The Ancient Biography Thread

[markdienekes]

Originally Posted by Caracalla

Great bio, Mark.

Cheers mate!

[pixi666]

Originally Posted by Caracalla

Great bio, Mark.

Seconded. Once again, we bask in your brilliance, Mark.

[markdienekes]

Originally Posted by pixi666

Seconded. Once again, we bask in your brilliance, Mark.

Thanks for reading, Pixie!

[pixi666]

Majorian: Part 1

“[Majorian] presents the welcome discovery of a great and heroic character, such as sometimes arise, in a degenerate age, to vindicate the honour of the human species".

-Edward Gibbon

Majorian is a fascinating character, a shining beacon of light in an age quickly becoming ink black. In his short reign, he shook off the influence of both the Germanic general Ricimer and the Eastern Roman Empire to try to re-establish the Western Roman Empire. He defeated barbarian invasions, reconquered lands that had been lost, attempted to reform the government, and in return, all he got was a knife in the back. He is in many ways rather like Aurelian. The difference between them is that Aurelian was followed by competent men rather like him: Probus, Carus, and of course, Diocletian. They built on Aurelian’s successes, but Majorian had no such successors; indeed, he was the last effective emperor of the Western Roman Empire. Those who followed were merely puppets (except perhaps for Anthemius, who at least tried to be effective). Majorian was the last hope for the Western Empire, and who knows what could have happened if he had lived longer. Now let’s examine his life and reign.

Flavius Julius Valerius Majorianus Augustus (r. 457-461) was born sometime after 420. He came from a powerful family; his grandfather had been magister militum, a top-level military officer, under Theodosius I, and his father was Flavius Aetius’ accountant, so in this sense he is unlike Aurelian and the other Illyrian general-emperors of the 3rd century, who all arose from humble backgrounds. He began his military career under Aetius, fighting in Gaul and distinguishing himself as an able general. It was at this time that Ricimer and Aegidius, another man later to become a powerful general, were also in the army. In 454, Majorian was kicked out of the military, supposedly because Aetius’ wife thought that Majorian would one day replace her husband. So, he retired to a country estate in typical Roman fashion.

He wasn’t there for long: later that year, Aetius was murdered by the emperor, Valentinian III, and Majorian was recalled to help mollify Aetius’ loyal troops, who were understandably pretty pissed off at their general’s assassination. However, Valentinian got a taste of his own medicine in 455 when he was murdered by 2 former officers of Aetius. Valentinian’s death caused a power vacuum, and Majorian was supported by Licinia Eudoxia, the emperor’s widow, and Ricimer as Valentinian’s successor. The new emperor ended up being a senator called Petronius Maximus, but he was killed during the sack of Rome by the Vandals in the same year. During Petronius’ short reign, Majorian was promoted to the position of comes domesticorum, the head of the imperial guard. A man named Avitus was the new emperor, and he received Majorian and Ricimer’s support, but not for long. Avitus was a Gallic-Roman, and he practiced favouritism towards other Gallic-Romans in choosing administrative postings. This, along with other unpopular policies, caused Majorian and Ricimer to revolt against him.

Majorian waited patiently for Marcian, the Eastern Roman Emperor, to name him emperor of the west, but Marcian died in January of 457 before looking into the matter. The man who succeeded him, Leo, simply promoted Majorian and Ricimer to higher military postings, indicating that he wished to rule as sole emperor over both halves of the empire. This wouldn’t do. On April 1st, Majorian was proclaimed Augustus, and so began his reign.

Part 2 coming soon!

[Caracalla]

When do we get Part 2, Pixi?

[markdienekes]

Great first part mate, never heard of this fella until now!

[pixi666]

Originally Posted by Caracalla

When do we get Part 2, Pixi?

Probably Saturday evening, so Sunday morning for you.

[Caracalla]

Titus Flavius Vespasianus

9 – 69

Part I

The Flavians were not of ancient Roman aristocracy, indeed their family history is obscure until Vespasian's father, Titus Flavius Petro, a citizen of Reate and a mule breeder, appears in the records as a centurion in the army of Pompey, facing Caesar's at the battle of Pharsalus on August 9 48 BC. He secured an honourable discharge and went to Asia as a tax gatherere- apparently a rare one according to Suetonius, since statues were raised there to him inscribed “To an Honest Tax-gatherer”. Flavius became a money-lender and then appears to have retired to Raetia, where he died, leaving his wife and two sons, Sabinus and Vespasian. Sabinus, the elder, went on to attain the rank of Urban Prefect in Rome.

