Emperor Titus

In this episode, we explore the remarkable - and often overlooked - life of Emperor Titus. We uncover the dramatic events that defined his life and reign: from the bloody conquest of Jerusalem to the catastrophic eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Joining us is Marc Hyden, author of 'Emperor Titus: The Right Hand of Vespasian'. He explains how a man who ruled for just two years left a lasting mark on Roman history. Produced by James Hickmann and edited by Dougal Patmore. Join Dan and the team for a special LIVE recording of Dan Snow's History Hit on Friday, 12th September 2025! To celebrate 10 years of the podcast, Dan is putting on a special show of signature storytelling, never-before-heard anecdotes from his often stranger-than-fiction career, as well as answering the burning questions you've always wanted to ask! Get tickets here, before they sell out: https://www.kingsplace.co.uk/whats-on/words/dan-snows-history-hit/. We'd love to hear your feedback - you can take part in our podcast survey here: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on. You can also email the podcast directly at [email protected] mailto:[email protected]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Dan Snow?

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• 1:26Dan Snow?

  Hi everyone, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. The burial of Pompey, the destruction of the Jewish temple in Jerusalem, the taming of Britain after Boudica, the rebuilding of Rome and the opening of the Colosseum. The subject of my podcast today really was a central figure in the Roman world for decades, and those were decades that would shape much of what followed.

• 1:50Dan Snow?

  His story begins in 39 AD, and that was at a time when the Roman Empire was new. Emperors like Caligula and Claudius would forge new ways of running their massive domain. They needed men. They needed men of talent, men without names. They needed men without statues of their wonderful senatorial ancestors in their tricliniums, their dining rooms. They wanted men who did not have illustrious forbears or lineages. They wanted men who did not harbour dreams of reconstituting the Republic. They wanted men who were happy to bow to an emperor. And those were men like Vespasian, or to give him his full name, Titus Flavius Vespasianus. He was an able soldier, he wasn't very glamorous, he had

• 2:33Dan Snow?

  humble origins, he had a bit of a rough manner. He got the job done, and he helped Claudius to conquer Britain. Nero sent him east to deal with a Jewish revolt. And as Vespasian climbed the ladder, his sons went in his wake. And one of them, Titus, received the education of a member of the Roman Empire elite. In fact, he really was part of that elite. He was educated alongside the son of the Emperor Claudius, Britannicus. They became friends. He witnessed Britannicus's cruel demise. So it was clear that Vespasian and his sons were moving in exalted circles. And the family made the final jump, the final rung of the ladder, thanks to the implosion of the Julio Claudians, those descendants of the Emperor Augustus, or more importantly, of his wife Livia. That's the family that

• 3:18Dan Snow?

  supplied all the emperors to that point. But in 69 AD, the reign of Nero, the life of Nero, ended very badly. There was civil war, empresses came and went in the space of weeks and months. And it was good old Vespasian and his son who seized that moment and took the imperial throne, offering stability, security, reliability. This episode is all about Vespasian's son, the Emperor Titus, an emperor who deserves to be better remembered. He ruled over a Roman world that was, by and large, at peace. After the appalling violence of the Jewish revolt in the East, the emperor faced no great internal or external challenges.

• 4:03Dan Snow?

  So I'm not saying it was the 1990s, but it was certainly more peaceful than was common in the long story of the Roman Empire. He ruled for only two years, but in that time, he opened the Colosseum. He presided over the fallout as Vespius erupted and Pompey was buried. And he made key decisions following on from his destruction of Jerusalem and its Jewish temple, which he conducted when he was working as an enforcer for his father. He was, for that reason, despised by the Jews. But he's really admired by subsequent Roman historians. So Titania says he was the delight and darling of the human race. Such surpassing ability

• 4:44Dan Snow?

  had he by nature, art, or good fortune to win the affections of all men. And that too, which is no easy task, while he was emperor. So Titonius obviously is not, including the Jewish community in that description. But it is true that subsequent Romans held him up as one of the greatest of emperors. Yet today, he's probably slipped down our lists. Let's find out why. We're going to talk to Mark Hayden. He's a newspaper columnist and ancient Roman historian. He's written books about key Roman figures, like the OG Roman, Romulus, the legendary founder, like Marius, with whom the rock set in arguably. His latest book is Emperor Titus, The Right Hand of Vespasian. Enjoy.

• 5:49Dan Snow?

  Mark, thanks for coming on the show.

• 5:51Speaker 02

  Hey, thanks so much for having me. Really excited.

• 5:53Dan Snow?

  Don't you think it's strange, given what we think we know about the Roman world and this sort of hereditary imperial office, that actually the imperial crown very rarely passed from father to son? It's so strange, isn't it?

• 6:07Speaker 02

  It is. You see all these forms of government in the past and currently where it's a hereditary monarchy, essentially. And Rome was never designed originally, save for the monarchical period, the empire wasn't designed to be a hereditary monarchy. And the very first person, a biological son to succeed his father, was Titus. There were prior opportunity, Britannicus was the son of Claudius, but he was passed over in favor for Nero. And I think we all know how that turned out.

• 6:37Dan Snow?

