Vespasian
The avarice with which both Tacitus and Suetonius stigmatize Vespasian seems really to have been an enlightened economy, which, in the disordered state of the Roman finances, was unnecessarily exaggerated.
Vespasian could be liberal to impoverished Senators and equestrians, to cities and towns desolated by natural calamity, and especially to men of letters and
rhetors, several of whom he pensioned with salaries of as much as 1,000 gold pieces a year.
Quintilian is said to have been the first public teacher who enjoyed this Imperial favor.
Pliny the Elder's great work, the
Natural History, was written during Vespasian's reign, and dedicated to Vespasian's son Titus. Some of the philosophers who talked idly of the good old times of the
Republic, and thus indirectly encouraged conspiracy, provoked him into reviving the obsolete penal laws against this profession, but only one,
Helvidius Priscus, was put to death, and he had affronted the Emperor by studied insults. "I will not kill a dog that barks at me," were words honestly expressing the temper of Vespasian. Vespasian was indeed noted for mildness and a healthy sense of
justice. For example, he helped his late adversary Vitellius' daughter find a suitable husband and even provided her with the
dowry. Much money was spent on public works and the restoration and beautifying of Rome: a new forum, the splendid Temple of Peace, the public baths and the vast
Colosseum.
To the last, Vespasian was a plain, blunt soldier, with a demonstrated strength of character and ability, and with a steady purpose to establish good order and secure the prosperity and welfare of his subjects. In his habits he was punctual and regular, transacting his business early in the morning, and enjoying a
siesta in the afternoon.
He did not quite have the distinguished bearing looked for in an emperor. He was free in his conversation, and his humour, of which he had a good deal, was apt to take the form of rather coarse jokes. He could jest even in his last moments:
Vae puto, deus fio - "Alas, I think I'm becoming a god," he allegedly whispered to those around him. There is something very characteristic in the exclamation he is said to have uttered in his last illness, "An emperor ought to die standing."
Vespasian ultimately did much good for Rome, and ranks somewhere with its greatest emperors, among
Augustus,
Trajan,
Septimus Severus, and
Constantine the Great.
*
Marcus Didius Falco novels
*
Suetonius,
Lives of the Twelve Caesars*
Tacitus,
Histories*
Dio Cassius,
Roman History*Barbara Levick,
Vespasian (Roman Imperial Biographies), Routledge, 1999. ISBN 0415166187 (hbk). ISBN 0415338662 (pbk, 2005)
*
Life of Vespasian (Suetonius; English translation and Latin original)
*Biography on
De Impertoribus Romanis.
This entry was based on the entry from the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica.