Vespasian was born on 17 November 9 AD in the hamlet of Falcrina, near Reate, in Sabine country. His mother, Vespasia Polla, had some aristocratic links through her brother, who entered the senate as a praetor, but otherwise the family was detatched from events in Rome. Vespasian enjoyed a good education, and the financial help of his mother propelled him on the ladder of the Course of Honour. He was a military tribune for three or four years in Thracia; held a quaestorship in Creta-Cyrenaica; and the offices of aedile and praetor, successfully, under Gaius Caligula, and latter in Germania, where he helped the emperor put down a rebellion in 39. Later he was made pro-consul of Africa and then governor of Judea.

He gained valuable experience overseas, not only in military matters but also learning the value of providing housing, sanitation and an efficient tax-collecting system. In the process, he acquired a wife, Flavia Domitilla, who bore him two sons, Titus and Domitian, and a daughter Domitilla. When Flavia died before his accession Vespasian returned to his former mistress, Caenis. Born a palace slave, Caenis had risen to become the Augusta Antonia's secretary and was later given her freedom, but the law that forbade senators to marry freedwomen meant she could never become his wife. Caenis, an intelligent, clear-headed person, exerted a beneficial influence over Vespasian.

His future seemed assured when the well-placed freedman Narcissus became his patron at Claudius's court. He was indebted to Narcissus for his command of a legion in Germania, and an army in Britannia, where his brilliant record made him a popular figure. The historian Suetonius said of him: “He went to Britannia, where he fought thirty battles, subjugated two tribes and took more than twenty hill forts, Isle of Wright besides.” This hardly does Vespasian justice. His mastery of artillery pieces such as the scorpion and ballista allowed him to annihilate supposedly impregnable fortresses in Wessex and devastate native morale. With one quarter of the invasion force, his Legio II Augusta conquered three-quarters of the Romans target territory, including a vast swathe across the south and south-west as far as Exeter. Legio IX Hispania pushed north as far as Lincoln, while XIV Gemima and XX Valeria Victrix advanced to Leicester. The line connecting them was the two-hundred-mile Fosse Way, the ancient limestone ridge between Devon and Lincolnshire that became the limit of the initial Claudian occupation. During this period Vespasian served at times under the consular commander Aulus Plautius, and at times reported directly to Claudius.

Vespasian was awarded the triumphal insignia, as well as a consulship for the last two months of (probably) 51. However, the death of Claudius and the accession of Nero – and specifically his mother Agrippina – cast Vespasian into the wilderness for some fifteen years. Agrippina showed animosity to any friend of Narcissus, even after the freedmen had killed himself. Vespasian continued to serve on the periphery of the empire until Nero made him proconsul of Africa in about 63/4. On completion of his term, Vespasian returned to Rome where he seems to have gained the emperor's trust sufficiently to be included on Nero's tour of Achaea in 66/7. He was, therefore, the man on hand when a revolt broke out in Judea, and Nero called on him to deal with the problem.

By spring of 67, with sixty thousand legionaries, auxiliaries and allies under his command, Vespasian in the company of Titus, the eldest of his two sons, set out to subdue Galilee and then to cut off Jerusalem. Success was quick and decisive. By October all of Galilee had been pacified and plans for the strategic circumvellation of Jerusalem were soon formed. It was in Judea, he was to recall, that he came close to death for the second time, when he was narrowly rescued after being cornered by Jewish resistance fighters; the first time had been in Athens, when he fell asleep during one of Nero's interminable musical recitals. And it was from Judea that Vespasian surveyed the fast-moving events of 68 and 69 in Italia.

He gave his short-lived approval to Galba as an alternative to Nero, but the new emperor was dead before Vespasian's goodwill message reached Rome. On hearing of the further deterioration of the situation, Vespasian determined to act. The idea of aspiring tot he principate was not a new one. There had been omens in his childhood that had predicted a great future. A popular story told of how, during his aedileship, Caligula – furious at Vespasian's failure to keep the streets of Rome clean – ordered soldiers to load the aedile down with mud*. This was interpreted to mean that one day the soil of Italia would be trampled on in a civil war, but that Vespasian would protect it.

*The duty of maintianing Rome's streets fell to the lowliest rank of the cursus honorum the vingtivirate, not an aedile. Perhaps Suetonius, who tells this tale, confused the order of events in Vespasian's career, or he was making a point of Caligula's cruelty in forcing the senior aedile to do the juniour vingtivirate's job.

However, it was luck that precipitated Vespasian's decision to do something. The two thousand men of the three legions in Moesia, one of them attached from Syria, had reached Aquileia in support of Otho, and remained there, despite news of his suicide. Seeing that other armies had declared their own emperors, these men decided to elect their own, and settled on Vespasian on the recommendation of the Syrian contingent, who best knew Vespasian's record. When the news leaked out, the Egyptian prefect made his legions take the oath to Vespasian on 1 July 69, and the emperor-elect's own troops in Judea were only too eager to follow suit days later. Swallowing his jealousy of Vespasian, Lucius Mucianus, governor of Syria, gave his support, and with a promise of forty thousand archers from Vologeses, king of the Parthians, Vespasian was ready to begin his campaign.

