He had come home to Aqua Cutiliae to die. It was late June, and the sun was still high that afternoon. The dinner guests had gone, and Phyllis had settled him on a couch looking out over the lake that he loved so much. The navel of Italy they called it. From this highpoint, he could look west to Rieti towards Antonia's old villa and east up the Via Salaria that led north to his birthplace in Falacrina.
He had no regrets. Rome was back on its feet, Aged 40, Titus would have a long life ahead of him and so keep Domitian from power. No heir had been better prepared by war and office, and few had such a team of advisors to assist him. How Titus loved and trusted Pliny, who had been his first commander in Germany, and Nerva, who had done so much to protect the family in Nero's mad time, was like a grandfather to his son.
The Jews were here too. He would miss them. After it was all over, Tiberius Alexander would return to his home, Alexandria. Poor Josephus would have to stay forever in exile in Rome. It was a pity that they could not stand each other. But he loved them both, and they loved him. Berenice was one of the missing guests. Vespasian knew better than anyone, the pain of loving a woman that Rome could not accept.
Women were the making of his life. He hardly remembered his father, who had died when he was young. It was his mother and his granny who had brought him up. It was they who had convinced Antonia that he would make a suitable companion for her disappointing younger son.
Here, by a happy accident of fate and location, he had been taken into the summer household of Antonia Minor. There, he had befriended her awkward son, Claudius. There, he had become the ally of Narcissus. There, he had met the love of his life, Caenis. This valley was more than a home. It was the foundation of his life.
He took a sip of laudanum. It soothed the pain in his bowels but made him constipated. A glow settled upon him, and he began to remember those innocent early days.
In this series, I am going to tell the story of how the most unlikely man became Emperor and how it was through his connections that he survived the snake pit that was the court at Rome and how he triumphed.
For more than three decades, I have researched the lives of Claudius and Vespasian. As I explored, a series of patterns about relationships have emerged that has put a new meaning on how historians view the evidence.
Bound by facts, historians rarely allow themselves to conjecture. For instance, all agree that Vespasian was helped in his early career by Narcissus and Caenis. The texts support this. (By the way, Narcissus was the private secretary of Claudius while he was a nobody. Later he became one of the most powerful men in Rome. Caenis played the same role for Antonia Minor, daughter of Mark Anthony, granny of Caligula and mother of Germanicus and Claudius.) No one asks the question, why did they help him? Or what was their connection in the first place?
The answer is undoubtedly rooted in place. Vespasian, an upper-middle-class boy, was raised not in Rome but the quiet Sabine countryside near the modern town of Rieti. Nearby, the austere Antonia had her summer place. Embarrassed by her son, I make the assumption that she stashed him there for long periods of the year. The relationship between Vespasian and the two ex-slaves must have begun in this household. For me, there can be no other explanation. How else could Vespasian earn the trust of Claudius and also of his mother? The timing of this friendship is essential. For no one could imagine that Claudius could rise to the purple. Vespasian was Claudius's man when it mattered when he was no one going nowhere.
In the bottom left of this map we see Rome. Look up to the top centre and you will find Reate, modern Rieti. The Roman Road that connects Rome to Reate is one of the oldest in Rome, the Via Salaria. It is the old salt road. It is along this road that the mule trains carrying salt worked for hundreds of years. In a down-period of his life, Vespasian relied on running a mule transport business from Reate.
We don't know where Antonia's Villa was but we can assume it was near Reate as this would would make the trip to Rome easy. It is thought that Pallas, another important freedman in Antonia's household who became leading figure in both the reign of Claudius and Nero, had a villa in the valley to the west of Reate.
The sources are clear. Both Vespasian and Titus choose to die at Aquae Cutiliae.
Aquae Cutiliae is to the left/east of Reate near the modern village of Paterno. Above the lake, on the hill to the north are some impressive ruins that might have been a palace. Between Aquae Cutiliae and Reate are more ruins of an impressive bathhouse known today as Vespasian's Baths.
