Titus

• 1. Introduction

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  Titus Flavius Vespasianus was born on the 30th of December 39 AD, in the same world that would later watch him tear down one of its most sacred buildings. He ruled Rome for just over two years. In that time, a volcano buried two cities, a fire consumed much of Rome, and the grand Colosseum opened its gates to the public for the very first time. His last recorded words were reportedly: "I have made but one mistake." No one has ever agreed on what that mistake was. What drove a man so celebrated in his lifetime to die with that admission on his lips? And how does a man who destroyed Jerusalem end up remembered by Roman historians as the delight and darling of the human race?

• 2. A Family on the Rise

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  Titus's great-grandfather, Titus Flavius Petro, had served as a centurion under Pompey and fled the battlefield at the Battle of Pharsalus in 48 BC. That moment of disgrace set off an unlikely chain of events. Petro married a wealthy woman named Tertulla, and her fortune lifted the next generation of Flavians into respectability. Titus's grandfather Sabinus worked as a tax collector in Asia and a banker in Helvetia, and his marriage into the patrician gens Vespasia brought the family into the senatorial class.

  Titus's father Vespasian held the offices of quaestor, aedile, and praetor, reaching a consulship in 51. He also served in the Roman invasion of Britain in 43, which gave him early military credentials. Titus himself was raised at the imperial court alongside Britannicus, the son of Emperor Claudius. Suetonius recorded a striking detail: on the night Britannicus was poisoned by Nero in 55, Titus was reclining beside him and reportedly drank from the same cup. He survived. Britannicus did not.

  As a young man, Titus showed talent across several fields. He served as a military tribune in Germania from around 57 to 59 and later in Britannia, where he may have arrived around 60 with reinforcements following the revolt of Boudica. He practiced law, attained the rank of quaestor, and was known as a skilled poet and orator in both Greek and Latin. His first marriage, to Arrecina Tertulla, ended with her death around 65. His second wife, Marcia Furnilla, came from a distinguished family, but her uncle and cousin were executed after the failed Pisonian conspiracy of 65. Some historians believe Titus divorced her because of that connection.

• 3. The Jewish War

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  In 66, a revolt broke out in the Judaea Province. The Roman legate of Syria, Cestius Gallus, was defeated at the battle of Beth-Horon and forced to pull back from Jerusalem. Nero appointed Vespasian to crush the rebellion, and Vespasian brought two legions south. Titus joined him at Ptolemais with a third legion, the Fifteenth. Together they commanded roughly 60,000 professional soldiers.

  The Roman-Jewish historian Josephus covered the war in detail in his work The War of the Jews. Josephus himself commanded the garrison at Yodfat when the Romans invaded Galilee in 67. The city held for 47 days before falling, with an estimated 40,000 killed. Josephus survived a group suicide, surrendered to Vespasian, and became a prisoner who later provided the Romans with intelligence on the ongoing resistance. By 68, the coast and north of Judaea had been subdued, with Titus distinguishing himself in victories at Taricheae and Gamala.

  The siege of Jerusalem itself came after a period of chaos. While the Romans waited for orders following Nero's death, the resistance inside Jerusalem splintered. The Sicarii, the Zealots under Eleazar ben Simon, the forces of John of Gush Halav, and the Idumeans under Simon Bar Giora all competed for control inside the city walls. When Titus finally moved on Jerusalem, he was reinforced by the Twelfth Legion, which had previously been defeated under Gallus. Vespasian sent Tiberius Julius Alexander from Alexandria to serve as Titus's second in command.

  Titus encircled Jerusalem with three legions on the western side and one on the Mount of Olives to the east. He allowed pilgrims to enter for Passover and then refused to let them leave, deliberately straining food and water supplies. Jewish raids repeatedly harassed the Roman forces; one nearly captured Titus himself. After Josephus failed to negotiate a surrender, the Romans breached the first and second walls. To break the defenders' will, Titus ordered that Jewish deserters be crucified around the city's perimeter. When the weakened third wall finally fell, fighting continued street by street. The Romans seized the Antonia Fortress and then stormed the gates of the Second Temple, setting the upper and lower city on fire and destroying the Temple itself. Titus then ordered what remained of the city razed. His soldiers proclaimed him imperator.

  Josephus claimed that 1,100,000 people died during the siege, though modern scholarship rejects that figure as impossible given the population of the region at the time. The source confirms that 97,000 were captured and enslaved, including Simon Bar Giora and John of Gischala. Titus reportedly declined a wreath of victory, saying he had merely been the instrument through which God had expressed wrath against his own people.

• 4. Power Before the Throne

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  Titus returned to Rome in 71 as a conqueror. The triumph included a parade of gold and silver, elaborate re-enactments of the war, Jewish prisoners, and treasures from the Temple of Jerusalem, among them the Menorah and the Pentateuch. Simon Bar Giora was executed in the Forum. Religious sacrifices closed the procession at the Temple of Jupiter. The triumphal Arch of Titus, which still stands at the entrance to the Forum, was built to mark the occasion.

  Vespasian granted Titus the title of Caesar and gave him tribunician power. Titus held seven consulships during his father's reign and served as Vespasian's secretary in the Senate. Most critically, he was appointed Praetorian prefect, commanding the personal guard of the emperor and ensuring its loyalty to the Flavian house.

