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

The year of four emperors

The end of Nero
Deserted by his imperial guard, Nero had clumsily attempted suicide. His secretary had finished off the job, ridding the world of a cruel, murderous tyrant and bringing to an end the family dynasty that had controlled Rome since Augustus almost a century earlier.

Everywhere the empire was in disarray. As Vespasian was fighting his campaign against the Jewish rebels, the governors of Gaul and Spain had led rebellions against the emperor; in Britain, the Brigantes had risen against their colonial masters; and in the Balkans, fierce Dacians had crossed the Danube. All this had sapped the coffers of Rome. As imperial troops turned towards their capital, Germans and Gauls attacked them. The autonomy of Rome was in question.

Galba, Otho and Vitellius
Competition for control of the beleaguered empire was fierce. The struggle was initially won by the 70-year-old governor of Spain, Servius Sulpicius Galba, who was installed as emperor in October 68. But even as he entered Rome, the rules were changing. The Roman historian Tacitus wrote: 'The secret of empire was now disclosed, that an emperor could be made elsewhere than in Rome.'

The job of emperor was soon up for grabs, despite the efforts of the new incumbent Galba. It would have been of little comfort to him to know that this, supposedly the first year of his reign, would be remembered for ever as 'The year of four emperors'.

On 15 January, in the Forum, he was dragged from his litter and stabbed to death by troops loyal to Nero's friend (and possible lover) Otho. Proclaiming himself emperor, Otho managed to survive in the job for three months. The Roman army in Germany advanced towards Rome, and in the name of Vitellius, a notorious debaucher and glutton, they met Otho's forces at Cremona on 14 April. They won.

Otho fell on his sword and it was the turn of Vitellius to be emperor – the third that year ... and it wasn't over yet. Tacitus described it as 'nearly Rome's last'.

Emperor Vespasian
The shock waves following Nero's death had spread to the distant outposts of empire and then had begun to return inexorably towards Rome.

Furthest from the capital were the armies involved with rebellion in the east. The troops fighting to subdue the Jews in Judaea picked their own imperator. Their man was not an aristocrat. He had no family connections to high office, and he had not been born in Rome. But he was a man with wide experience, both civil and military, from all the corners of the empire. A new man, practical and hard headed.

The ripples returning to Rome bore with them the agents of his move for power: his own general, Mucianus, with troops from Syria; the armies of the Danube under Primus and Fuscus; and his son Domitian with his own force from Judaea. They all bore down on Vitellius's troops, and once again at Cremona, the Roman incumbent was defeated.

But the contender himself, in a masterstroke, had moved to Alexandria and taken control of Rome's vital grain supply. His other son Titus held Judaea. The power struggle was over. As the forces from the Danube and Judaea, commanded by the ambitious Domitian, entered Rome on 20 December 69, the boy from the hills became emperor.

It would be almost a year before Vespasian would arrive in Rome in person. New laws, drafted by him, gave him full powers backdated to the day of his victory. In conferring on himself the right to act in all things divine, human, public and private, he rolled all of the powers created by Augustus, Tiberius and Claudius into one.

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