A rumour of his abdication had preceded him, and Flavius Sabinus 69 had sent written instructions to the Guards’[183] officers to keep the men in hand.  Thus the whole empire seemed to have fallen into Vespasian’s lap.  The chief senators, the majority of the knights, and the whole of the city garrison and the police came flocking to the house of Flavius Sabinus.  There they heard the news of the popular enthusiasm for Vitellius and the threatening attitude of the German Guards.[184] But Sabinus had gone too far to draw back, and when he showed hesitation, they all began to urge him to fight, each being afraid for his own safety if the Vitellians were to fall on them when they were disunited and consequently weaker.  However, as so often happens on these occasions, every one offered to give advice but few to share the danger.  While Sabinus’ Body Guard were marching down by the Fundane reservoir[185] they were attacked by some of the most determined Vitellians.  The surprise was unpremeditated, but the Vitellians got the best of an unimportant skirmish.  In the panic Sabinus chose what was at the moment the safest course, and occupied the summit of the Capitol,[186] where his troops were joined by a few senators and knights.  It is not easy to record their names, since after Vespasian’s victory crowds of people claimed credit for this service to the party.  There were even some women who endured the siege, the most famous of them being Verulana Gratilla, who had neither children nor relatives to attract her, but only her love of danger.[187]

The Vitellians, who were investing them, kept a half-hearted watch, and Sabinus was thus enabled to send for his own children and his nephew Domitian at dead of night, dispatching a courier by an unguarded route to tell the Flavian generals that he and his men were under siege, and would be in great straits unless they were rescued.  All night, indeed, he was quite unmolested, and could have escaped with perfect safety.  The Vitellian troops could face danger with spirit, but were much too careless in the task of keeping guard; besides which a sudden storm of chilly rain interfered with their sight and hearing.

At daybreak, before the two sides commenced hostilities, Sabinus 70 sent Cornelius Martialis, who had been a senior centurion, to Vitellius with instructions to complain that the conditions were being violated; that he had evidently made a mere empty show of abdication, meant to deceive a number of eminent gentlemen.  Else why had he gone from the meeting to his brother’s house, which caught the eye from a conspicuous position overlooking the Forum, and not rather to his wife’s on the Aventine.  That was the proper course for a private citizen, anxious to avoid all pretension to supreme authority.  But no, Vitellius had returned to the palace, the very stronghold of imperial majesty.  From there he had launched a column of armed men, who had strewn with innocent dead the most crowded quarter