by Gwyn Morgan
It was during this same period that Vespasian married—down, as Suetonius points out, by taking as his wife Flavia Domitilla, a woman of highly suspect origins. Whatever her exact status, she gave him three children. There were two sons, Titus, born in December 39, and Domitian, born in October 51. There was a daughter too, Domitilla, born perhaps in 45, but she and her mother died before Vespasian became emperor. Vespasian made no attempt to remarry after his wife’s death. Instead, he took up once again with Antonia Caenis, his mistress prior to the marriage, and he treated her “almost as if she were his lawful wife” until she died around 75. It is another question whether this affair began by choice or of necessity. Vespasian seems never to have had much money, one reason no doubt why tight-fistedness became a dominant trait in his character, to the embarrassment of Suetonius and Tacitus’ amusement. Not only was Titus born in one of the least select areas of Rome; he also had his future foretold by a metoposcopus, a character with all the social standing of a palmist today.2 And though Titus was educated at court with Claudius’ son Britannicus until 55, Domitian would claim that as a boy he had not had even one piece of silver plate at his disposal (making a point for which Americans have a more homely expression).
Vespasian emerged from obscurity only in the early 60s, just like Galba, and perhaps for the same reasons. He was appointed governor of Africa for 62/63. Although he returned from his province no richer than when he entered it, this failed to endear him to the provincials. It would be unwise to generalize from Suetonius’ story that on one occasion Vespasian was pelted with turnips by the enraged citizens of Hadrumetum (Sousse), but it is significant that in 69 the province’s inhabitants were still so ill disposed toward him that they preferred Vitellius. It was also over Vespasian’s financial situation at this stage that he and Sabinus had their most serious falling-out. According to the story, Vespasian was so hard up that he had to ask for an unsecured loan from Sabinus, but was given financial assistance only in return for mortgaging his estates to his brother. This much is reported by Tacitus and Suetonius alike, but Suetonius goes on to say that, to recoup his fortunes, Vespasian was forced to take up selling mules (Reate was famous for them). In all likelihood he engaged in operations on a scale large enough to avoid being dismissed as a mere tradesman, but he was still saddled with the nickname of “the Muleteer.”
For all that, Vespasian became a member of Nero’s court and accompanied him on his pilgrimage to the home of all the arts in 66. A more ill-matched pair it is hard to imagine, and there is good reason to wonder about Nero’s reasons for taking him along, especially as Vespasian supposedly made a habit of either disappearing or falling asleep whenever the emperor sang. Still, it is probably an exaggeration to hold that he was saved from disgrace or even death only by the outbreak of the Jewish revolt in 66. This assumes both that Nero was infuriated by Vespasian’s conduct, and that he thought the revolt the major crisis the ax-grinding Josephus depicts. It is true that Gessius Florus, the procurator of Judaea, had proved unable to handle the uprising he had so largely provoked, and that the governor of Syria, Gaius Cestius Gallus, had bungled his attempt to nip the movement in the bud. Yet if Nero decided that he needed a competent commander who could be sent to the area at once, and so had to pick somebody from his own entourage, Vespasian no doubt looked like the best choice. He was unlikely to threaten the emperor’s position, no matter how many legions he was given to carry out his task—and Nero gave him three, V Macedonica, X Fretensis, and XV Apollinaris. What we can say, however, is that for Vespasian this command was a godsend. Nearly 60 years of age, he should have had little hope of receiving another chance to make his name as a soldier. Instead, he was packed off to Judaea.
