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 new dynasty

	Reconstructed Roman fortifications surrounding fortress of Masada Werner Forman Archive Enlarge Image

Triumph
When Vespasian finally arrived in Rome in the autumn of AD 70, Domitian stood aside. All over the empire there were fences to mend, especially on the Rhine and in Gaul. The army was fractured, demoralised and, in many quarters, still rebellious. But Vespasian's presence in the capital had an immediate effect. Patiently he began to restore order.

Titus, meanwhile, under his father's instructions, was overseeing the final reduction of Judaea, a campaign he pursued with great ruthlessness. Following a siege lasting 139 days, Jerusalem fell. Titus took everything. He violated the Jews' most sacred sites and their women, and brought the booty home – where these events would later be immortalised in carvings on the Arch of Titus. In June of 71, the 60-year-old father and the 30-year-old son celebrated the triumph together. The message was clear: Nero's death had marked the end of one dynasty, Vespasian's arrival the start of another – the Flavian dynasty.

The moneylender's son from Reate was supreme pontiff. There was a consulship for Titus and a praetorship for Domitian. Both sons were honoured with the designation 'Caesar' and 'Leaders of Youth', the latter a title that had been devised by Augustus for his adopted sons.

It was clear to all that Titus was ready to rule even as his father came to power, and this gave even greater stability to the regime. Vespasian, with his long and broad experience, would take care of peace and domestic matters, while Titus would handle the military side. In fact, Titus had been proclaimed imperator by his troops after the fall of Jerusalem. He had the good grace not to use the title around his father.

New and unfinished business
The sack of Jerusalem had marked the end of the war for both Vespasian and Titus. However, as old campaigners they each had unfinished business. For Vespasian, it would be the conquest of Britain – he would continue to take an interest in his furthest-flung province.

But more immediately for both of them, there was the rump of the Jewish rebellion, lodged in a mountain stronghold the name of which would linger in history. More than any other military engagement of the Vespasian years, it would come to represent the formidable doggedness and inexorable advance of Rome.

In April 73, the fortress of Masada, occupied by the last of the Jewish rebels, finally succumbed to the Roman forces under Titus, after a two-year siege. The remainder of the Jewish garrison all committed suicide rather than become slaves.

Riches plundered from Jewish temples became the starter capital for a new Rome. Fire and civil war had devastated the city. Now the enormous wealth of Judaea would fill her empty coffers.

Vespasian mended the aqueduct system at his own expense and made sure the citizens knew it. He rebuilt the temples. At the heart of the old city, in the grounds of Nero's vast Golden Palace, he built an amphitheatre, the biggest in the world, a gift to the people. He called it the Flavian amphitheatre, but the world knows it as the Colosseum.

Further afield, throughout the empire, provincial cities became Roman cities by Vespasian's gift and their citizens Roman citizens. According to historian David Mattingly:

The greatest legacy of Vespasian is that he finds a metropolitan empire based on the city of Rome and he leaves a cosmopolitan empire that is based on a much broader network of élite families, élite groups from the provinces who have a really enhanced economic and political commitment to the empire.

'By bringing peace, by steadying the state,' says historian Derek Williams ...

Vespasian gave the empire a second chance. The best was still to come. Rome had 150 good years left. The century ahead – the 2nd century AD – will, in many ways, be her happiest.

Vespasian rescued Rome, put her back on course, plucked the purple toga from the mud, allowed classical civilisation to recover and, before long, enter what would be the golden afternoon of Rome's 12 century history.

Vespasian was emperor for only 10 years, but he had served Rome faithfully for 50. He had never dreamed that he would be emperor, and as he lay dying in AD 79 – the first emperor to die a peaceful death since Augustus, 65 years earlier – he made a joke of his improbable career. 'Woe's me,' he said. 'Methinks I'm turning into a god!'

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