Ancient History Sourcebook:
Suetonius: Life of Vitellius, chap. 13
The Emperor Vitellius, who had a very brief and insignificant reign (69 A. D.),
was mainly distinguished for his gormandizing and gluttony. How he enjoyed himself during
his short lease of power is told by Suetonius. Probably there were a good many in Rome who
would have imitated him, if given a similar opportunity.
Suetonius (c.69-after 122 CE): Life of Vitellius (b. 15 -
r. 69 -d.69 CE)
Chap. 13: The Gormandizing of the Emperor Vitellius.
Vitellius always made three meals per day, sometimes four: breakfast, dinner and supper
and a drunken revel after all. This load of victuals he could bear well enough, from a
custom to which he had enured himself of frequently vomiting For these several meals he
would make different appointments at the houses of his friends on the same day. None ever
entertained him at a less expense than 400,0000 [Arkenberg: about $570,000,000 in 1998
dollars]. The most famous was a set entertainment given him by his brother, at which were
served up no less than two thousand choice fishes, and seven thousand birds. Yet even this
supper he himself outdid at a feast which he gave upon the first use of a dish which had
been made for him, and which from its extraordinary size he called "The Shield of
Minerva." In this dish were tossed together the livers of charfish, the brains of
pheasants and peacocks, with the tongues of flamingoes and the entrails of lampreys, which
had been brought in ships of war as far as from the Carpathian Sea [between Crete and
Rhodes] and the Spanish Straits. He was not only a man of insatiable appetite, but he
would gratify it at unseasonable times, and with any garbage that came his way. Thus at a
sacrifice he would snatch from the fire the flesh and cakes and eat them on the spot. When
he traveled, he did the same at inns upon the road, whether the meat was fresh dressed and
hot, or whether it had been left from the day before and was half eaten.
From: William Stearns Davis, ed., Readings in Ancient History: Illustrative Extracts
from the Sources, 2 Vols. (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1912-13), Vol. II: Rome and the
West, pp. ??
Scanned by: J. S. Arkenberg, Dept. of History, Cal. State Fullerton. Prof. Arkenberg
has modernized the text.
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© Paul Halsall, June 1998