  Yeah, poor Britannicus. I mean, apart from anything else, that's a sad we didn't get a Roman emperor with our name on it, but also he had a... Particularly unpleasant fate at the hands of his stepbrother. Tell us about Vespasian. I mean, not only is it strange that they're the first to transmit that imperial crown from father to son, but very unlikely wearer of the crown in the first place. Let's just quickly go back to Vespasian, just explain who he was and how he started this new dynasty.

• 7:01Speaker 02

  Well, Vespasian came from this Flavian family that kind of sprouted out of obscurity a few generations earlier. And in fact, one of his ancestors might have been a lowly farmhand in northern Italy. It didn't take long, a few generations for the family to become the preeminent dynasty in the Roman Empire. But even Vespasian's rise was a bit muddled. When he was working his way up the cursus honorum, which is the path of honors, where you hold a series of offices, political offices and militaries, you work your way up. It was a checkered experience for him. Caligula was upset with how he was cleaning the streets, so he had him pelted with mud. And then another time when Vespasian was

• 7:43Speaker 02

  governor in Africa, what was probably a food riot, the people pelted him with turnips. So this poor guy that was destined to be emperor and perhaps one of the greatest emperors in Rome's history, had a history of having Titus tossed at him and ruining his clothes, which I find fascinating.

• 8:00Dan Snow?

  I suspect that might keep us all a bit more real. Perhaps the two are related. Is it Vespasian or is it, as you said, a generation, is it that he's a particularly effective soldier, administration official? Like, what is about Vespasian? And then, of course, timing, but we'll come on to that. What is it about Vespasian that really marks him out as successful?

• 8:16Speaker 02

  You know, I mean, that's a bit of a tough question. I mean, some of it's opportunity. He was in the right place at the right time and that he was also easy to look over. So he was a good military man, but he wasn't particularly inspiring. And that is probably the reason in part why Nero assigned him to take over the legions and subdue Judea, which was in revolt starting in 66 AD. So this is someone he couldn't, wouldn't have expected to be able to challenge him for popularity, challenge him for succeeding to the throne, or anything along those lines. But then the year of the four emperors happened, there are these civil wars. This uprising Nero ends up killing himself with the help of one of his friends.

• 8:58Speaker 02

  And then here's Vespasian sitting there with tens of thousands of troops at his disposal. And a very capable son who has been making diplomatic connections. And very quickly, much of the empire says, hey, this Vespasian guy might work out as emperor. So then they decided to stake their claim and they were successful in the end.

• 9:17Dan Snow?

  Yeah, just quick shout out for Vespasian. He actually conquered the part of Britain that I'm sitting in now. And I'm looking out of the Isle of Wight, which he conquered. It's called Vectus back then. So, so we've got a local connection with Vespasian. So he's a successful soldier. Nero effectively takes his own life and four emperors, one after the other in that fateful year 69 AD. Vespasian emerges. This was the beginning of the Flavian dynasty. He's the first emperor not to have the blood of the original, you know, Juliusus and Augustus in his veins. I mean, was, was his hold on power pretty tenuous at the start? And by the way, what role was his son Titus already playing at this point?

• 9:52Speaker 02

  Well, his son played a role as kind of a, he was very skilled in diplomacy. So he helped bridge the gap between Vespasian and Mucianus, who was a governor in Syria, who also had troops at his disposal. And he was a very able politician as well. And in fact, it was Mucianus that they used as the administrator in Rome before Vespasian arrived. And his grasp on power was probably still pretty tenuous. There were no other serious claimants by late 69 because Galba had died. Otho had died. Vitellius had died. So that kind of left Vespasian as the last man standing. And he was thrilled and he was in Africa at the time in Egypt.

• 10:33Speaker 02

  And he's had Mucianus go to Rome and start working through things. Make sure their rule was safe and secure. But also I think that there, and I'm not the first person to have said this. Vespasian probably delayed his arrival in Rome because Mucianus needed to kill some enemies to make sure that their ascent was perfectly fine and safe. And then they had Domitian acting as the Flavian mouthpiece. He was a figurehead, had zero power, but he was there in Rome along with Mucianus.

• 11:01Dan Snow?

  And we should say Domitian, by the way, is Vespasian's other son.

• 11:04Speaker 02

  That's correct. So after they reinstituted control or instituted control and probably killed enough political enemies. Finally, Vespasian, probably in mid to late, sometime in the autumn of 70 AD, decided to head to Rome, put on his laurel leaves and start acting as emperor.

• 11:21Dan Snow?

  And he had a lot of work to do, the famous fire under Nero, but there was also a fire in Rome during the fighting of 69 AD, so Rome was itself badly damaged. The empire's suffered its, well, first, first big civil war, we can say perhaps, and there would be many more in the coming decades and centuries. Did Vespasian save the empire at this point?

• 11:43Speaker 02

  You know, I don't know if he saved it. So there's what's happening inside of the city of Rome and then what's happening out in the provinces. The provinces probably, they didn't notice too much of a difference, I would imagine, except for where the fighting actually was. They continued paying their taxes and they farmed and did their thing. If Vespasian wouldn't have risen to the occasion, I suspect someone else would have. However, he turned out to be a pretty good administrator and we saw an extension of the Pax Romana, the Roman peace, when he was there. So could someone else have done it? Probably, but maybe not as well.

