What will be Middle Eastern historians’ judgment of Saddam’s regime and its enforced collapse? Is there a Tacitus among them?
In his Histories, Tacitus describes the traumatic ‘Year of the Four Emperors’ (ad 69) that followed the death of Nero, a year when general after general attempted to seize power by force, and the Roman world seemed to fall apart. There is an especially dramatic description of the fall of the third brief tenant of the imperial throne, Vitellius – an end which may yet mirror Saddam’s.
When Rome was captured by the troops of his successor, Vespasian, Vitellius was taken by chair through the back of the palace to his wife’s house. His aim was to lie low and get away by night to his brother’s home, 60 miles to the south in Tarracina. But unable, in his terror, to make a final decision, Vitellius returned to his ‘vast, deserted palace.
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