virgins to Cerialis as envoys.

[Sidenote:--19--] Since no one would listen to them and they came very
near losing their lives, the emissaries visited Primus, who was also at
last approaching; from him they secured an audience, but accomplished
nothing. For at this juncture his soldiers came angrily toward him and
overcame with ease the guard at the Tiber bridge. (When the latter took
their stand upon it and disputed their passage, the horsemen forded the
stream and fell upon them from the rear). After this various bodies of men
made assaults at various points and committed some of the most atrocious
deeds. All the behavior for which they censured Vitellius and his
followers, behavior which they pretended was the cause of the war between
them, they themselves repeated, slaying great numbers. Many of those
killed were struck with pieces of tiling from the roof or cut down in
alleyways while jostled about by a throng of adversaries. Thus as many as
fifty thousand human beings were destroyed during those days of carnage.

[Sidenote:--20--] So the city was being pillaged, and the men were some
fighting, some fleeing, some actually plundering and murdering by
themselves in order that they might be taken for the invaders and so
preserve their lives. Vitellius in dread put on a ragged, dirty, little
tunic and concealed himself in an obscure alcove where dogs were kept,
intending to run off during the night to Tarracina and join his brother.
But the soldiers found him after a short search, for he could not long be
sure of remaining hid, seeing that he had been emperor. They seized him, a
mass of shavings and blood--for the dogs had done him some harm
already--and stripping off his clothes they bound his hands behind his
back, put a rope around his neck and dragged from the palace the Caesar
who had reveled there. Down the Sacred Way they hauled the emperor who had
frequently paraded past in his chair of state. Then they conducted the