush, Valens had arrived on the Italian side of the Alps, though he was still a good 50 miles from the action. When word came of the events at Placentia and Cassina's failed ambush, his army double-timed it to meet up with their comrades. The forced march, though, interestingly, was not actually Valens' idea. His troops, believing Valens to be dragging his feet and slowing the column down on purpose, literally marched off without him, forcing him to hurry to catch up.

At this point, discipline in all of the armies was something of a joke. Prior to the ambush, a mutiny in the Othonian camp at Badriacum, triggered by the men's belief that their commanders were insufficiently committed to the war, was headed off only when Otho sent his own brother, whose commitment could not be questioned, to take on overall command. During the ambush, a mutiny had broken out among Cassina's troops back in Cremona because they believed that their commanders were refusing to send them out in full force to relieve their comrades because they wanted to hang Cassina out to dry. Valens, meanwhile, endured one mutiny on his march that required him to slip out of the camp in slaves' clothes, and then obviously a second one when his army disobeyed his orders and marched to Cassina's defense. Much is made of the notion that throughout the year of the four emperors, the common soldiers were running amok, and their commanders were simply trying to keep up. Much of this is probably overblown, but there is no denying that for this period of the war between Vitellius and Otho, the soldiers clearly did not trust their commanders, and for a while, the cart really did seem to be leading the horse.

In the middle of March, Otho himself finally left Rome at the head of another six to nine thousand troops. The emperor settled with his accompanying forces in the town of Bruxellum, about fifteen miles from Bedreacum, where he too waited for the Balkan reinforcements. Soon enough, the first of these legions arrived. But by the time they showed up, Cassina's assault on Placentia had failed, and his ambush exposed as a non-starter. The Othonian army was eager to finish off what they saw as a fatally demoralized army. Was there really any need to wait for the rest of the Balkan troops? Even the arrival of Valens was not enough to put them off. With the casualties Cassina had suffered trying to take Placentia, and the arrival of Otho's force and the new Balkan legion, the two sides were now of approximately equal strength.

By the middle of April, the ball was clearly in Otho's court about what the next move would be. The battalions, meanwhile, were holed up in Cremona, hoping that the inexperienced Otho, his five feuding generals, and their inexperienced legions, would make a crucial mistake that they could exploit.

Otho traveled to Bedreacum to hold a council of war, where the generals debated whether to attack now or wait for a more opportune moment. It seems, though, that the decision to attack at once had already been made, and that despite their valid arguments that it would be best to perhaps wait for the rest of the Balkan legions, those in favor of delay were seen as being overly timid and possibly working to undermine the Othonian effort. Delay, it was argued, meant losing the initiative and allowing Vitellius to send his own reinforcements. The only real open question was whether Otho would lead his army personally or return to the safety of Bruxellum. It was finally decided that the emperor would follow precedent and remove himself from the field. If things went badly and he was out of harm's way, he would still be a rallying point and able to direct a counterattack. But if things went badly and he was in the thick of the battle, well, the death of Otho meant the death of the whole operation, as he had no heir and had not yet named a successor.

The decision to fight itself was not the fatal mistake the Vitellians had been waiting for, but the way Otho's generals executed the decision most certainly was. Badriacum was only about thirty miles from Cremona, but it took the Othonians two full days to reach the city. The delay gave Otho fits, as he sent dispatch after dispatch demanding to know why in the hell they had not attacked yet. To make matters worse, on that second day, the Othonian generals, particularly Otho's brother, were not prepared for battle at all. Convinced that the Vitellians would remain sequestered in Cremona, he tried to lead the Othonian army around the city to a spot five miles past Cremona, where they would make camp and then finally, on day three, goad the Vitellians into attack. But when Valens and Kycena saw the Othonians sort of rambling towards them, with all their baggage and carts and equipment weighing them down, they figured that now was the perfect opportunity to attack. So they did just that.

Totally unprepared, the Othonians lined up in confused order, when the full Vitellian army suddenly appeared on the horizon. Both sides were able to set themselves, and initially, the battle was little more than a series of skirmishes. But then the two lines crashed into each other, and the armies got down to business. Though everyone comments that the untried Othonians fought far better than anyone could have expected, first their left flank, and then their right, were overrun. The Othonians broke and fled back to the safety of their camp at Pedreacum.

The survivors spent the night trying to figure out what to do next. The Praetorians present wanted to keep fighting, but everybody else was ready to surrender. A delegation was sent to meet with Kycena and Valens to work out the terms.

Otho received news of the defeat from survivors staggering into Brixellum that same evening. Though he still had reinforcements on the way, their loyalty was nominal at best. So despite the protests of the Praetorians surrounding him, Otho determined straight away that he had taken his one shot and missed. He could not in good conscience prolong a war that would only see more Roman blood spilled. He dispersed what money he had, encouraged his supporters to flee from the oncoming Vitellian wrath, and then went to bed, his mind firmly made up. If right now he was seen as a villain for having seized the throne violently, and then engaging in a war against his fellow countrymen, let future generations see him as a noble man who died to stop the slaughter.

On the morning of April 16th, he woke up early and stabbed himself in the heart. He was 36 years old and had ruled Rome, well, some of it anyway, for almost exactly 3 months.

Though his suicide did indeed endear him to future generations, who came to see Otho's noble death as one of the most virtuous in the whole long history of the empire, it would only stop the bloodshed for a short while. For many Romans, while Otho may have been a murderous usurper, Vitellius was a crass and unworthy man who would use the armies entrusted to him to engage in full-blown civil war without soliciting the senate or the people's approval. Vitellius may have been popular with his troops and supported by a few provincial governors in the west, but the rest of the empire was a different story. The backers of Otho were not simply ready to resign themselves to Vitellius. Rather, they cast about looking for a leader to rally behind, someone strong enough to dislodge the Rhine legions from their newly won place at the top of the food chain. Naturally, their eyes turned to the east.

Too far away to really take part in the events of the past year, the eastern legions, led by Titus Flavius Vespasianus, read about the unfolding chaos with dismay. When Vitellius, of all people, wound up on the throne, Vespasian decided to heed the calls coming in from his fellow eastern governors to bid for the throne himself. After all, had he not heard the prophecy that the future rulers of the world would emerge from Judea, embroiled in the great Jewish revolt in Judea, Vespasian had not only heard the prophecy, but he had come to believe it. Just a month and a half after his so-called decisive victory at Badreacum, Vitellius discovered that practically the entire eastern empire, including the crucial province of Egypt, had declared for Vespasian. Despite Otho's best efforts, the chaos and bloodshed of the year of the four emperors was far from over.