This was not Nero’s only step. He had to find a governor for Syria too, as a result of Cestius Gallus’ incompetence. His choice fell on Gaius Licinius Mucianus, the first person to whom Tacitus grants a character sketch in the Histories. In his youth, Mucianus had cultivated the friendship of the powerbrokers in Rome, but something had gone wrong, and he was thought even to have offended the emperor Claudius. So he had withdrawn into seclusion in the wilds of the province Asia, “as close to exile then as he was later to an emperor.” He returned to Rome presumably when Nero succeeded Claudius in 54, but his career under the new emperor is another almost complete blank. All we know is that he held the consulship, probably in the mid-60s, and was appointed governor of Syria in 67. For Tacitus these details are much less important than his character, a mix of virtues and vices: Mucianus could be lazy or industrious, arrogant or cordial, too given to his pleasures when off duty, but capable of great energy when he undertook campaigns. (This is a reference to his military exploits in and after 69, not before.) “You might praise his public activities, but his private life was much criticized” is Tacitus’ elliptical way of indicating that Mucianus was gay. Then comes the key point, and the reason for his being given so much space so early: an influential man in 68/69, he was more inclined to play kingmaker than king.
Still, Mucianus had no chance to try out for either role so long as Nero lived. At first, indeed, he failed to display even the principal gift expected of him in his new post, diplomacy. Though Mucianus commanded three legions (IV Scythica, VI Ferrata, and XII Fulminata), his main function was to deal with the Parthians on the far side of the Euphrates, and to prevent their intervening in Rome’s eastern possessions, especially at times when there were disturbances they could exploit. Instead, Mucianus spent his first months in squabbles with Vespasian, partly jurisdictional and partly logistical. The word “province,” in Latin provincia, meant originally an assignment, “the war against the Jews” or bellum Iudaicum, for example, and it never lost this sense, even when it became common to use it to denote a specific area like Judaea, a province in the modern acceptation.3 Now Vespasian’s task was to suppress the Jewish rebellion, and when he began operations in February 67, much of Judaea was in revolt. As he had no choice but to move from north to south, he began his campaign from bases in the lower reaches of Syria, and no doubt drew supplies from there too. When Mucianus arrived, in September or October (traveling from Rome rather than Greece, he arrived much later), he took exception to this. Since he would demonstrate a marked yearning for military glory in 69, he may have hoped to take part in suppressing the revolt, and so win the distinction he coveted. He certainly objected to Vespasian’s making free with his province, so much so that the latter had to negotiate with Mucianus, using his elder son, the 28-year-old Titus, as intermediary. Titus, the legate of XV Apollinaris under his father’s overall command, was sent off to Antioch, the administrative capital of Syria. It still took until the end of 67 to iron out the differences between the two governors, and even then the negotiations were concluded successfully, so it is said, only because Mucianus took such a shine to the youthful Titus.
There matters rested until news arrived that Nero had committed suicide and Galba had been recognized as emperor by the senate. Besides Vespasian and Mucianus, there was one more commander in the East with legions at his disposal (two as it happened, XXII Deiotariana and III Cyrenaica). This was Tiberius Julius Alexander, the prefect of Egypt, and we know that he recognized the usurper at once, publishing the appropriate edict on 6 July 68. It has been suggested that Alexander had reached some kind of agreement with Galba beforehand, but it is far more likely that he found a compelling reason to avow his loyalty to the new emperor as rapidly as possible in the fact that Nero had contemplated taking refuge in Alexandria. Some two or three years younger than Vespasian, Alexander had made his way up through the civil and military posts open to a member of the equestrian order. He had been procurator of Judaea between 46 and 48; he had gained some military experience under Nero’s best general, Domitius Corbulo, in 63; and he had held the prefecture of Egypt, the highest position he could realistically hope to achieve, since the middle of 66. There was one more rung on the ladder he had climbed, that occupied by the prefect of the praetorian guard, but Ale
xander was an apostate Jew, the son of a prominent member of the Jewish community in Alexandria. Though the Roman governing class grew more cosmopolitan as the years went by, Alexander’s unusual ancestry made it improbable that he would ever be put in charge of a guard drawn exclusively from men born in Italy. Even to keep his current post he had to allay any suspicions that he sympathized with Galba’s predecessor.
