Vespasian: Money Doesn’t Stink

Vespasian: Money Doesn’t Stink (The son of a tax collector, whom Caligula had covered in mud and Nero threw out for dozing at a concert. A prisoner foretold him the throne, Egypt gave him grain, and his son gave him Jerusalem. Seven chapters, four films and a treasury to fill.) — lesson 12 of the course: 7 parts, about 33 min of reading.

Vespasian becomes emperor as a man nobody had been thinking about: the son of a tax collector, a muleteer, an old soldier whom Nero threw out for dozing off at a concert. The episode leads from the camp at Jotapata, where the prisoner Josephus calls him “Caesar,” through Egypt, from which he fed Rome, and the siege of Jerusalem, which Titus conducted in his name, to the triumph, Masada and the treasury that had to be filled after the civil war. It contains questions about what is certain and what was added after the fact, a decision to make, a dispute over the burning of the Temple, a game about taxes and four films. The third episode of the second season of the series about the emperors of Rome.

Films

• The Prisoner from Jotapata — Galilee, AD 67: a prisoner in chains, Joseph son of Matthias, tells the Roman general Vespasian that he will become emperor.
• Jerusalem, AD 70 — The siege of Jerusalem from spring to September AD 70 on an old view of the city: the camps, the walls, the Antonia, the Temple.
• The Spoils of Jerusalem — Rome, AD 71: Vespasian and Titus ride in a joint triumph, and among the spoils they carry objects from the Temple in Jerusalem.
• My Sons or No One — The Flavian family tree in AD 79: who in Vespasian’s family is still alive, and on whom the new dynasty rests.

Articles

• The Prisoner from Jotapata — Vespasian: Money Doesn’t Stink — The prisoner says “Caesar” to a man who has not a drop of the Caesars’ blood in his veins. Vespasian is fifty-seven, bald, with the look of a man who is always wrestling with something.
• The Emperor from Egypt — Vespasian: Money Doesn’t Stink — In two years Vespasian takes the whole plain and all the cities of Judaea except Jerusalem. In that time Nero dies in Italy, and after him Galba, Otho and Vitellius fight over the throne.
• Jerusalem — Vespasian: Money Doesn’t Stink — Let us go back four years. Spring of AD 66, Jerusalem.
• The Triumph — Vespasian: Money Doesn’t Stink — After the capture of Jerusalem the soldiers hail Titus as imperator and do not want to let him leave the province. They plead and even threaten: let him stay, or take them all with him.
• The Fortress on the Rock — Vespasian: Money Doesn’t Stink — Masada is King Herod’s fortress on a lone rock above the Dead Sea, with cliffs so deep the eye cannot reach the bottom. It is held by rebels under Eleazar ben Yair.
• Money Doesn’t Stink — Vespasian: Money Doesn’t Stink — The Rome the emperor finds in the autumn of AD 70 looks like a place after a war, because it is a place after a war. The Capitol is ashes, the streets are full of ruins from fires, and the treasury holds nothing.
• I Think I’m Becoming a God — Vespasian: Money Doesn’t Stink — In ten years there are many plots against him. Vespasian tells the Senate calmly: either my sons will succeed me, or no one will.