Reign as emperor of Vespasian

On December 21 Vespasian’s position was officially confirmed by the Senate, but he remained quite frank about the military origin of his rule. He dated his powers to July 1, when the troops had acclaimed him, thus flouting constitutional precedent and contradicting even the behaviour of his rival Vitellius, who had awaited confirmation by the Senate. Later Vespasian received by law a number of powers for which his Julio-Claudian predecessors had not sought explicit sanction. Whether similar grants had been made to Galba, Otho, and Vitellius or were to be made to Vespasian’s successors is not known; but a fragment of the enabling law survives, and it includes a provision that can be said to confer on him a naked autocracy. More important to him than any legal enactment, however, was the recognition of his extralegal authority (auctoritas) and the prestige of his upstart house. He carefully publicized the divine omens that portended his accession and also built up the titles surrounding his name. He held the consulate, for brief periods on each occasion, every year of his reign except two; and he gave frequent consulates to his two sons, Titus and Domitian. He accumulated “salutations” as imperator from his armies and allowed Titus to share them with him. Throughout his reign he was insistent that his sons would succeed him, one after the other (Titus having no male issue); and it was probably over hereditary succession that he quarrelled with certain doctrinaire senators such as Helvidius Priscus, who was executed about 76. But Helvidius and his friends had already expressed general misgivings about Vespasian’s government in the early months of 70.

About October 70 Vespasian returned to Rome from Alexandria. While in Egypt he had been concerned with raising money; and his exactions, coupled with sales of imperial estates to speculators, caused great discontent among the Egyptians. He now announced that about three times the revenue of the empire was needed to put the state to rights, and both before and after his return he promoted his financial program. He increased, and sometimes doubled, provincial taxation and revoked immunities granted to various Greek-speaking provinces and cities. He reclaimed public land in Italy from squatters and instituted various new taxes, including the diversion to Rome’s treasury of the tax paid by Jews of the Diaspora to the Temple at Jerusalem. Such measures were essential after the deficit incurred by Nero and the devastations of the civil wars, but contemporaries inevitably continued to charge Vespasian with “avarice.” Such a charge, however, was irrelevant to any emperor of the year 70.

The sum raised by Vespasian for public funds cannot be determined. But he was able to build his Forum and the Temple of Peace, to begin the Colosseum over the foundations of Nero’s “Golden House,” and above all to restore the capitol. His biographer Suetonius claims that throughout Vespasian’s reign his firm policy was “first to restore stability to the tottering state, and then to adorn it.” But, despite his buildings and his generosity to needy friends, he probably bequeathed a substantial surplus of public money to his successors.

It was in the same spirit of stabilization that he turned to military affairs. The first task was to restore discipline to the armies after the events of 68–69. Before Vespasian’s return Mucianus reduced the Praetorian Guard, greatly enlarged by Vitellius, to approximately its former size; and the legions on the frontiers were soon regrouped to remove from dangerous positions those that had fought for Vitellius. Important changes were made in the East, where Vespasian replaced the single army (which until Nero’s time had only four legions) in Syria with three armies, with a total of six legions, in Cappadocia, Syria, and Judaea. Titus effectively ended the Jewish war with the capture of Jerusalem in August 70, and about the same time an alarming revolt in the Rhineland was broken by Vespasian’s cousin Petilius Cerealis. The way was now open for the improvement of certain frontiers. In southern Germany annexation of a territory called Agri Decumates cut off the reentrant angle formed by the Rhine at Basel. In Britain more important advances were made; the kingdom of Brigantia in northern England was incorporated in the province, the pacification of Wales was completed, and in 78 the general Gnaeus Agricola began the seven years’ governorship that was to lead Roman arms into the Scottish Highlands.

Vespasian had some difficulty with his sons at the beginning of his reign. Domitian had been overbearing and irresponsible in the months before his father’s return and was kept firmly in a junior position during the remaining years. With Titus there was cause for alarm when his troops, after his victory in Judaea, asked him to take them to Italy; but he returned alone. Although Titus was not allowed an independent triumph, he became virtually a partner in Vespasian’s rule, not only accumulating consulates and imperatorial salutations with his father but also being given command of the Praetorian Guard.

In 73 Vespasian and Titus became censors. In this office, although little is known about the details, they probably carried out extensive reorganization of the provincial communities, including some of the taxation reforms mentioned earlier. They bestowed Latin rights on all Spain, which meant that all city magistrates obtained Roman citizenship, with consequent profit to the imperial treasury; and no doubt Roman citizenship was granted liberally elsewhere. In addition they recruited many new members, provincial as well as Italian, to the Roman Senate.

With the Senate, despite the discords of the early months, Vespasian succeeded in maintaining friendly relations. To the historian Tacitus, who was embarking on his senatorial career in Vespasian’s last years, he was “the only emperor who had changed for the better.” With opponents he considered dangerous or irreconcilable, he could be ruthless: with Helvidius Priscus may be associated a group of “philosophers” who were expelled from Italy; and in 78 he executed Eprius Marcellus, one of his earliest and most efficient supporters, accused of a conspiracy that may have been directed at Titus’s association with the Jewish princess Berenice. But he showed good-natured tolerance of offensiveness that could do no harm.

Personal characteristics

Matching the rugged and uncompromising features that are familiar from his portrait busts, Vespasian cultivated a bluff and even coarse manner, characteristic of the humble origins he liked to recall. This was popular, as also were his great capacity for hard work and the simplicity of his daily life, which was taken as a model by the contemporary aristocracy. At the same time he was astute and ambitious; he built up a powerful party quickly at the outset, and many of his initial appointments were dictated by nepotism or the desire to reward past services. The policies of his reign, though sensible, reveal no great imaginativeness, compared with those of such later emperors as Trajan or Hadrian. Yet it was justly believed by contemporaries that Vespasian had prevented the dissolution of the empire by putting an end to civil war, and it was fitting that pax (“civil peace”) should be a principle motif on his coinage. In his last illness he said, “Vae, puto deus fio” (“Oh dear, I think I’m becoming a god”); and after his death he was immediately accorded deification.

He had married one Flavia Domitilla, who bore his sons Titus and Domitian and a daughter, Flavia Domitilla (later deified). Both his wife and daughter died before he became emperor. He then returned to an earlier mistress, called Caenis, who had been a freedwoman of Antonia, sister-in-law to the emperor Tiberius; she too died before he did.