There is nothing to indicate whether Alexander’s prompt acceptance of Galba gave the lead to Mucianus and Vespasian too, but since they also were Neronian appointees, it seems likely enough. The only specific evidence we have, however, is Josephus’ comment that once Vespasian heard of Galba’s accession, he halted his campaign against the rebels “until he received further instructions from the emperor about the war.” From this some have concluded not only that Vespasian sat back and waited for Galba to contact him, but also that he feared that the new emperor would replace him. The first of these views goes far beyond the evidence. For a start, the obvious way for Vespasian to have solicited those instructions was to send Galba a letter in which he professed his allegiance and asked for the emperor’s guidance on the campaign. Then too, halting operations against the rebels around July 68 and seeking advice was a sensible course to take, no matter what was happening in Rome. By now Vespasian had completed his slow but systematic conquest of rebel strongholds. Discounting the three small fortresses of Herodium, Machaerus, and Masada, he was under the impression that Jerusalem alone remained to be subdued, and he had long since recognized that investing the city would be a massive undertaking. In the winter of 67/68 his officers had urged him to begin an assault on Jerusalem at once, because the rival factions in the city were at each other’s throats. He had rejected their advice, preferring to let the factions destroy one another first. So Vespasian had good military reasons not to embark on a long and difficult task until he had been reassured about the views of his new emperor, a man who was supposed also to possess a good deal of military experience.
Whether Vespasian had grounds to fear that Galba planned to replace him as commander of the war is harder to answer. If we suppose that he sent Galba a letter in July, the emperor clearly failed to respond to his overtures. Yet that may have been simply because Galba did not reach Rome until October 68, and by then the matter was scarcely urgent, when the campaigning season for the year was over. But this failure to reply could well have disquieted Vespasian. Suetonius not only reports that Vespasian thought later that Galba had sent assassins from Spain to murder him, but also implies that Vespasian said as much officially in the winter of 69/70, when he annulled a senatorial decree to set up a memorial to Galba in Rome. This story is usually dismissed as propaganda, and so it could be. A usurper customarily justified his rule by claiming that his predecessor had tried to assassinate him. But this particular example may not be as far-fetched as it looks. If true, it could even have generated a major misunderstanding, and much greater fear on Vespasian’s part than was warranted by the facts.
It is entirely conceivable that early in 68 Galba resorted to the methods he used later to dispose of Clodius Macer in Africa, and sent a centurion from Spain in an abortive attempt to remove Vespasian. But if so, it was not because Galba viewed the Flavian as a rival. That idea invests Vespasian with far too much importance. Rather, in April or May 68, Vespasian was in much the same boat as Tiberius Alexander, that is, an official who could be considered loyal to Nero. He had been attached to Nero’s entourage during the pilgrimage to Greece, and Nero had put him in charge of the Jewish War. Until Nero committed suicide in June, therefore, Galba had to consider the possibility that Vespasian and his battle-tested legions might choose to support the legal emperor against him. Once Nero was dead, Galba could drop such plans, confident now that Vespasian would find nobody else to back against his new ruler, and no incentive to bid for the throne himself. This is perhaps confirmed by Plutarch. As Galba made his way through Gaul in July and August, so the biographer tells us, Nymphidius Sabinus plied him with alarmist letters that included allegations not only against Clodius Macer in Africa but also about trouble brewing in Syria and Judaea. If Galba had still regarded Vespasian as a threat, he should have acted on these charges. Instead, he ignored Vespasian even as he eliminated Clodius Macer.
