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118 forced upon him by the tribunes and centurions at Cologne.

It is pleasant to encounter virtuous women in the annuals of a period soiled by the names of a Poppæa, a Messalina, and an Agrippina; we have therefore given a passing notice of the wife and mother of Vitellius. Of himself there is nothing more to be said on the score of virtue. "Tacitus," says Gibbon, "fairly calls him a hog," and in truth he was a most valiant trencherman. As soon as, perhaps even before, his arrangements were completed for despatching his legions from the Rhine to the Tiber, he appears to have thought that the highest privilege he had attained by his sudden promotion was that of keeping the most expensive table ever known in Roman annals. But Vitellius allowed not a day to pass unsignalised by the pomp and circumstance of his dinner. During his whole progress from Cologne to Italy—it was necessarily a slow one, since he needed many hours for refreshment and digestion—the lands through which he passed were ransacked, the rivers and the seas were swept, for delicacies for his table. "The leading men of the various States were ruined by having to furnish his entertainments, and the States themselves reduced to beggary." Such a commander could neither be respected nor enforce discipline. The Gauls suffered severely, but not so much as Italy, from the presence of the Vitellians. The evils of war are terrible, but not so terrible, says the historian, as was the march of the German legions. The soldiers, dispersed through the municipal towns and colonies, were robbing and plundering and polluting every place with violence and lust. Everything,