In this, as in everything he did, he showed the shrewdness of a Julius Caesar. Instead of marching directly on Rome, he directed Mucianus to take his two remaining Syrian legions west to support those of the Illyrian provinces that had proclaimed him. (Vespasian was not to know at thispoint that Marcus Antonius Primus was already advancing into northern Italia in his name). Vespasian then went to Alexandria to secure the grain supply and deny it to Vitellius. The threat of starvation in Rome did much to weaken Vitellius's standing in the eyes of the populace. Vespasian's delay also anticipated the fall of Jerusalem, which he needed since Jerusalem was wealthy and he knew that the treasury was empty. However, the events in Rome of December 69* meant that he could no longer tarry in the east, so he left the investment of Jerusalem in the capable hands of his son Titus and left shortly before Jewish resistance finally crumbled. Pockets of Vitellian resistance held him up briefly, but the hindrance proved fortuitous in that on reaching Rome news of Jerusalem's fall had arrived, so the senate was able to decree their new Augustus a suitable triumph to greet him.

*After fierce fighting Vitellius was found hiding and disguised in dirty clothing. He was dragged from his hiding place and hauled to the forum where he was tortured, killed, and dumped in the Tiber. On 22 December the senate recognised Vespasian as Augustus, and with disorder rampant in Rome, hailed Domitian as Caesar. Soldiers continued to rampage through the city until Mucianus arrived in January 70 and took the office of regent in Vespasian's name. Vespasian didn't arrive in Rome until October.

[Caracalla]

Vespasian in Office

70 - 79

Part II

At the age of sixty-one, Vespasian was now at the helm of an empire shattered by a year of anarchy. There had been an enormous loss of public confidence in the power of the Roman state, which the new princeps needed to heal. In this he enjoyed a natural advantage; a rustic, common-sense upbringing combined with a sterling military career. He brought to Rome the native shrewdness of an Italian farmer, rather than the intellectual brilliance of the city-dweller. He notoriously loathed any form of affectation – all to prevalent among the nobility arising from the depredations of Nero. When a young man, reeking of perfume, approached him to give thanks for a promotion in rank, Vespasian turned away in disgust and cancelled the order, adding: “I should not have minded so much if it had been garlic.”

Despite public acclamation, Vespasian faced immediate threats to his reign, among them the rebellion in Germania and Gaul of a Batavian auxiliary commander, Julius Civilis. This was swiftly suppressed, but it underlined the need for military reform. Like Augustus before him, Vespasian was well aware that an idle army is a dangerous one. Neither was the mistake Nero had made of remaining aloof from his troops lost on Vespasian, who assiduously cultivated the legions and so won their loyalty. In doing so, he and his sons finally weaned the provincial soldiers off their adherence to the Julii and gained from them the acceptance of the practice of succession in the principate. It was clear to Vespasian that the revolt of Civilis had succeeded due to the widespread support he found among the troops quartered in Gaul and along the Rhine. Although called “Roman”, most were natives of their region and commanded be native officers. Vespasian took measures to ensure such a situation could not arise again. In future the auxiliaries were to serve in regions far away from the countries of their origin to avoid nationalistic sympathies colouring their loyalty to the state, nor were they allowed any longer to serve under native officers.

The emperor also wisely followed the Augustan principle of keeping the army busy. The failure of Augustus's major campaign of conquest , that of the extension of Gaul north to the line of the Elbe, meant that the Roman frontier followed the Rhine south until it could cross to the upper Danube. This greatly extended the length of the line to be defended. In 73 Vespasian ordered the legate of Germania Superior, Gnaeus Cornelius Clemens to annex the triangular-shaped region between the rivers' headwaters known as the Agri Decumates, and this straightened out the frontier. While this proceeded without much hinderance from the tribes of the sparsely populated region – the modern Black Forest – it went slowly, since Clemens erected forts along his front lines as his troops pressed forward. But by 79 a line existed that at least stretched between Argentorate (Strasbourg) to Arae Flaviae (Rottweil), and from there tot he edge of Lacus Venetus (Lake Constance); and Clemens may even have reached as far north as a line running from Aquae (Baden) to Guntia (Gunzburg) on the Danube.