• 12:17Dan Snow?

  We've mentioned both of his sons. We've got Titus and Domitian, they're obviously involved. Titus has sort of grown up, I presume, as his father's enjoyed ever greater honours and status. He's had the upbringing of a more aristocratic young Roman. Was Titus more at home with his people of senatorial class?

• 12:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, so he was born around 39 AD and he also entered the Cursus Honorum. And what really helped him and Vespasian's rise is Nero murdered his mother. Agrippina was not a fan of the Flavians and in fact, when Nero killed or had Britannicus killed, Titus was sitting right next to him and drank some of the poison too, which nearly killed Titus and he had a long-term ailment because of this. But with Britannicus out of the way, Nero secured his grip on power. Then he killed Agrippina, which allowed the Flavians to rise and Titus went through a similar process as Vespasian, as he went through the Cursus Honorum, became a senator.

• 13:16Speaker 02

  And when Nero assigned Vespasian to subdue the revolt in Judea, Vespasian assigned his son to lead the 15th Legion. So together they fought in Judea and Galilee and the surroundings as they tried to subdue...

• 13:31Speaker 02

  The insurgents there. Now, when Vespasian became emperor, he allowed his son to finish off the war. And by this point, there was primarily Jerusalem was where the thick of the fighting was left to be done, and it would be an extended siege. And then there were some other fortresses like Herodion, Macaris, as well as Masada. And Titus got to oversee the Jerusalem siege, which turned out to be incredibly bloody.

• 13:54Dan Snow?

  It's savage, savage fighting in Judea. What is the upshot? What is the thing for which Titus is primarily remembered in Judea?

• 14:02Speaker 02

  I mean, I think it's the extended siege of Jerusalem, Titus. You know, he was looked at as this consummate commander that did the unthinkable and perhaps unconquerable in Judea. But really, he had, he also had a bit of a checkered history. He was a bit of a headstrong, immature commander, unlike his father. And really, there's issues of ambushes, losing siege engines, siege ramps, and all these things that happened. But despite that, he had, gosh, maybe 65 to 80,000 men at his disposal to lay siege to Jerusalem. And after several months, he was successful. But at the end, according to Josephus, over a million Jews died, most from famine. And some of the stories that came out of there are just appalling. Josephus recorded one terrible instance of a mother eating her

• 14:47Speaker 02

  own child, things that make us cringe to this day and really pull at our heartstrings.

• 14:54Dan Snow?

  So Titus was effective. There is a debate, isn't there, whether Titus, perhaps as a young man, would have been in Britain during Boudica's revolt? Why do you stand on that?

• 15:02Speaker 02

  Well, I think he would have been there after she died. So there's the Boudica revolt, where she raises hundreds of thousands of people to fight against the Romans and enjoy some success originally. But Paulinus Suetonius ends up winning the day. And after Boudica dies, is killed, however she passes, Nero transferred some troops from Germania to Britannia. And it's kind of been assumed throughout history that Titus, because he was in Germania probably around that time, and it's assumed that that's when he was transferred to Britannia. So he could have played a role as a tribune in subduing the remnants of the revolt, or he could have just been on guard duty. It's really impossible

• 15:44Speaker 02

  to know what he did, because no one recorded anything about his time in the modern UK, other than to say, he did a good job.

• 15:52Dan Snow?

  So let's get back to Judea now. He's been given command by his dad, who's the emperor. He's besieging Jerusalem. He's built walls right around the city. There's cannibalism going on inside the city. It's just shocking. He's bringing down bombardment on the Jewish defences. The climax of that siege, of that battle is so important. Well, it's so shocking, but important for subsequent history as well, isn't it? Because, take me through it. Titus's legionaries, they storm the city and they storm Temple Mount.

• 16:17Speaker 02

  Right. So Jerusalem back in this era had three walls. They weren't concentric. They just kind of kept adding on to make sure that they could hold, protect the people that were there. And one by one, using siege ramps, siege towers and battering rams, Titus plows through slowly but surely these massive walls. And then what's really left at the end, where the biggest holdout is, is the Temple Mount. The temple complex is where a lot of them are holding out. It's built exceptionally well. And really, Titus and the Romans just have a terrible time breaking in. There's these skirmishes.

• 16:51Dan Snow?

  And Mark, sorry to interrupt there. Mark, we should say people will be familiar with the name Temple Mount now. It's actually got the mosque on it now. It's Alaxa Mosque. But it was called the Temple Mount because it had the Jewish temple on it, the great and famous Jewish temple.

