THE FLAVIAN FAMILY.
62-96.
The ablest of all Nero's officers was Titus Flavius Vespasianus, a
stern, rigid old soldier, who, with his son of the same name, was in the
East, preparing to put down a great rising of the Jews. He waited to see
what was going to happen, and in a very few weeks old Galba had offended
the soldiers by his saving ways; there was a rising against him, and
another soldier named Otho became Emperor; but the legions from Gaul
marched up under Vitellius to dethrone him, and he killed himself to
prevent other bloodshed.
When the Eastern army heard of these changes, they declared they would
make an Emperor like the soldiers of the West, and hailed Vespasian as
Emperor. He left his son Titus to subdue Judea, and set out himself for
Italy, where Vitellius had given himself up to riot and feasting. There
was a terrible fight and fire in the streets of Rome itself, and the
Gauls, who chiefly made up Vitellius' army, did even more mischief than
the Gauls of old under Brennus; but at last Vespasian triumphed.
Vitellius was taken, and, after being goaded along with the point of a
lance, was put to death. There had been eighteen months of confusion,
and Vespasian began his reign in the year 70.
It was just then that his son Titus, having taken all the strongholds in
Galilee, though they were desperately defended by the Jews, had advanced
to besiege Jerusalem. All the Christians had heeded the warning that our
blessed Lord had left them, and were safe at a city in the hills called
Pella; but the Jews who were left within were fiercely quarrelling among
themselves, and fought with one another as savagely as they fought with
the enemy. Titus threw trenches round and blockaded the city; and the
famine within grew to be most horrible. Some died in their houses, but
the fierce lawless zealots rushed up and down the streets, breaking into
the houses where they thought food was to be found. When they smelt
roasting in one grand dwelling belonging to a lady, they rushed in and
asked for the meat, but even they turned away in horror when she
uncovered the remains of her own little child, whom she had been eating.
At last the Roman engines broke down the walls of the lower city, and
with desperate struggling the Romans entered, and found every house full
of dead women and children. Still they had the Temple to take, and the
Jews had gathered there, fancying that, at the worst, the Messiah would
appear and save them. Alas! they had rejected Him long ago, and this was
the time of judgment. The Romans fought their way in, up the marble
steps, slippery with blood and choked with dead bodies; and fire raged
round them. Titus would have saved the Holy Place as a wonder of the
world, but a soldier threw a torch through a golden latticed window, and
the flame spread rapidly. Titus had just time to look round on all the
rich gilding and marbles before it sank into ruins. He took a terrible
vengeance on the Jews. Great numbers were crucified, and the rest were
either taken to the amphitheatres all over the empire to fight with wild
beasts, or were sold as slaves, in such numbers that, cheap as they
were, no one would buy them. And yet this wonderful nation has lived on
in its dispersion ever since. The city was utterly overthrown and sown
with salt, and such treasures as could be saved from the fire were
carried in the triumph of Titus--namely, the shew-bread table, the
seven-branched candlestick, and the silver trumpets--and laid up as
usual among the spoils dedicated to Jupiter. Their figures are to be
seen sculptured on the triumphal arch built in honor of Titus, which
still stands at Rome.
[Illustration: ARCH OF TITUS.]
These Flavian Cæsars were great builders. Much had to be restored at
Rome after the two great fires, and they built a new Capitol and new
Forum, besides pulling down Nero's Golden House, and setting up on part
of the site the magnificent baths known as the Baths of Titus. Going to
the bath, to be steamed, rubbed, anointed, and perfumed by the slaves,
was the great amusement of an idle Roman's day, for in the waiting-rooms
he met all his friends and heard the news; and these rooms were splendid
halls, inlaid with marble, and adorned with the statues and pictures
Nero had brought from Greece. On part of the gardens was begun what was
then called the Flavian Amphitheatre, but is now known as the Colosseum,
from the colossal statue that stood at its door--a wonderful place, with
a succession of galleries on stone vaults round the area, on which every
rank and station, from the Emperor and Vestal Virgins down to the
slaves, had their places, whence to see gladiators and beasts struggle
and perish, on sands mixed with scarlet grains to hide the stain, and
perfumed showers to overcome the scent of blood, and under silken
embroidered awnings to keep off the sun.