Vespasian's supposed birth place is another two days walk north along the Via Salaria. In 2009 a large villa was found there that the finder claims as Vespasian's Villa. It may well have been his birthplace but it makes no sense to me as the scene of his death. It is too far away from anything and most importantly it is too far from Reate and so Antonia.
Here we see the lake (Source) and on the right some of the ruins. Current exploration is based on the idea that this was built by Titus - that may be correct but as he only lived for two more years after his father, I tend to favour that it was built by Vespasian. Titus also came back here to die as well. The place meant much to both father and son. We are maybe a 2 hour walk from Reate here. The palace would look out over the valley and the lake. The view, the sacred nature of the spot and the closeness to Reate argue strongly for this being at least one of Vespasian's Reate Palaces.
The lake is sacred to the water Goddess Vacuna. She is the primary goddess for Sabines. The Via Salaria passes by on the far left.
Onto some of the people mentioned above.
Pliny the Elder had been Titus's first commander in the army. We think of him as a scientist, which he was, but he was also a serious soldier with a long career. Titus's first posting was with Pliny in Germany when Pliny commanded an Ala (480 men) of cavalry near modern Xanten. Titus in later life rode with the cavalry - a love of horses that he must have developed at that time. Pliny was to die a few months after Vespasian during the eruption of Vesuvius in the fall of 79. Vespasian dies on June 24th.
Agricola was to become Titus's favourite general. He was recalled from being Governor of Britannia by Domitian. Tacitus claims that Domitian was jealous of his success. Few people have noticed that Titus went to Britannia during the Boudicca revolt where he served on the staff of Paulinus with the then young tribune Agricola. This was another relationship founded in youth.
Nerva was consummate political insider at Rome. He did his best to keep to the background, emerging only twice. First to inform Nero of the Pisonian conspiracy. This resulted in him being given a triumph by Nero and increased his stature with the emperor. Corbulo, who was the greatest general of the age was implicated and told to commit suicide. His death opened the way for Vespasian to be given the job to put down the rebellion in Judea. The second public emergence was after the murder of Domitian. As long as Domitian confined his murders to the aristocracy, he was safe. His final mistake was to order the death of Nero's favourite freedman, Epaphroditus. Epaphroditus had raised Nero and was his secretary. It was at his house that Nero killed himself. Domitian accused him of not trying hard enough to save his master. Epaphroditus was then still in the imperial bureaucracy. Once the in-group saw that they were not safe, they had the Emperor killed. Nerva was the safe pair of hands that filled in the space on the provision that he chose a suitable heir. That being Trajan, whose father had served in Judea with Vespasian and Titus. It was a small world. BTW Epaphroditus owned a very important slave, Epictetus, the most influential stoic until Marcus Aurelius.
Oh and Phyllis is the family nanny. Later when Domitian is killed, she buries him. This brings up for me the paradox of household slaves. It is Acte who buries Nero. Nero dies surrounded only by his close slaves who are loyal to the end. Here is the quote in Suetonius - "He (Domitian) was slain on the fourteenth day before the Kalends of October in the forty-fifth year of his age and the fifteenth of his reign. His corpse was carried out on a common bier by those who bury the poor, and his nurse Phyllis cremated it at her suburban estate on the Via Latina; but his ashes she secretly carried to the temple of the Flavian family and mingled them with those of Julia, daughter of Titus, whom she had also reared."
I suggest that Phyllis might care for Vespasian at his end. Caenis had been dead for five years in 79 ad. Who else would look after Vespasian at the end? Some context, Churchill had a photo of his nanny, Everest or as he called her "Woomany" by his bed for his entire adult life. Like upper class Britain in the 19th century, relations were not close between children and parents in the upper regions of Roman society. Close relationships with slaves and ex slaves was a very important part of how Rome worked. This will be a major theme of this story.
