Introduction | Early years | Climbing the greasy pole
Military commander | Desperate straits | The Judaean adventure
The year of the four emperors | The new dynasty | Find out more

Early years

	Coin depicting Emperor Vespasian Ancient Art and Architecture Collection Enlarge Image

Boyhood
Titus Flavius Vespasianus – who became known to history as Vespasian – was born in AD 9 in Reate, a quiet little town in the folds of the Sabine hills, 60 miles from Rome. Reate's claim to fame was, and still is, as a centre for mule breeding. Vespasian would become known as 'The Muleteer' – a label of which he was rather proud.

On his mother's side, he was fairly respectable, part of the local gentry. But his father's family had distinctly peasant origins. Some said that his grandfather had been a centurion, but he was really probably only a common soldier. His father had worked in the tax collecting system but not at the top level, and then went into money-lending in Switzerland and made a bit of money.

Vespasian's father died when the boy was just 10. It was his ambitious mother who made sure he got the education and grooming that, with luck and money, might one day result in election to the Senate.

Roman society
Rome was a strictly stratified society. Below the senatorial class were the equites (equestrians): land owning, loyal and, at that time, the backbone of the growing civil service. Below them were the plebeians, the greatest mass of Roman freeborn citizens (the 'common people') with little or no political sway and, thanks to the slavery system, little useful to do.

Below them were the freedmen, a much more variegated level of society. Having been brought to Rome in bondage, they were often skilled men or intellectuals, the best of their kind. Once they had achieved freedom from bondage, they could quickly rise to positions of influence as secretaries or teachers, eventually aspiring to top jobs in the civil service.

And finally there were the slaves themselves, the underclass whose very existence rendered much of the middle class idle.

Military training

Roman, let your concern be to command the nations; your skills shall be these: to impose the rule of peace, to spare the submissive and to crush the proud.
Virgil

At the age of 18, Vespasian got his first taste of the army and of colonial rule when he began his military service. His posting was to Thrace, the land that is today shared by northern Greece, western Turkey and southern Bulgaria. It was as troublesome a region then as it is now.

The Roman military tradition, inherited from the republic, had originated from senators' fears that one of their number might upstage the others. Commands were given only for the duration of an emergency or a specific campaign, and it was forbidden to bring soldiers on to home ground – that is, to do as Julius Caesar did and cross the Rubicon. The principal ingredients of rebellion were seen as ambitious senators and discontented soldiers.

So Italy was demilitarised, the army was scattered around the frontiers and the legions were progressively reduced. There was no military academy or professional officer corps. There was no continuity above the level of sergeant major. The career ladder was arranged so that military posts and governorships were short term. As a result, generals would not have time to build reputations, officers to establish close relationships with their men or governors to develop a strong identity with their provinces.

No one could have dreamed that a system based almost entirely on suspicion would endure for centuries. But it did.

Military training – three years for Vespasian – was a vital start to a senatorial career. An understanding of how the Senate (or the emperor) controlled the army and how the army controlled the provinces led to an understanding of just how the imperial system worked. To the Romans, the army equalled peace equalled prosperity equalled taxation ... equalled the army.

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