Vespasian was an upright man, and though he was stern and unrelenting,
his reign was a great relief after the capricious tyranny of the last
Claudii. He and his eldest son Titus were plain and simple in their
habits, and tried to put down the horrid riot and excess that were
ruining the Romans, and they were feared and loved. They had great
successes too. Britain was subdued and settled as far as the northern
hills, and a great rising in Eastern Gaul subdued. Vespasian was accused
of being avaricious, but Nero had left the treasury in such a state that
he could hardly have governed without being careful. He died in the year
79, at seventy years old. When he found himself almost gone, he desired
to be lifted to his feet, saying that an Emperor should die standing.
[Illustration: VESUVIUS PREVIOUS TO THE ERUPTION OF A.D. 63.]
He left two sons, Titus and Domitian. Titus was more of a scholar than
his father, and was gentle and kindly in manner, so that he was much
beloved. He used to say, "I have lost a day," when one went by without
his finding some kind act to do. He was called the delight of mankind,
and his reign would have been happy but for another great fire in Rome,
which burnt what Nero's fire had left. In his time, too, Mount Vesuvius
suddenly woke from its rest, and by a dreadful eruption destroyed the
two cities at its foot, Herculaneum and Pompeii. The philosopher
Plinius, who wrote on geography and natural history, was stifled by the
sulphurous air while fleeing from the showers of stones and ashes
cast up by the mountain. His nephew, called Pliny the younger, has left
a full account of the disaster, and the cloud like a pine tree that hung
over the mountain, the noises, the earthquake, and the fall at last of
the ashes and lava. Drusilla, the wife of Felix, the governor before
whom St. Paul pleaded, also perished. Herculaneum was covered with solid
lava, so that very little could be recovered from it; but Pompeii, being
overwhelmed with dust or ashes, was only choked, and in modern days has
been discovered, showing perfectly what an old Roman town was
like--amphitheatre, shops, bake-houses, and all. Some skeletons have
been found: a man with his keys in a cellar full of treasure, a priest
crushed by a statue of Isis, a family crowded into a vault, a sentry at
his post; and in other cases the ashes perfectly moulded the impression
of the figure they stifled, and on pouring plaster into them the forms
of the victims have been recovered, especially two women, elder and
younger, just as they fell at the gate, the girl with her head hidden in
her mother's robe.
[Illustration: PERSECUTION OF THE CHRISTIANS.]
Titus died the next year, and his son-in-law Tacitus, who wrote the
history of those reigns, laid the blame on his brother Domitian, who was
as cruel and savage a tyrant as Nero. He does seem to have been shocked
at the wickedness of the Romans. Even the Vestal Virgins had grown
shameless, and there was hardly a girl of the patrician families in Rome
well brought up enough to become one. The blame was laid on forsaking
the old religion, and what the Romans called "Judaising," which meant
Christianity, was persecuted again. Flavius Clemens, a cousin of the
Emperor, was thus accused and put to death; and probably it was this
which led to St. John, the last of the Apostles, being brought to Rome
and placed in a cauldron of boiling oil by the Lateran Gate; but a
miracle was wrought in his behalf, and the oil did him no hurt, upon
which he was banished to the Isle of Patmos.
The Colosseum was opened in Domitian's time, and the shows of
gladiators, fights with beasts, and even sea-fights, when the arena was
flooded, exceeded all that had gone before. There were fights between
women and women, dwarfs and cranes. There is an inscription at Rome
which has made some believe that the architect of the Colosseum was one
Gandentius, who afterwards perished there as a Christian.
Domitian affronted the Romans by wearing a gold crown with little
figures of the gods on it. He did strange things. Once he called
together all his council in the middle of the night on urgent business,
and while they expected to hear of some foreign enemy on the borders, a
monstrous turbot was brought in, and they were consulted whether it was
to be cut in pieces or have a dish made on purpose for it. Another time
he invited a number of guests, and they found themselves in a black
marble hall, with funeral couches, each man's name graven on a column
like a tomb, a feast laid as at a funeral, and black boys to wait on
them! This time it was only a joke; but Domitian did put so many people
to death that he grew frightened lest vengeance should fall on him, and
he had his halls lined with polished marble, that he might see as in a
glass if any one approached him from behind. But this did not save him.
His wife found that he meant to put her to death, and contrived that a
party of servants should murder him, A.D. 96.
[Illustration: COIN OF NERO.]