Note 54 — Chapter LX · The Treatment of a Prisoner

—page 467. The fine portrait here drawn of Titus Flavius Vespasianus, the tenth of the Twelve Cæsars, known in history as Vespasian, is in striking contrast with that previously sketched of his son Titus. The father had little of the princely and imposing personality of the son. He was a thoroughly able soldier, while simple and frugal in his habits; in short, Tacitus says that “but for his avarice he was equal to the generals of old days.” A better judgment, however, would probably attribute the avarice, with which both Tacitus and Suetonius stigmatize him, to “an enlightened economy, which, in the disordered state of the Roman finances, was an absolute necessity.” He could be abundantly “liberal to impoverished senators and knights, to cities and towns desolated by natural calamity, and especially to men of letters and of the professor class, several of whom he pensioned with salaries of as much as £800 a year.” He was a blunt, plain soldier, without distinguished bearing, and perhaps for that very reason a greater favorite with the army and the common people. “By his own example of simplicity of life he put to shame the luxury and extravagance of the Roman nobles, and initiated in many respects a marked improvement in the general tone of society,” while devoting much thought to the spread and promotion of those intellectual tastes with which he was not personally in sympathy.