• 17:02Speaker 02

  That's correct. So they finally, they have these skirmishes going back and forth. They're burning colonnades. They're burning these resplendent gates that are coated in silver. And finally, the Romans get in. And one by one, these legionaries start throwing firebrands into the Holy Temple. Now, it depends if you want to listen to Josephus or some of the other ancient writers. According to Josephus, which I don't believe this to be fully accurate, Titus convened his lieutenants and just tried to figure out what to do with the temple. And he decides, let's give orders to save it. It's beautiful. It's a work of art and it's never offended Titus. This is what we're told in Josephus. So they disseminate the orders and then the troops completely ignore him. And they go and they try to burn

• 17:45Speaker 02

  it down. They loot it. They plunder the surroundings. And Titus even goes in person, tried to save it. He goes into the temple, is like, okay, it's not lost yet. So he has lancers try to guard it and push back his own troops. Something I just don't know if actually happened. But it was for naught. One soldier torched the hinges on the door and then the temple was irreparably lost. And it's never been rebuilt since, which is a terrible reminder to the people, the Jewish faith, even to this day, of the tragedy that unfolded.

• 18:16Dan Snow?

  And over the following years, there would be a Roman temple, there would be a mosque, there would be a, after the first crusade, Christian site of worship there, that HQ of the Knights Templar, which is where they get that name, and then, and then obviously now is a mosque again, mosque complex. And that all takes back to this astonishing moment. What about the wider settlement? Did the Romans, did Titus achieve his aims here in Judea? Was Judea brought back to the fold? And what else did he do?

• 18:41Speaker 02

  So, the fighting actually wasn't over when the temple fell, because the, a lot of the insurgents, the revolutionaries, they snuck out, and then they hid in different parts of Jerusalem that hadn't been completely subdued, like Herod's palace, and some even went down into the sewers, thinking that they could wait it out. And that was a deadly, deadly decision from the do, and sewers are disgusting as is, and the Romans, they were not going to leave until they got all of them. So, the fighting continued for some time, but the battle was largely over. And Titus, again, according to Josephus, who's a Flavian propagandist, he wanted to make the Flavians look as merciful and as kind as possible, while also showing that they killed so many people. He said that Titus, like, offered multiple times, the insurgents, the opportunity to leave Jerusalem, fight

• 19:26Speaker 02

  elsewhere, and he would save the city, he would secure the temple as well, and they ripoffed him every single time. So, what happened is, the fighting continued, and he let his soldiers, as we already talked about, destroy the temple, but also the rest of Jerusalem, leaving, I think, only three towers standing. And those three towers were left standing as a testament to Titus's supposed strength. So then, all of these temple contents that, again, if Titus wanted to save the temple, he probably wouldn't have stolen all the contents of the temple, he probably would have left that to the Jews. But he steals all of the stuff, and decides to take it back for his triumph, and like I mentioned, Josephus said, over a million people died of the siege, Titus places the number to no more than 600,000, modern historians probably say more like 100,000.

• 20:10Speaker 02

  Whatever the case, he also enslaved supposedly over 100,000 Jews, where they were sent to mines, they were probably sent to arenas to die. It was a brutal existence, and many of them, those poor people, they were sent to also walk through Titus and Vespasian's triumph through Rome, where they were, probably had produce hurled at them, and all sorts of insults, and then most of them were cast off to work in the mines, where they died probably not long after.

• 20:36Dan Snow?

  Wow, so it's a Roman-style peace?

• 20:39Speaker 02

  It is from Titus, the Romans, Vespasians' point of view, at that point Judea, Galilee, Peria, Idumia, that whole area was subdued. It was brought back into the fold, but I mean, it was utter devastation. Of course, there were the three fortresses that they subdued in the following years. By 73 or 74, the war was over with from the Roman perspective, but some Sicarii did escape and they went to Alexandria where they tried to foment another rebellion. Now, the local Jewish population, they weren't having it and they ensured that there was no rebellion, a widespread one. But despite this, Titus and Vespasians showed that they weren't as merciful and peaceful as you might think, or at least inclined to

• 21:21Speaker 02

  the Jews, because there was a Jewish temple in the Onaius district. And this stood as a kind of a minor rival to the Jerusalem temple where they could conduct sacrifices there. And after this supposed attempted uprising, they had that toppled. So again, if Titus wanted to save the temple in Jerusalem, we've also knocked down another temple. I don't know. I mean, he just wanted to destroy stuff. And I think that he may have seen the Jerusalem temple as the symbolic heart of the rebellion and destroying it was one of his priorities, probably.

• 21:54Dan Snow?

  The Jews that were left in Jerusalem, on around the city was destroyed, but the Jews that left had to pay a hated tax so the Romans could build a temple of Jupiter in the place of their temple, extraordinarily paid for by them. But then Titus, does he return to Rome? Well, I've seen the Arch of Titus in Rome, so presumably he and his daughter think they've got lots to celebrate.

• 22:12Speaker 02

  Well, he doesn't go immediately. And there's a theory about why. So it's September 70s AD when he's essentially finished in Jerusalem, but he doesn't sail back just yet. And there's a theory why. So to the east of Rome is the Parthian Empire, and that's kind of their main rival. And in fact, the Parthians had kicked the Romans' butts in the past when Crassus tried to invade. There's a theory that perhaps the Flavians were worried about the Parthians because they may have believed that the Romans were going to turn on them next. You already have upwards of 80,000 tribes at your disposal and you're right at their back doorstep. Why not invade? Supposedly Titus hung around a little bit longer so that he could assuage their concerns.

