1While Vitellius was addressing an assembly, Asiaticus, Flavus and Rufinus, leaders in the Gallic provinces, are demanded for execution, because they had fought for Vindex. 1Nor did Vitellius check cries of this kind: besides the cowardice ingrained in his mind, aware that a donative was due and money was lacking, he lavished everything else on the soldiers. 1The freedmen of the emperors were ordered to contribute, as a tax, according to the number of their slaves: he himself, caring only for squandering, built stables for charioteers, filled the circus with shows of gladiators and wild beasts, and made sport as if in the greatest abundance of money.
Lectitō › Tacitus › Histories, Book 2
Tacitus · Historiae II
Histories 2.99
Vitellius squanders the treasury
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Tacitus, Historiae II. Latin text: C. D. Fisher, Cornelii Taciti Historiarum Libri (Oxford, 1911), public domain; digital text from the Perseus Digital Library, CC BY-SA. Word analysis: drafted by our own tagger (trained on the hand-checked texts on this site), with every doubtful word checked by hand. English translation and section titles: written for this app, each checked against the Latin by a second reader.