The
cavalry rode into the mob and scattered them. But the Vitellian troops
faced the enemy, themselves, too, in three separate divisions. Again
and again they engaged before the walls with varying success. But the
Flavians had the advantage of being well led and thus more often won
success. Only one of the attacking parties suffered at all severely,
that which had made its way along narrow, greasy lanes to Sallust's
Gardens[219] on the left side of the city. Standing on the garden
walls, the Vitellians hurled stones and javelins down upon them and
held them back until late in the day. But at last the cavalry forced
an entrance by the Colline Gate and took the defenders in the rear.
Then the opposing forces met on the Martian Plain itself. Fortune
favoured the Flavians and the sense of victories won. The Vitellians
charged in sheer despair, but, though driven back, they gathered again
in the city.
The people came and watched the fighting, cheering and applauding 83
now one side, now the other, like spectators at a gladiatorial
contest. Whenever one side gave ground, and the soldiers began to hide
in shops or seek refuge in some private house, they clamoured for them
to be dragged out and killed, and thus got the greater part of the
plunder for themselves: for while the soldiers were busy with the
bloody work of massacre, the spoil fell to the crowd. The scene
throughout the city was hideous and terrible: on the one side fighting
and wounded men, on the other baths and restaurants: here lay heaps of
bleeding dead, and close at hand were harlots and their
companions--all the vice and licence of luxurious peace, and all the
crime and horror of a captured town.
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