• 22:55Speaker 02

  But while he was hanging out there and probably pretty bored in the Near East, he goes on this tour of all these cities where he kills just probably thousands of Jewish captives, throws them in arenas and lets them fight it out with animals or against each other to the death. And it's great fun for the Romans, but it's again a terrible and lamentable outcome for some of these people. But after he has enough of this, he eventually sails back to Rome with his captives, with all the booty they stole from the temple. And then they march through Rome where they are received as conquering heroes. And Titus is this beloved figure. In the end, he actually becomes essentially a demigod. I mean, he's worshipped as a deity after he passes.

• 23:37Speaker 02

  But for the time, I mean, he's this conquering hero who's beloved by the masses.

• 23:44Dan Snow?

  Listen to Dan Snow's history, we're talking about Titus, we're coming up.

• 23:54Dan Snow?

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• 24:36Dan Snow?

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• 27:17Dan Snow?

  Is his dad threatened by that? Or is this good for the regime? His dad's busy building the amphitheatre, the so-called Colosseum in Rome. He's trying to boost his credentials. Is this victory for the family seen as a good thing by the dad?

• 27:29Speaker 02

  Absolutely. This is fantastic news for the Flavian family as he's setting up a dynasty. It's very clear from the beginning that Vespasian intended for Titus to succeed him eventually. As soon as Vespasian becomes emperor, Titus becomes Caesar. So he's marked as the heir apparent already. And then they share a consulship, although it's in absentia since Titus is busy and waging war at the time. Then Vespasian endows with all these other powers, tribunici potestas. Essentially, he has veto power. He can also convene the senate, produce legislation, and he probably enjoys a degree of imperium even when he returns to Rome. So he has power over the provincial armies. He is clearly the heir apparent.

• 28:13Speaker 02

  He is Vespasian's right hand. And in fact, the triumph, they were offered two triumphs for this victory, but Vespasian says, one's enough. Me and my son will do it together. So they march through as one. And I don't think that there's any real fear from Vespasian about Titus, although there's some hints of that in the ancient writings. I just don't really believe it. But despite this being a power sharing agreement between Vespasian and Titus, it's very clear that Vespasian's the one in control because there's one instance in which Vespasian raises taxes and he needs to find creative ways to do it. So he has a urine tax that is instituted. It sounds weird to modern listeners, and I understand that, but they use urine, human urine, for ammonia.

• 28:58Speaker 02

  So they would collect it and then they levied a tax on it. And this disgusted Titus. And to be honest, it is pretty disgusting when you think about it. So when the first tax collections come in, Vespasian holds the coins out to his son and he says, well, smell this. Does it have any odor? And Titus says, well, no. And Vespasian's response is, yet it comes from piss.

• 29:18Dan Snow?

  That's good.

• 29:20Dan Snow?

  So he hasn't lost his rough and ready manners.

• 29:23Speaker 02

  No, he stays like that until the end. He's a very witty person. And I should also mention the remarks from some that maybe Vespasian was a little bit worried about Titus. I think we should cast that to the side because Vespasian even made his son one of the Praetorian prefects. So that made him head of the Imperial Guard, over thousands of troops with one goal, and that is protecting the emperor. So he wouldn't have made his son, given his son like the sword to protect him if he was really worried about Titus's intentions.

• 29:54Dan Snow?

  Well, and he's a very sensible man because the Praetorian prefect, they've got a record of they're supposed to protect the emperor, but they often do exactly the opposite. So when Vespasian dies, you get that actually very rare thing in Roman imperial history, and certainly to this point, unknown, which is a son inherits pretty much peacefully from the father. How did it go? How was the transition?

• 30:16Speaker 02

  It was immediate. Vespasian decided to go to the countryside after a long illness. At first, no one was concerned about it. It seemed pretty mild, but it got worse and it became clear that he was going to pass. His physicians was telling him to chill out, just relax, don't be doing all of your imperial work. And of course, Vespasian didn't do that. The famous thing that he says is, as he's slowly dying, is that woe is me, me thinks I'm becoming a god. Because a lot of emperors were deified upon their death. So this was like his wittiness toward the very end. And then a bout of diarrhea hits the guy and he says, an emperor ought to die standing. And as he stands, he passes away. Whether Titus was with him or in Rome at the time is really unclear,

• 31:01Speaker 02

  but they had filled the senatorial ranks with pro Flavian allies. And then there was also the fact that Titus was the heir apparent. And this was presumably also in Vespasian's will, that he wanted his son to replace him. And when you also factor in that Titus already held many of the same powers as the emperor, had control of Praetorian Guard, there was really no way they could appoint anyone else. So it was a seamless process. He was inaugurated, but it must have been a rather sad time because he also had to organize a funeral for his father and then inter his remains. They placed him in the mausoleum of Augustus and eventually they created a temple of Vespasian and Titus.

• 31:43Dan Snow?

  What do we make of Titus as an emperor? He might not be an emperor that many people will have heard of or sort of placed in the top 10, but he was pretty effective, wasn't he?