Vespasian also recognised another lesson in the revolts of Civilis and Vindex. The provinces, especially those of Gaul, had attained such a level of romanised development that they wanted to play an active part in the cultural, political, and military life of the empire. Apart from Claudius opening up the senatorial order to Gallic nobles, little else had been done in this direction, and Vespasian feared that, denied participation, provincial energies would be diverted first towards nationalism then separatism. In 73 he assumed the office of censor and used the position to fill the gaps in the senate with a new aristocracy drawn from the Italian municipia. He then conferred Latin rights on Baetica and continued the programmes of Julius Caesar and Augustus in founding colonies and granting municipal charters to provincial towns. Between 74-84 no fewer than three hundred and fifty Spanish towns received the municipium. Elsewhere in the empire numerous colonies were also founded. Once made a Latin municipium, the local elite automatically acquired Roman citizenship and became eligible for high positions within the principate.

In this, he was quite open that, like Augustus, he intended to have a senate amenable to his actions – they should obey rather than just be co-operative. However, even those naturally opposed to him did not want to see a return to the spendthrift years of Caligula or Nero; Vespasian was famous for his parsimony. He made it the business of his reign to restore the moral foundation of the state and its economic stability before turning to artistic embellishment.

Among Vespasian's many achievements, a few stand out. In Rome, he expanded the city's pomerium to beyond the Servian Wall to help relieve crowding – an overt symbol of Rome's invulnerability to foreign attack that would remain until the later Aurelian Wall was built in less steady times. He encouraged rebuilding on vacated lots, restored the Capitol and the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus destroyed in the civil war of 69. Work began on three massive new monuments. On the Caelian Hill a temple was raised in honour of the deified Claudius, a project cannily designed to identify Vespasian as the legitimate heir to the Julio-Claudians, while distancing himself from Nero*. As a celebration of the tranquillity Vespasian had brought to the empire the Temple of Peace was built beside the forum. On the Palatine, Vespasian pulled down Nero's palace and began construction of the extensive Domus Flavia that his younger son Domitian would complete. But above all, he began to build a massive amphitheatre on the site of the lake of Nero's Domus Aurea, known as the Amphitheatrum Flavium. We know it better today as the Colosseum.

*The platform for this huge edifice had been begun during Nero's reign, but Nero appropriated it to become a raised garden for his Domus Aurea.

Restoring the treasury to solvency after Nero and a year of civil strife was a monumental task, but by the end of his ten-year reign it was accomplished. This, of course, required numerous changes to taxation and many new ways of raising money, many of them unpopular. Cities that had been freed from paying tax in the past – Rhodes, Byzantium, and Samos – now had to pay again. Achaea, freed by Nero, was returned to provincial status and had to pay, as did coastal Cilicia and Comagene. No part of daily escaped Vespasian's taxes, including the most basic production of human urine. This might seem odd, but it was collected for use by fullers in cleaning woollens. Titus – more fastidious than his gruff father – was said to have complained that taxing the contents of the public latrines was unsavoury. Vespasian held out a coin taxed on the first day and asked him to sniff it. When Titus complied and smelled nothing but its metallic odour, his father laughed and said that was odd, because it had come directly from a urinal.

The position of the principate in respect of the senate was quite clear. Vespasian held the office of consul in every year of his reign except 73 and 78, and made Titus his colleague on six occasions. In 71, Titus was given the proconsular imperium and the authority of the tribunes, which firmly identified him as Vespasian's successor. However, to prevent repetition of praetorian meddling in the succession, he appointed Titus as sole praetorian prefect (having reduced the guard from the sixteen cohorts of Vitellius to the Augustan number og nine). Nevertheless, Vespasian was courteous in his dealings with the senate – although it was clear to all who actually rule the empire – and generous-spirited towards all men. As Suetonius says, his researches showed that Vespasian had no innocent party executed, and he went so far as to endower the daughter of his former enemy Vitellius for her marriage.

Unlike the majority of his predecessors, Vespasian died unmolested in his bed on 23 June 79, after contracting a brief illness; perhaps fortunate that his two ambitious sons Titus and Domitian were prepared to let nature take its course. At the age of seventy-eight, his life finished on an ironic note when Vespasian, who never mustered much faith in Roman religion or superstition, uttered:”Woe is me, I think I am turning into a god.”

Of the three Flavian emperors, Vespasian was undoubtedly the greatest. Usually waspish Suetonius, writing in “The Life of Vespasian,” described his rule like this: “The empire which for a long time had been unsettled and, as it were, drifting through the usurpation and violent death of three emperors, was at last taken in hand and given stability. This house was, it is true, obscure and without family portraits, yet it was one of which our country had no reason whatever to be ashamed...”

Vespasian had little time for the trappings of imperial protocol with regard
to himself, but was politically astute in allowing the senate to honour his
wife Flavia Domitilla, who had died before his accession, by deifying her.

[markdienekes]

I've read part one, Cara, great stuff mate, will read part two soon!