Finally he entered the city to the sound of the trumpet, wearing a general’s mantle and a sword at his side, amid standards and banners, with his staff in military cloaks and his troops with drawn swords. Then showing greater and greater disregard for the laws of gods and men, he assumed the office of high priest on the day of Allia,* held elections for ten years to come, and made himself consul for life. And to leave no doubt in anyone’s mind what model he chose for the government of the State, he made funerary offerings to Nero in the middle of the Campus Martius, attended by a great throng of the official priests; and when at the accompanying banquet a flute-player was received with applause, he openly urged him “to render something from the Master’s Book® as well”; and when he began the songs of Nero, Vitellius was the first to applaud him and even jumped for joy.
The Greek stands ready in the workroom; the English is served. Both faces will read together.
Vitellius, Suetonius — translated by J. C. Rolfe, 1913
Apparatus shelf — Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars (J. C. Rolfe translation; Dover republication) · J. C. Rolfe, 1913 (preface dated Philadelphia, April 1913); Dover Publications republication, 2018
license: public-domain (US: the served text is Rolfe's 1913 translation, pre-1930 — verified from the scan's own copyright and preface pages; Dover-era apparatus [2018 arrangement, introductions, endnotes, index, the Lives of Illustrious Men part] is not extracted and not served)