• 31:52Speaker 02

  Titus wasn't emperor for long, and that was not his fault. But this is a person who, despite having some issues, showing some immaturity as a commander in Judea, as well as showing some kind of murderous and tyrannical tendencies as he protected his father, he became this emperor. He had this transformation. And this is kind of the the enigma of Titus. He was the antithesis of the so-called paradox of power. While serving as Vespasian's right-hand, Titus proved to be tyrannical, brutal, and an unforgiving enforcer. But as an emperor, he transformed into this loving and merciful father-like figure. He finished the Colosseum,

• 32:34Speaker 02

  held 100 days of games, which was something that, when you read the accounts, it's rather amazing. Everything that happened to the thousands of animals that died, that parts rather sad situation, as well as, we don't know how many slaves or gladiators died in this, which is lamentable as well. He built the, or at least finished the baths of Titus, which was this bath complex given to the Roman people so that they could use. It was either subsidized or free to use, we're not really sure. And he had a good monetary policy, which kept the economy fairly balanced. It was a rather peaceful time. And even when people tried to assassinate him, he proved incredibly merciful. There's this one instance of two patricians, these aristocrats that had planned to kill Titus. And somehow he found out about

• 33:17Speaker 02

  it. And he brought them to the palace. And he's like, hey, guys, I know you're trying to kill me. And he also found out that one of their mothers knew about it and was worried that he was going to kill him. So he sent a note to the mother. He's like, don't worry, he's fine. I'm not going to assassinate this person. And he tells him, he's like, I'll give you anything you want. I just can't give you the imperial power that came to me by fate. But anything else, I'll give it to you. And to prove that he was fine with them and very forgiving, he invited them to a banquet. Now, they probably thought that they were going to be poisoned, but they weren't. And he goes a step further. He invites them to sit in the imperial box at the Colosseum, where ritually, people that are working there, they would hand the gladiatorial swords to the emperor,

• 33:59Speaker 02

  and he would check to see if they were sharp enough. He handed the swords to these conspirators. And just to let them know, hey, you guys actually have the swords. I have nothing. I trust you, and I'm not gonna hurt you. So this kind of shows what kind of peaceful and merciful person he became once he became emperor. Now, was it real? Who knows? He may have been using a little bit of relying on counselors to try to present himself as this really merciful person, because we know that his successor Domitian turned out to be a murderous tyrant. So there might have been a murderous tyrant hiding within Titus, but he just had really good advisors. We don't know.

• 34:35Dan Snow?

  And so he maintains pretty good relations with the senatorial class. You don't get these dramatic fallings out that you get with Nero, for example. What about the empire as a whole, security? Was this a time of peace and stability?

• 34:48Speaker 02

  In most places, yes, but Agricola was busy in the UK subduing regions and trying to push deep and, according to some accounts, well into Scotland. So that was going on, and that actually started under Vespasian. But instead of sending his son Titus to do it, he relied on the local governor, who proved to be a very good commander. But other than this, it's a rather peaceful time. There is an instance of a pseudo Nero appearing, someone who played the liar, sang like Nero, looked like Nero in the East. And I don't really know what this guy wanted. Like, there was already an emperor. Did he think that they were gonna go, oh, you're still alive? We're gonna give you imperial power. We're very sorry about this. But he was a fraud.

• 35:31Speaker 02

  And I think that the Romans probably would have very quickly dispatched him, but he fled to the Parthian Empire, and the king decides to hold him in his custody, probably to try to undermine the Flavian position at some point. But it became clear even to the Parthians that this guy was a fraud. I think they probably killed him after they were being frustrated with him for so long.

• 35:53Dan Snow?

  So the army's strong. As you say, Gracchala looking at conquests in Britain, maybe even Ireland, but elsewhere, not a time of expansion.

• 36:01Speaker 02

  No, this is really a very peaceful time for the Romans, say, for what's going on in the modern UK. And really, they needed this. When Vespasian came to power, the Roman Empire was broken financially. There was the extended war in Judea. There were civil wars that had been siphoning away whatever money they had socked away. There was the Great Fire of Rome that took a lot of money to rebuild Rome. And there was heavy taxation in the provinces to try to cover this. So it was broken financially. Vespasian was able to get it on good financial footing. Titus continued that good fiscal responsibility as well. And part of that might have been, we don't want to go to war.

• 36:43Speaker 02

  Rome's expansion really slowed to this point. In Claudius's era, there was the expansion into England. But really, Nero, nothing happened. Vespasian was more about subduing what they already had. And really, I think they just needed to be content with what was going on currently, what they primarily had. And there was only so much that they could push forward. They wanted to go east, they had to fight the Parthians. They wanted to go north and east, they had to fight the Germanic tribes. And the Romans proved that they weren't terribly interested in that land. Couldn't grow great wine. So, you know, why go there?

• 37:15Dan Snow?

  So there's a time of retrenchments, time of rebuilding, and sounds pretty successful.

• 37:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. And it was a good respite for them. And that continued for some time. And it's really probably a benefit to the Romans that there was a time of peace. I mean, war tended to bring in booty and plunder and wealth and new land that they could tax. But the peace allowed them to save money and prepare for what was coming. And under Titus's successor Domitian, there were plenty of wars with different barbarian tribes. And this cost plenty of money. And Vespasian and Titus, their monetary policy was pretty solid. They didn't go through large debasements of their elite coin, which is known as a denarius. It was made of silver. And later, Roman emperors devalued it so much that it caused inflation, all sorts of problems. But Vespasian and Titus, they had a pretty consistent plan.