  In that role, Titus earned a reputation for ruthlessness. He ordered suspected traitors executed without trial. When a plot by Aulus Caecina Alienus and Eprius Marcellus to overthrow Vespasian was uncovered in 79, Titus invited Alienus to dinner and had him stabbed before the meal was over.

  During the Judaean campaigns, Titus had begun a relationship with Berenice, the sister of Agrippa II. The Herodians had cooperated with Rome during the rebellion, and Berenice had personally supported Vespasian's rise to power. In 75, she came to Rome and lived openly with Titus in the palace, understood by contemporaries to be his promised wife. Roman public opinion turned against the relationship. When the couple was denounced by Cynics in the theatre, Titus sent her away, though his reputation suffered in any case. When she returned to Rome after he became emperor, he sent her away a second time.

• 5. A Reign of Disasters

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  Vespasian died of an infection on the 23rd or the 24th of June 79 AD. Titus succeeded him immediately and became the first Roman emperor to come to power after his own biological father. Suetonius noted that many Romans had feared Titus would imitate Nero's worst excesses, given the rumors about his private conduct. One of his first acts was to end treason trials, which had terrorised Rome's political class since the reign of Augustus. He declared publicly that it was impossible for him to be insulted, since he did nothing that deserved censure. No senator was executed during his reign, and informants were publicly punished and expelled from the city.

  A few months after he took power, Mount Vesuvius erupted, burying Pompeii and Herculaneum under metres of stone and ash and killing thousands around the Bay of Naples. Titus appointed two former consuls to coordinate the relief effort and contributed large sums from the imperial treasury. He visited Pompeii once after the eruption and again the following year.

  During his second visit to Pompeii, in the spring of 80, a fire broke out in Rome and burned for three days and three nights. Cassius Dio listed the buildings destroyed: Agrippa's Pantheon, the Temple of Jupiter, the Diribitorium, parts of the Theatre of Pompey, and the Saepta Julia, among others. The damage was less than the Great Fire of 64, but still severe. Suetonius also records that a plague broke out during the fire, though the nature of the disease and the death toll remain unknown. Titus again provided personal compensation to affected communities. His reign also saw a rebellion in Britannia, where Gnaeus Julius Agricola pushed into Caledonia and established several forts. For this Titus received the title of imperator for the fifteenth time, between the 9th of September and the 31st of December 79 AD.

• 6. The Colosseum and Its Games

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  Construction of the Flavian Amphitheatre had begun in 70 under Vespasian and was completed in 80 under Titus. The building was designed not only as a venue but as a monument to the Flavian dynasty's military achievements in Judaea. Adjacent to the amphitheatre, Titus also ordered the construction of new public baths, the Baths of Titus, completed hastily to open alongside the arena.

  The inaugural games lasted a hundred days. They included gladiatorial combat, battles between wild animals including elephants and cranes, mock naval battles for which the theatre was flooded, and both horse and chariot races. During the games, wooden balls were dropped into the crowd, each inscribed with a prize: clothing, gold, or slaves, which could be exchanged for the designated item.

  At the closing of the games, Titus formally dedicated the amphitheatre and the baths. It was his final recorded act as emperor. He left Rome for the Sabine territories, fell ill at the first roadside station, and died of a fever there, reportedly in the same farmhouse where his father had died. His last words, according to the sources, were: "I have made but one mistake."

• 7. What the Historians Said

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  Titus ruled for just over two years, from the death of Vespasian in 79 to his own death on the 13th of September 81 AD. His successor Domitian's first act as emperor was to deify his brother.

  Suetonius described Titus as the delight and darling of the human race. Cassius Dio was more measured. Dio observed that Titus's good reputation may have owed something to the brevity of his reign: he survived his accession by only two years, two months, and twenty days, which gave him no opportunity for the kind of wrongdoing that longer reigns invite. Dio compared him to Augustus, arguing that Augustus would never have been loved had he ruled a shorter time, while Titus might not have deserved his fame had he ruled longer.

  Josephus, the primary source on the Jewish Wars, became a Roman citizen in 71 and took the name Flavius from his patrons. He received an annual pension and lived in the Flavian palace. His War of the Jews portrays the Jewish leadership as weak and disorganised and places blame for the revolt on the rebels themselves. Later scholars have questioned his neutrality. The historian Tacitus, who began his public career in 80 or 81 and credits the Flavians with his advancement, covered this period in his Histories, but only the first five books survive; the sections covering Titus's and Domitian's reigns have been lost.

  Pliny the Elder dedicated his Naturalis Historia to Titus, though Pliny himself died during the eruption of Vesuvius. In contrast to Roman praise, Jewish memory preserved "Titus the Wicked" as a destroyer of the Temple. The Babylonian Talmud attributed his death to an insect that flew into his nose and ate at his brain over seven years, a story understood by later Rabbinic scholars including Azariah de Rossi as allegory about divine retribution rather than literal history. Cassius Dio believed Titus's cryptic final words referred to his failure to execute Domitian when it was discovered that Domitian had been openly plotting against him.