Ebook: Vespasian

This is a success story, as medieval traditions about ‘the noble Emperor’make clear. In one French, Spanish, and Portuguese romance, printed inLisbon in 1483, Vespasian, a sufferer from leprosy, is cured by the handkerchiefof St Veronica, and proceeds to take Jerusalem, avenging Christ and punishingJews and Pilate; he converts his entire Empire to Christianity.1The individual’s success, set against the downfall of a dynasty, is thestraightforward subject of the first four chapters of this book. The unglamorousnew senator Vespasian pursued his career under the Julio-Claudian emperors,Tiberius, Gaius, Claudius, and Nero (14–68), and his accumulating experiencemade him useful to the declining dynasty without making him dangerous.He survived politics as well as the rigours of campaigning in Britain (Ch. 1–2) to emerge in 67 as the military man chosen by Nero to bring Judaea backinto the Empire (3). So he came to be in charge of three fighting legions andin alliance with the governors of Syria and Egypt, who controlled five more,precisely when the emperors of 68–9 were fighting for survival (4.1). Thesuccess of the bid itself depended on his being able to rally legions andindividuals in key positions military and civilian through calculation orprinciple, fear or ambition, usually a complex amalgam.