The bloodshed and rapine were carried into the city of Rome itself. When he saw that his case was hopeless, the ignoble, indolent Vitellius wished to abdicate; but this neither his soldiers nor the people would allow him to do. Flavius Sabinus was prefect of the city, and he, with the soldiers of the Vespasian party, took refuge in the Capitol. There were women who voluntarily took their places with these besieged men. Among them was Verulana Gratilla, who, having neither children nor relatives, followed the fortunes of the war for no other apparent reason than the pleasure she derived from scenes of carnage. In this conflict the Capitol was fired and the temple of the Empire reduced to ashes. Yet, while all these things were occurring, the common people of Rome, indifferent as to whether they were ruled by Vitellius or Vespasian, looked on as if they were at a gladiatorial show. It was to them nothing more than a spectacle, except that it was also an occasion for absolute lawlessness and an incitement to frenzied indulgence in everything vicious. So brutalized were the people that, while in some parts of the great city the streets were filled with heaps of slain, in other parts, to which the conflict did not extend, there prevailed revelry of the most frantic kind, in which shameless women took a leading part. The legions of Vespasian conquered; and with his enthronement Rome returned to peace and sanity. The enormities in which she had indulged since the reign of Augustus were for the time expiated. In the Flavians, a new and healthy dynasty came to the throne of the Cæsars, though not later than the third reign, that of Domitian, it also was to succumb to the effects of the possession of unbounded power. Vespasian had come from an obscure family living at Reate in the Sabine country. His father had collected the revenue in the province of Asia, where his statue had been erected with the inscription: _The Honest Tax Collector_. His mother, whose name was Vespasia Polla, was descended from a good Umbrian family. Tertulla, his grandmother by his father's side, had charge of his education, and her memory was always held by him in the highest regard; much more than appears is suggested in the remark of Suetonius that, after his advancement to the Empire, Vespasian loved to visit the place where he spent his childhood. The house and all the surroundings were kept exactly in the same condition, so that amid unchanged scenes he might live over again his boyhood days. It was a simple country house, with no pretension to the splendor in which the great mansions of the city vied with each other; yet it was artistic.