Birthday Greetings #46

Happy birthday to Titus, Roman Emperor.  Titus was the elder son of the emperor Vespasian who emerged on top of the somewhat chaotic series of insurrections and revolts that became known as the Year of the Four Emperors.  Vespasian was the last of the four and the only one with shelf life.  It has been suggested that one of the reasons Vespasian was popular enough not to get killed was that he had a couple of adult sons who could take over after he was gone thus providing a certain level of stability to regime change in the empire.

There is a suggestion that Titus toyed with the idea of bringing on that regime change a little earlier than his father might have expected but in the end he was (or appeared to be) his father's loyal deputy.  Titus had been close to the centres of power for a while.  Titus was actually dining with Britannicus, the son of the emperor Claudius, when he (Britannicus) was poisoned.  Despite this brush with political reality he followed in his fathers footsteps with a civil and military career (the Romans didn't really distinguish between the two) and also practiced as a lawyer for a while. 

Vespasian was in Judea dealing with the Jewish revolt when Nero committed suicide and would be emperors started crawling out of the woodwork.  When Vespasian put his name forward for the top job Titus did a lot of the diplomatic work to persuade neighbouring governors to support him and when Vespasian travelled to Rome he left the Jewish revoltto be dealt with by Titus.

Titus crushed the Jewish revolt with spectacular brutality culminating in the destruction of the Jewish temple of Jerusalem and the hideous death of thousands of Jews (although to be fair the Jews also caused the hideous death of thousands of Jews in various fits of internal bickering).  After which Titus returned to Rome to join his father in a triumph pausing only to pick up a beautiful Jewish princess named Berenice along the way.  This caused him some difficulty as the last beautiful member of middle eastern royalty that the Romans had experience of was Cleopatra and they were definitely not going to go down that path again.  Eventually Titus had to get rid of her.

In Rome Vespasian placed the security of the city (and command of the Praetorian Guard) in Titus's hands.  Titus proved to be a ruthless commander not overly concerned with legal niceties before torturing or beating people to death.  He served essentially as Vespasian's hatchet man taking care of the dirty, messy parts of imperial rule while Vespasian managed to look magisterially above such things.

His role as imperial enforcer, combined with his dalliance with Berenice and his association with the least pleasant parts of his father's reign (taxes, policing, internal security) meant that when Vespasian died he was possibly one of the least popular people to rise to an imperial throne.  The senate was also annoyed as he'd killed a couple of them and nobody asked them if they minded if he took the job.

Once in charge he underwent what appears to be a complete personality transplant.  Most emperors started out popular and wound up hated.  Titus did it the other way round.  What's more he managed to do it in two short years and despite the fact that his reign was marked by disasters.

Vesuvius erupted during his reign burying Pompeii and Herculaneum (nobody ever seems to remember Herculaneum), a massive fire broke out in Rome and the region was also hit with a bout of plague.  Titus laboured tirelessly to bring aid to those affected by the disasters (although one suspects that after the first shock he didn't have to do much for the people of Pompeii or Herculaneum) and set standards for mild yet efficient rule.  He abolished treason trials, cut down on the number of informers and when a possible conspiracy was uncovered he took the unusual step of completely ignoring it.  In addition to this he completed the Flavian amphitheatre started by his father (we call it the Colosseum) which provided an immeasurable boost to modern Italy's tourism and post card industries.

By the time the new amphitheatre had been officially opened with a series of games it was obvious that Titus was ill.  He died at the family home after a little over two years as emperor.  Illness was the official excuse although there was a dark rumour that his younger brother Domitian poisoned him.  This could be just projecting Domitian's subsequent behaviour back in time to account for the death of a beloved emperor at the age of just forty one.  And despite his earlier reputation and behaviour Titus was loved and seems to have earned it by his behaviour as emperor.  Although I'm prepared to bet that no one was taking opinion polls in Judea.