The gens Vitellia was a family of ancient Rome, which rose from obscurity in imperial times, and briefly held the Empire itself in AD 69.
According to the first account, the family was descended from Faunus, King of the Aborigines, and Vitellia, who ruled over Latium in the distant past, and were later regarded as two of the indigenous deities.
[3] A less flattering story reports that the emperor's family was descended from a freedman, a cobbler according to Cassius Severus.
His son was a delator, who earned his fortune selling confiscated property, and married a wanton woman, the daughter of a baker named Antiochus.
[4] Suetonius offers no opinion on which of these accounts is true, other than to say that Publius Vitellius of Nuceria, the emperor's grandfather, was indeed an eques, that he was entrusted with administering the property of Augustus, and that he left four sons, who all made names for themselves in the Roman aristocracy.