He Regretted One Thing — Titus: A Cloud Like a Pine Tree

September AD 81. Titus travels to the land of the Sabines, to the family’s country estate. Bad omens weigh on him. At the first stop he comes down with a fever. They carry him on in a litter. Suetonius writes that he drew back the curtains, looked at the sky and complained that his life was being taken from him though he had not deserved it (Titus 10).

Which one? He did not say. There was much speculation. Most often people spoke of an affair with Domitia, the wife of his younger brother. Suetonius does not believe it: Domitia swore that there had been nothing between them, and she would have boasted had it been otherwise (Titus 10).

Meanwhile his younger brother, Domitian, had been plotting throughout his entire reign. He stirred up the army and thought of fleeing to the legions. Titus could not bring himself to punish him. He called him his partner and successor, and in private begged him with tears to return his love (Suetonius, Titus 9). Dio knows both versions of the “one thing” and himself chooses the second: Titus regretted not having killed his brother when he caught him plotting. He preferred to suffer at his brother’s hands, and left the empire to such a man (66.26).

Domitian does not wait. While Titus is still breathing, he races to Rome, enters the Praetorian camp and gives the soldiers what his brother used to give them. He comes out with the title of emperor (Dio 66.26). Suetonius writes that he ordered his brother to be left as if dead before he had drawn his last breath (Domitian 2). According to Dio the common version says it was the brother who hastened his death; others write of a natural death. We do not know the truth.

Titus dies on September 13, AD 81, in the same house as his father. He is forty-one. He ruled for two years, two months and twenty days. The people mourn him as if he were one of their own family. Senators run to the Curia before anyone convenes them. At the still-closed doors they thank him as they never thanked him in his lifetime (Suetonius, Titus 11).

He came to the throne with a reputation for cruelty and debauchery. He is remembered as the best of emperors. Cassius Dio cites a cold-eyed explanation that was repeated in Rome:

Maybe he was lucky not to have had time to disappoint. Maybe he really did change. One thing is certain: in twenty-six months he got a volcano, a fire and a plague, and each time — Suetonius and Dio write — he helped, giving of his own and taking nothing of others’.

In the next episode: The new emperor begins by deifying his brother. Then he has himself addressed as lord and god.

He will rule for fifteen years — longer than anyone since Tiberius.