The Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Complete
friends were very ready to support him, and even pressed him to the
enterprise, until he was encouraged to it by the fortuitous aid of
persons unknown to him and at a distance. Two thousand men, drawn out of
three legions in the Moesian army, had been sent to the assistance of
Otho. While they were upon their march, news came that he had been
defeated, and had put an end to his life; notwithstanding which they
continued their march as far as Aquileia, pretending that they gave no
credit to the report. There, tempted by the opportunity which the
disorder of the times afforded them, they ravaged and plundered the
country at discretion; until at length, fearing to be called to an
account on their return, and punished for it, they resolved upon choosing
and creating an emperor. “For they were no ways inferior,” they said,
“to the army which made Galba emperor, nor to the pretorian troops which
had set up Otho, nor the army in Germany, to whom Vitellius owed his
elevation.” The names of all the consular lieutenants, therefore, being
taken into consideration, and one objecting to one, and another to
another, for various reasons; at last some of the third legion, which a
little before Nero’s death had been removed out of Syria into Moesia,
extolled Vespasian in high terms; and all the rest assenting, his name
was immediately inscribed on their standards. The design was
nevertheless quashed for a time, the troops being brought to submit to
Vitellius a little longer.
However, the fact becoming known, Tiberius Alexander, governor of Egypt,
first obliged the legions under his command to swear obedience to
Vespasian as their emperor, on the calends [the 1st] of July, which was
observed ever after as the day of his accession to the empire; and upon
the fifth of the ides of the same month [the 28th July], the army in
Judaea, where he then was, also swore allegiance to him. What
contributed greatly to forward the affair, was a copy of a letter,
whether real or counterfeit, which was circulated, and said to have been
written by Otho before his decease to Vespasian, recommending to him in
the most urgent terms to avenge his death, and entreating him to come to
the aid of the commonwealth; as well as a report which was circulated,
that Vitellius, after his success against Otho, proposed to change the
winter quarters of the legions, and remove those in Germany to a less
(449) hazardous station and a warmer climate. Moreover, amongst the
governors of provinces, Licinius Mucianus dropping the grudge arising
from a jealousy of which he had hitherto made no secret, promised to join
him with the Syrian army, and, among the allied kings, Volugesus, king of
the Parthians, offered him a reinforcement of forty thousand archers.
VII. Having, therefore, entered on a civil war, and sent forward his
generals and forces into Italy, he himself, in the meantime, passed over
to Alexandria, to obtain possession of the key of Egypt [745]. Here
having entered alone, without attendants, the temple of Serapis, to take
the auspices respecting the establishment of his power, and having done
his utmost to propitiate the deity, upon turning round, [his freedman]
Basilides [746] appeared before him, and seemed to offer him the sacred
leaves, chaplets, and cakes, according to the usage of the place,
although no one had admitted him, and he had long laboured under a
muscular debility, which would hardly have allowed him to walk into the
temple; besides which, it was certain that at the very time he was far
away. Immediately after this, arrived letters with intelligence that
Vitellius’s troops had been defeated at Cremona, and he himself slain at
Rome. Vespasian, the new emperor, having been raised unexpectedly from a
low estate, wanted something which might clothe him with divine majesty
and authority. This, likewise, was now added. A poor man who was blind,
and another who was lame, came both together before him, when he was
seated on the tribunal, imploring him to heal them [747], and saying that
they were admonished (450) in a dream by the god Serapis to seek his aid,
who assured them that he would restore sight to the one by anointing his
eyes with his spittle, and give strength to the leg of the other, if he
vouchsafed but to touch it with his heel. At first he could scarcely
believe that the thing would any how succeed, and therefore hesitated to
venture on making the experiment. At length, however, by the advice of
his friends, he made the attempt publicly, in the presence of the
assembled multitudes, and it was crowned with success in both cases
[748]. About the same time, at Tegea in Arcadia, by the direction (451)
of some soothsayers, several vessels of ancient workmanship were dug out
of a consecrated place, on which there was an effigy resembling
Vespasian.
VIII. Returning now to Rome, under these auspices, and with a great
reputation, after enjoying a triumph for victories over the Jews, he
added eight consulships [749] to his former one. He likewise assumed the
censorship, and made it his principal concern, during the whole of his
government, first to restore order in the state, which had been almost
ruined, and was in a tottering condition, and then to improve it. The
soldiers, one part of them emboldened by victory, and the other smarting
with the disgrace of their defeat, had abandoned themselves to every
species of licentiousness and insolence. Nay, the provinces, too, and
free cities, and some kingdoms in alliance with Rome, were all in a
disturbed state. He, therefore, disbanded many of Vitellius’s soldiers,
and punished others; and so far was he from granting any extraordinary
favours to the sharers of his success, that it was late before he paid
the gratuities due to them by law. That he might let slip no opportunity
of reforming the discipline of the army, upon a young man’s coming much
perfumed to return him thanks (452) for having appointed him to command a
squadron of horse, he turned away his head in disgust, and, giving him
this sharp reprimand, “I had rather you had smelt of garlic,” revoked his
commission. When the men belonging to the fleet, who travelled by turns
from Ostia and Puteoli to Rome, petitioned for an addition to their pay,
under the name of shoe-money, thinking that it would answer little
purpose to send them away without a reply, he ordered them for the future
to run barefooted; and so they have done ever since. He deprived of
their liberties, Achaia, Lycia, Rhodes, Byzantium, and Samos; and reduced
them into the form of provinces; Thrace, also, and Cilicia, as well as
Comagene, which until that time had been under the government of kings.