For his part, Vespasian need have had no idea what the emperor’s silence betokened. Even if he had thwarted the assassin or assassins sent by Galba from Spain, he may well have concluded that the emperor would send more from Gaul and Germany, no matter how vigorously he expressed his loyalty to the new dispensation. Nor will the nonappearance of hit men have reassured him, as he heard about Galba’s “long and bloody march” to Rome. Besides, he now knew something that should have given him still more reason to worry. Though Tacitus ignores most of the stories about signs portending Vespasian’s elevation to the throne, one of the two incidents he records is the first visit Vespasian made, in May or June 68, to Basilides, priest of an ancient shrine on Mount Carmel. Although it has sometimes been held that the purpose of this trip was to confer with Mucianus, that happened only a year later, during a second visit in May or June 69. In 68, as Tacitus states explicitly, Vespasian wanted to test “his secret hopes,” and these were confirmed in full. When Basilides turned to the intricacies of his craft, he found to his astonishment that “whatever it is, Vespasian, that you have in mind, be it to raise a house, or to extend your estate, or to add to your slaves, to you is given a mighty house, enormous boundaries, and a mass of men.”
For our purposes, it does not matter what generated Vespasian’s secret hopes, since he was a superstitious man anyway. But it is tempting to connect them with an incident that had occurred a year earlier. As Josephus tells the story, mainly to excuse his own conduct and, more specifically, his capture by the Romans at Jotapata in July 67, he was brought before Vespasian soon after, and was so impressed that he informed his new master that, according to “the word of God,” Vespasian was destined to become emperor. Josephus adds that it took Vespasian time to swallow this prophecy, but even so obviously self-serving a prediction would have prompted Vespasian to start entertaining secret hopes, and to decide in due course to check them out by consulting a more antique, and so more reputable source.4
Vespasian himself grasped the meaning of Basilides’ prediction at once, but he did not act on it straight away. On the contrary, as Tacitus also points out, he was still mulling it over when he made his second visit to Mount Carmel a year later, in May or June 69. But all this proves is something to which Suetonius also draws attention, that Vespasian’s beliefs were always tempered by his native caution. What counts is that, having been given two predictions of future greatness by the time Galba was recognized as emperor, Vespasian had reason to worry about Galba’s failure to indicate what he thought. Vespasian, in other words, regarded neither Josephus’ prophecy nor Basilides’ prediction as a cast-iron guarantee that he would accede to the throne, and so had to allow for other outcomes, one of them being that Galba might not only try to remove him from his command but also put him to death before they came to pass.
This is the background that makes some sense out of Vespasian’s decision to send his son Titus to Rome late in 68. To explain this trip, Tacitus states only that Vespasian felt neither public nor personal hostility to Galba, clearly under the impression that otherwise he would never have risked letting Titus become Galba’s hostage for his father’s good behavior (yet Vespasian’s younger son, Domitian, was apparently in Rome at this time). What Tacitus’ comment fails to explain is why Vespasian had not sent Titus to Rome sooner, as he could have done, since there was no serious campaigning in Judaea during the second half of the year; why he insisted that Titus take ship for Rome in the winter of 68/69, when winter travel—especially by sea—tended to be undertaken only in emergencies; and why he sent Titus in particular, when the ostensible reason for the trip was to offer allegiance and pay his respects to the emperor, actions that could probably have been carried out by almos
t any of his officers.
Tacitus is unconcerned with these questions, because for him it is not the fact of Titus’ journey to Rome that matters, but its effect on public opinion, first in Rome, and then on people in the eastern provinces. In the city it sparked gossip about Titus as another potential candidate for adoption by Galba. As he was young, good-looking, and able, “the populace could not be restrained from identifying successors in bulk until one was actually chosen.” Tacitus adds that Titus was of an age to seek the next office in the sequence laid down for senators, namely, the praetorship he should have held before he took command of XV Apollinaris. In reality this too could have waited, or have been dropped altogether.5 So it looks very much as if Galba’s continued failure to give Vespasian guidance made the latter truly fearful for his own future, and led him to send Titus posthaste to Rome for two reasons: first, his willingness to entrust his elder son to Galba was supposed to prove his own loyalty to and respect for the emperor; and second, if that failed to do the trick, he could always hope that the young man would charm Galba as he had Mucianus, and so secure or regain the emperor’s goodwill toward his father.
