Tacitus will know, without my telling him, how Flavius Sabinus and the Consul elect Atticus surrendered and were led in chains before Vitellius. He may deem their surrender inglorious, believing that a soldier should die sword in hand. That is often the view of men who have studied war at a distance and have little experience of battle themselves. In any case I believe that Flavius Sabinus yielded when he saw that the few troops that remained with him were sentenced to death if he did not do so. It is said that Vitellius would have spared his life, if he had been brave enough to do so. But the mob, composed partly of legionaries, partly of auxiliaries, partly of citizens – Senators among them – and partly of the most degraded rabble, howled for more blood; and Vitellius dared not deny them. So died a man for whom I had great respect, a man who had served Rome in more than thirty campaigns, and who throughout this terrible year had alone among men of distinction sought peace, preferring diplomacy and negotiation to war. Had he succeeded, Rome would not have suffered the disgrace of seeing the Capitol in flames, and the lives of many men, some worthy, would have been spared.
Domitian did not share my regard for his uncle. In later years I have heard him say that if his advice had been followed Vitellius would never have gone free after signing his act of abdication; and that the battle on the Capitol, from which he had by his own account escaped only with difficulty, meeting great danger with audacity and ingenuity, was the consequence of his uncle's cowardice and unpardonable folly. Actually Domitian's escape, unlike my own, was ignominious. Yet, though I had fought my way out, and might be judged to have had nothing with which to reproach myself, I experienced shame, like a stabbing knife, when I learned of what had befallen Flavius Sabinus. I felt like a deserter.
And indeed for three days following, I skulked like a deserter in Sybilla's bed while, as in nightmare, I heard the mob surging through the city, seeking out those they judged disloyal to Vitellius, and slaying them indiscriminately. There was no reason in their madness. Had they been capable of reflection they must have judged that Vitellius could not remain Emperor above a week. It was as if with the burning of the Temple of Jupiter, Rome was deprived of reason, virtue, and whatever separates civilised man from barbarism. The she-wolfs children had made themselves into wolves.
On the third day, my mother, disdaining to keep the house as I had instructed her, was assaulted by a German auxiliary, dragged to the river-bank, and raped. Domitian had not dared to leave the house to act as her guard. She returned to the apartment, said nothing either to him or to his sister, retired to her chamber, wrote with unwavering hand a letter informing me of what had happened, and cut her wrists. Domatilla found her lying on blood-soaked sheets, her face calm as the Goddess Minerva to whom Domitian pretended such devotion. I can say nothing of this to Tacitus.
Nor to the boy Balthus, though I have formed the habit of reading the chapters I send to Tacitus to him. He hears them as one might hear stories from the Underworld.
'I am no longer surprised, master,' he said to me yesterday, 'that you choose now to live so far from Rome. However desolate you find these regions, they must seem as paradise compared to the inferno of that accursed city. Do you Romans not know the meaning of peace?'
'Peace?' I said. 'My dear boy, we make a desert, and that is peace. It is all the peace we ever achieve. Yet there were afternoons, by the seaside…' I paused, and shook my head.
'Come,' I said, 'let us take the hounds and hunt hares in the hill pastures.'