Publius Vitellius the Younger
commander under Germanicus and uncle of emperor Vitellius
Publius Vitellius was a first-century Roman commander under Germanicus. He was the son of the eques Publius Vitellius, and belonged to the gens Vitellia. The emperor Vitellius was his nephew.
Career
In AD 15, Vitellius accompanied Germanicus on his second campaign in Germania. During the retreat, Germanicus handed over command of the second and fourteenth legions to Vitellius. The journey back was disastrous, however, with many of the units' troops drowned in a flood. One year later, while Germanicus was preparing for his third and largest campaign in Germania, he sent Vitellius and Gaius Antius to Gaul to collect taxes. On Germanicus' suspicious death in the year 19, Vitellius was among the prosecutors of Gnaeus Calpurnius Piso, who was accused of having poisoned Germanicus, and who took his own life once he despaired of acquittal. Tacitus praises Vitellius' eloquence in the trial.
Vitellius was later among the supporters of Sejanus, and upon the latter's downfall in the year 31, Vitellius was also indicted for complicity, having been Sejanus' prefect of the military treasury.
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This entry incorporates text from “Publius Vitellius the Younger” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.