Vespasian
The way in which Vespasian met his death is very much in keeping with the character portrait that survives of him from antiquity. Histories and biographies show Vespasian as a light-hearted, witty man. And because, as we’ve seen so far, the manner in which an emperor lived his life is often reflected in the manner in which he departed it, it should come as no surprise that humor features large in the death of Vespasian.
While away in Campania in July of 79 AD, Vespasian suffered a minor illness. We don’t know the details, but it was enough to convince him to head back to Rome and start putting his affairs in order. Famously, upon first feeling ill he was said to have joked, Vae, puto deus fio,
“Alas, I think I am becoming a god”
making reference to the now-common practice of deifying emperors (the Senate did, in fact, posthumously declare him a god).
However, his health deteriorated rapidly, not helped by the fact that he was used to taking long, cold baths—just as any good Roman should—and therefore had an underlying intestinal disorder. He stopped off at Rieti, a city not far from Rome in the region of Lazio, but soon found himself confined to his bed. From there he continued to receive embassies and deal with official business, but a sudden bout of diarrhea on June 23 convinced him this was the end. Exclaiming that an emperor should die on his feet, he struggled out of bed, dying in the arms of those attending him.
So goes the official version. Scratch below the surface, however, and you find something sinister about the reign and character of Vespasian. Like Augustus, he was the first emperor of a new dynasty, a man who had only come to power by merit of being the only man left standing after a costly civil war. War in all its forms must inevitably be followed by peacetime. But in the aftermath of civil wars, rarely are such peacetimes jovial.
We should imagine Vespasian’s reign as one characterized by intense propaganda, severe censorship, and the rooting out and eradication of any past (or potential future) enemies. One indication of this is the fact that there is hardly a bad word to say about Vespasian in the surviving literature. History, after all, is often written by the victors.