Marcus Antonius Primus

Marcus Antonius Primus hailed from Tolosa in Gallia Narbonensis, a provincial background that gave him a pungent blend of ambition and frontier pragmatism. Early promise soured under Nero when he was condemned for forgery—an offense that expelled him from the Senate and stained his honor. The fall taught him speed and audacity. When Galba came to power in 68, Primus was restored and soon found himself in Pannonia with Legio VII, a formation Galba had raised in Spain and transferred north. The legion’s rough vigor suited its new commander: both were eager to prove themselves against Rome’s entrenched elites.

The crisis of 69 handed Primus his chance. As Vespasian was acclaimed in Judaea and Alexandria and Mucianus organized the eastern provinces, Primus moved first in the Balkans. He helped push the Danubian legions—VII, XIII Gemina, and cohorts from Pannonia and Moesia—into Vespasian’s column, then led a lightning march into northern Italy. In October, near Cremona, he fought the Second Battle of Bedriacum. The night fighting was savage along the Via Postumia; Primus’s men broke the Vitellian line, then sacked Cremona, an orgy of plunder that shamed even victors. With momentum, he drove on Rome. December street battles saw the Capitol contested, and in the chaos the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus burned, a cultural wound inflicted as Flavian soldiers, Primus’s among them, clawed through Vitellian resistance. By 20 December, Vitellius was captured and executed; the city belonged to the Flavians.

Primus’s strengths—decisiveness, charisma in camp, and a taste for risk—were inseparable from his faults. He did not wait for Mucianus’s slower, tidier approach; he forced events with steel and fire. The sack of Cremona and the Capitol’s destruction stained his laurels, and ancient critics accused him of letting plunder and personal glory outrun discipline. Yet his soldiers adored him, and his opponents feared the speed with which he turned marching columns into killing fronts.

His legacy is the sharp edge of the Flavian solution. Without Primus, Vespasian’s coalition might have remained a plan on papyrus while Vitellius regrouped. With him, the Danube became a battering ram. He proved that in the Year of the Four Emperors, the decisive currency was not only acclamation but action—the willingness to race for Rome and make senatorial decrees follow victory. After Mucianus arrived in early 70, Primus faded from prominence, his usefulness spent and his methods politically inconvenient. Still, when the question was who could master soldiers, grain, and law fast enough, Primus provided the soldiers—and gave law a fait accompli to recognize.