• 38:05Speaker 02

  Then Domitian, he increased the silver content, which is probably good in the long run. But he had to devalue it again, once all these wars started happening and they ran into the same problems. But Titus... He was a good financial administrator. This comes despite some of the terrible things that happened in his very short reign. There's a plague, there's another fire of Rome, and then there's Mount Vesuvius that just bulldozed cities, covering them up, which only until the modern era have we uncovered some of and seen just the terrible destruction that Iraq.

• 38:36Dan Snow?

  Yeah, well, let's talk about Vesuvius. The year he comes to the throne in 79, Vesuvius erupts, it destroys, you know, Herculaneum. Well, it covers Herculaneum and Pompeii and other settlements. What is the role of the emperor? What's the role of Roman state in trying to provide help? Or is it pretty hands off, pretty laissez faire?

• 38:53Speaker 02

  There's only so much about the emergency response. So the Roman welfare state, there is a bit of a welfare state. There's something known as the grain dole, where about 250,000 Romans within the city of Rome got free or subsidized grain on a regular basis. And this was the number two expenditure within the empire after the army. So they spent tons of money feeding people that were below the poverty line because there was a means test to make sure that rich people weren't taking free grain. So there was a role for Rome as a welfare state to some degree. And Nero even did this, during the great fire of Rome, he built temporary housing for people. So there was a role in emergencies for the Romans. So Mount Vesuvius blows its top and it is a terrible tragedy.

• 39:36Speaker 02

  As you mentioned, it covers Pompeii, Herculaneum, Aplantis, and probably some other smaller settlements as well. And it leaves this moonscape afterward. These people are frozen in time, but they're buried under all this pumice and all this ash and rock. What Titus does at this point, I'm quite sure that he uses some of his own purse to help a lot of these people that have been displaced, but he also gets a little creative because he sends some bureaucrats down there to try to provide assistance. And what they find is there's a lot of dead people and dead people don't own land anymore. So they have this vacant land that they're able to either give to the people that have been displaced, or they can sell that land and use it to help rebuild some of these lives.

• 40:17Speaker 02

  So he does actively engage in trying to help his people in creative ways, too, although I think some of it probably still came from the imperial purse. I don't know how many people wanted to buy land that had just been destroyed by a volcano.

• 40:31Dan Snow?

  More on the Emperor Titus after this.

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• 42:11Dan Snow?

  Just two years later, just two years later, extraordinary, isn't it, Mark? Titus dies. Pretty sudden. Do we suspect any foul play?

• 42:20Speaker 02

  Well, this is where it gets kind of fun for historians like me. So Titus has ruled for a couple of years. He's incredibly popular. The masses love him. He's taking care of them as a father-like emperor would be expected to be. And then he decides he wants to go vacation in the countryside, in the Sabine Country. So he goes out with some of his attendants. And at the first watering hole, all of a sudden, something is amiss. Titus is struck by a fever. And this is an incredibly high fever. And it's so fast-acting and terrible that Titus, he knows he's dying. And he opens up his litter curtains and looks at the sky, bemoaning his fate, and complains. To the gods, he's like, but I've only made one mistake.

• 43:04Speaker 02

  And we could talk about what that might have been because he never discloses it, of course. And then they hurry into the same farmhouse where his father died and then Titus dies not long after. So the questions, you know, what did he die of? And what was his solitary sin that he was worried about? Well, let's start with how he died or what might have caused it. So the ancient authors, they love to trash talk Domitian. Not a great emperor and the senatorial class didn't like him. And the senatorial class is the one that tends to record history. So they said, well, clearly Domitian poisoned him. And they even say that he used a sea hare as the poison. Sea hares might kill dogs. I haven't heard of humans dying from it. It's perhaps there's a way. I'm not a pharmacologist or anything along those lines. There's that theory.

• 43:50Speaker 02

  They also said that Domitian ordered Titus to be put in ice as a cure. And that might make sense if he had a high fever, he might put him in spice to try to bring that down. But they said that Domitian did that actually to hasten his demise. Why would Domitian want to kill Titus? I mean, there's the, uh, the ancients probably believe that Domitian wanted imperial power and he might have. There's also the theory that Titus's one regret is that he, uh, slept with Domitian's wife. Although there's absolutely no evidence based on this. Even the ancient writers thought that was a silly argument. They're like, this lady, if she had slept with him, she would have bragged about it. And she never did that. So they don't think there's anything about that. They also thought perhaps his one regret is that he didn't kill Domitian for plotting against him.

