1In a city that interprets everything, it was taken as a deadly omen that Vitellius, having obtained the office of chief pontiff, had issued an edict about public ceremonies on the eighteenth of July, a day ill-omened from ancient times for the disasters of the Cremera and the Allia: so ignorant was he of all law human and divine, and, with his freedmen and friends equally careless, he behaved as if among drunkards. 1But in holding the consular elections together with the candidates, like an ordinary citizen, he courted every breath of favour from the lowest of the common people, in the theatre as a spectator, in the circus as a supporter: things that would certainly have been welcome and popular if they had sprung from virtues, but which, in the memory of his former life, were taken as unbecoming and cheap.
1He came frequently to the senate, even when the fathers were being consulted on small matters. 1And it happened that Helvidius Priscus, praetor-elect, had voted against his wishes. 1Vitellius was disturbed at first, yet went no further than calling on the tribunes of the plebs to support his slighted authority; 1soon, when his friends, who feared his deeper anger, were soothing him, he replied that nothing new had happened in two senators disagreeing on public affairs; 1he himself, he said, had often spoken against even Thrasea. 1Most laughed at the impudence of the comparison; 1others were pleased by the very fact that he had chosen none of the all-powerful, but Thrasea, as his model of true glory.