He stationed some legions in Cappadocia on account of the frequent
inroads of the barbarians, and, instead of a Roman knight, appointed as
governor of it a man of consular rank. The ruins of houses which had
been burnt down long before, being a great desight to the city, he gave
leave to any one who would, to take possession of the void ground and
build upon it, if the proprietors should hesitate to perform the work
themselves. He resolved upon rebuilding the Capitol, and was the
foremost to put his hand to clearing the ground of the rubbish, and
removed some of it upon his own shoulder. And he undertook, likewise, to
restore the three thousand tables of brass which had been destroyed in
the fire which consumed the Capitol; searching in all quarters for copies
of those curious and ancient records, in which were contained the decrees
of the senate, almost from the building of the city, as well as the acts
of the people, relative to alliances, treaties, and privileges granted to
any person.
IX. He likewise erected several new public buildings, namely, the temple
of Peace [750] near the Forum, that of Claudius on the (453) Coelian
mount, which had been begun by Agrippina, but almost entirely demolished
by Nero [751]; and an amphitheatre [752] in the middle of the city, upon
finding that Augustus had projected such a work. He purified the
senatorian and equestrian orders, which had been much reduced by the
havoc made amongst them at several times, and was fallen into disrepute
by neglect. Having expelled the most unworthy, he chose in their room
the most honourable persons in Italy and the provinces. And to let it be
known that those two orders differed not so much in privileges as in
dignity, he declared publicly, when some altercation passed between a
senator and a Roman knight, “that senators ought not to be treated with
scurrilous language, unless they were the aggressors, and then it was
fair and lawful to return it.”
X. The business of the courts had prodigiously accumulated, partly from
old law-suits which, on account of the interruption that had been given
to the course of justice, still remained undecided, and partly from the
accession of new suits arising out of the disorder of the times. He,
therefore, chose commissioners by lot to provide for the restitution of
what had been seized by violence during the war, and others with
extraordinary jurisdiction to decide causes belonging to the centumviri,
and reduce them to as small a number as possible, for the dispatch of
which, otherwise, the lives of the litigants could scarcely allow
sufficient time.
XI. Lust and luxury, from the licence which had long prevailed, had also
grown to an enormous height. He, therefore, obtained a decree of the
senate, that a woman who formed an union with the slave of another
person, should be considered (454) a bondwoman herself; and that usurers
should not be allowed to take proceedings at law for the recovery of
money lent to young men whilst they lived in their father’s family, not
even after their fathers were dead.
XII. In other affairs, from the beginning to the end of his government,
he conducted himself with great moderation and clemency. He was so far
from dissembling the obscurity of his extraction, that he frequently made
mention of it himself. When some affected to trace his pedigree to the
founders of Reate, and a companion of Hercules [753], whose monument is
still to be seen on the Salarian road, he laughed at them for it. And he
was so little fond of external and adventitious ornaments, that, on the
day of his triumph [754], being quite tired of the length and tediousness
of the procession, he could not forbear saying, “he was rightly served,
for having in his old age been so silly as to desire a triumph; as if it
was either due to his ancestors, or had ever been expected by himself.”
Nor would he for a long time accept of the tribunitian authority, or the
title of Father of his Country. And in regard to the custom of searching
those who came to salute him, he dropped it even in the time of the civil
war.
XIII. He bore with great mildness the freedom used by his friends, the
satirical allusions of advocates, and the petulance of philosophers.
Licinius Mucianus, who had been guilty of notorious acts of lewdness,
but, presuming upon his great services, treated him very rudely, he
reproved only in private; and when complaining of his conduct to a common
friend of theirs, he concluded with these words, “However, I am a man.”
Salvius Liberalis, in pleading the cause of a rich man under prosecution,
presuming to say, “What is it to Caesar, if Hipparchus possesses a
hundred millions of sesterces?” he commended him for it. Demetrius, the
Cynic philosopher [755], (455) who had been sentenced to banishment,
meeting him on the road, and refusing to rise up or salute him, nay,
snarling at him in scurrilous language, he only called him a cur.
XIV. He was little disposed to keep up the memory of affronts or
quarrels, nor did he harbour any resentment on account of them. He made