• 44:35Speaker 02

  Again, this is like a postmortem character assassination. Titus and Domitian were probably pretty close. There's even coinage showing them holding hands, which is kind of weird now, but back then it was supposed to show that they were ruling together, at least on good terms with each other. What really seems to be the case is that in ancient Rome, in that part of the world. In September, that timeframe, and when you factor in Titus's symptoms, malignant malaria seems to be most likely. So malaria was rampant anyway. Malignant malaria, obviously much worse, causes a really bad fever, probably organ failure, and you die relatively quickly. And that seems to be more consistent with what happened with Titus

• 45:20Speaker 02

  as opposed to some of these other theories. So he probably died naturally, but what about his one regret? I think that there's several much more plausible last regrets than some of these other things. He might have regretted all of the death and destruction that he wrought on the Jewish people. That's something he definitely should have regretted. He could have regretted sending his paramour away, Berenice, who was a Jewish queen that he carried on a long relationship with, but he kicked her out of Rome on more than one occasion. You might have regretted that. He might have also regretted executing two of his friends when he was Praetorian prefect for supposedly plotting against his father. So this is a man that he should have had plenty of regrets. He only had one, and there's plenty of plausible ones that could have been it.

• 46:03Dan Snow?

  I don't think you can climb the greasy pole, become Roman emperor, fight on several campaigns, and not have, you know, one or two little regrets, Mark, about some of the things you've seen and done. Did he reign long enough to have a legacy? Is he important in the great scheme of Roman emperors?

• 46:19Speaker 02

  All Roman emperors that reign more than a handful of days, because there's some of those later, the Roman era, that were there too short of a time to have any sort of impact. And even before, you know, Otho had no real impact on long-term Rome. Yeah, he's very important. I mean, we see some of his works to this day. I mean, the Arch of Titus, which may have been constructed in his lifespan, is still there. Colosseum is still there. There's actually even a second Arch of Titus that there's only some rubble left over, but it's near the Circus Maximus. You can see some of the terrible handiwork in the Holy Land as well. There is unrest in the Holy Land to this day, and some of that you can trace back to Titus. So whether it's a good legacy or a bad legacy, he has a legacy.

• 47:04Speaker 02

  He has importance, and really, to the ancient Romans and Greeks. Titus was an exemplary Roman and a quintessential emperor who largely behaved with honor and integrity, save for some very notable episodes. But his sterling legacy, it has not survived intact to the modern era. And for good reason, many of his acts are really more consistent with villains than they are with heroes.

• 47:28Dan Snow?

  That's interesting. So for subsequent Romans, he was a poster child. He was a good example of how emperors should comport themselves.

• 47:36Speaker 02

  He was excellent from their perspective. He did everything that you would want an emperor to do. He cared for his people. He ensured the grain shipments were on time. He provided 100 days of games, funded all sorts of stuff out of his own pocket. When Rome caught on fire from his own purse, he helped rebuild it. When there was a plague, he conducted sacrifices, even looked at different medical treatments. He did everything that the Romans could have expected and brought peace or maintained peace in the empire, save for whatever agricola was up to. So this was a Roman, a pagan Roman who was, like you said, the poster child for later Romans to emulate.

• 48:13Dan Snow?

  And before we say goodbye to Titus Domitian, his brother was not held in that regard. And indeed, that was the end. There was no more hereditary succession after that. We got another discontinuity coming up in the line of emperors.

• 48:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, for all of Vespasian and Titus's work and hope to have a long succession, a dynasty, it ends up being pretty short. And to go back to what you're talking about, that whether Titus was an emperor with a legacy that we should care about today, you know, I believe Titus, the life of Titus is one of the greatest stories rarely told. It's a tale of an unlikely ascent to power, a veritable holy war in Israel, the Colosseum's rise, Pompeii's fall, and his own tragic and untimely death. And much of this history has really been buried beneath centuries of silence, unfortunately. And while the ancient Romans loved and even worshipped Titus, considering him a model, modern historians,

• 49:08Speaker 02

  modern scholars have really overlooked the Roman and cast him aside, which has left unmistakable gaps in the modern record. And I'm hoping that my work will end some of his long-term neglect.

• 49:18Dan Snow?

  I'm sure you will, Mark. And you've done a good job of that right here on the podcast. Thank you for coming on. Tell us what your book's called.

• 49:24Speaker 02

  The book is called Imperator Titus, The Right Hand of Vespasian, and you should be able to buy it just about anywhere that they sell books.

• 49:31Dan Snow?

  Thanks, Mark. Thank you for coming on.

• 49:33Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 49:36Dan Snow?

  Thanks very much for listening, everyone. Before we go, I'll tell you that ever at the cutting edge, the bleeding edge of what's new and exciting, after 10 years of the podcast, you can finally watch it on YouTube. We are moving fast and breaking things here, folks. Our Friday episodes each week will be available to watch on YouTube, and you can see me, you can see what we're talking about. I'd love it if you could subscribe to that channel over there. Just click the link in the show notes below, and you can watch it on your phone, your tablet, or even a TV, or even a giant cinema movie screen, if you have one in your underground lair. See you next time, folks.

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  Outdated technology isn't going to improve a disconnected healthcare system. Next. So what will? At Optum, we wake up every day and work for better. We call it healthy optimism. It's how we use insights and technology to help providers focus less on paperwork and more on patients. Will we fix it all overnight? No, but we'll wake up trying again and again, until healthcare works as one for everyone. That's healthy optimism. Learn more at optum.com.

• 51:25Dan Snow?

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