Reate (Rieti)

A Sabine town in central Italy, today Rieti. The Flavian family came from here: Vespasian’s grandfather, Titus Flavius Petro, was a burgher of Reate who fled from Pharsalus and came home to work as a debt collector. Vespasian was born on November 17, AD 9, in the nearby village of Falacrinae. When flatterers traced his family back to the founders of Reate and a companion of Hercules, the emperor laughed at them (Suetonius, Vespasian 12). He spent every summer near Reate, at the springs of Aquae Cutiliae, and died there in AD 79. The place appears in the Vespasian episode, in the chapters “The Prisoner from Jotapata” and “I Think I’m Becoming a God”.