On Dec. 21, A.D. 69, the Roman Senate made Titus Vespasian Flavius emperor. His ascension to the principate marked the end of a bloody, year-long civil war that had seen the reigns of no less than four emperors.
By June in A.D. 68, the emperor Nero had managed to alienate virtually every sector of Roman society because of his cruelty and incompetence. The Senate, the army and the people of Roman had enough, and without support from any quarter, the senate declared the emperor an outlaw. Unwilling to face the harsh Roman justice awaiting him, Nero ordered a servant to kill him, and with his death ended not only his reign but also the Julio-Claudian dynasty which had begun with Julius and Augustus Caesar.
Having murdered all of his close family members that could conceivably challenged his authority, the Senate was forced to cast a wider net to find a suitable candidate for the purple. Ultimately they chose septuagenarian Servius Sulpicius Galba, who had been serving as the Roman governor of Spain — the first emperor to be selected from outside Italy. If many thought Galba's age and experience would be welcome change from Nero's relative youth and erratic behavior, they were to be disillusioned.
The Roman historian Seutonius noted in his work, “The Twelve Caesars,” that earthquakes greeted Galba's entrance into Rome, a bad omen. Galba quickly had many put to death whom he deemed to be disloyal, and with the sorry state of Rome's finances following Nero's rule, Galba canceled the scheduled games, further alienating him from the people. In the hopes of trying to win back their favor, he adopted popular Senator Lucius Calpurnius Piso as his son and successor.
One of Galba's supporters, who had felt slighted by not being named the successor, was Marcus Salvius Otho, who soon crafted a plot against his former friend. In mid-January A.D. 69, Otho bribed members of the Praetorian Guard, the emperor's bodyguard. Galba and Piso were assassinated in the forum and shortly after Otho was proclaimed the new emperor.
As these events were playing out in Rome, the legions along the Rhine River were not content with Galba's elevation to the throne. The troops wanted their own candidate raised to the purple, Aulus Vitellius, commander of one of the two German legions. Before news of Galba's assassination had reached him, Vitellius began to move his army south to conquer Rome by force, if need be.
No military commander, Otho began to fear that his new regime may be finished before it really began. He quickly assembled an army and marched it north to meet Vitellius. The two forces met near the town of Cremona and engaged in battle in mid-April.
Suetonius noted that his father had served in Otho's force at the battle, a colonel in the Thirteenth Legion, and the historian wrote: “He often said afterwards that Otho had so deeply abhorred the thought of civil war while still a private citizen that he would shudder if the fates of Brutus and Cassius were mentioned at a banquet. And that he would not have moved against Galba to begin with, unless in the hope of a bloodless victory.”
Otho's army was defeated at what came to be known as the First Battle of Cremona, and the fledgling emperor decided to take his own life rather than face an almost certain horrible death at Vitellius' hands. The Roman biographer Plutarch later wrote about Otho: “If he lived no better than Nero, he died more nobly.”
Victorious, Vitellius entered Rome a conqueror and soon had the senate proclaim him emperor. A favorite of Caligula, Claudius and Nero, Vitellius found himself quite at home in the imperial palace. Among his vices, Suetonius tells us, the new emperor was a glutton who demanded huge banquets, often requiring others to pay exorbitantly for the feasts. He also took pleasure in torturing and killing anyone who crossed him. Unhappy with events playing out in Rome, the legion in Judea hailed its own commander as emperor in July.
In the book “The Romans: From Village to Empire, A History of Ancient Romes from Earliest Times to Constantine,” historians Mary T. Boartwright, Daniel J. Gargola and Richard J. A. Talbert wrote: “Vespasian was an unpretentious man from Reate in north-central Italy. His family, the Flavii, had been respectable tax gatherers and custom agents of equestrian tank, with none of its members ever advancing to the senate before his elder brother and himself. Vespasian's special strength was his military acumen, demonstrated outstandingly in Germany, Britain and Judea.”
Vespasian was able to make common cause with the Roman governor of Egypt, an essential step to making his bid for imperial power. Since the days of the republic, Rome had given its citizens grain at the public expense, much of it imported from the futile Nile river delta of Egypt. In a sense, Rome's dependence upon grain shipments from Egypt was not dissimilar from American dependence on foreign oil. Remaining in Egypt, Vespasian began to put a plan into action.
As Vespasian sent his armies on the long journey to Rome, the commander of the Pannonian (Hungarian) legion declared for him. Marcus Antonius Primus marched his army into northern Italy where it met a force Vitellius had sent to meet it, once again near Cremona in October. Smashing Vitellius' troops, Primus then sacked the city of Cremona for the aid it had given Vitellius' men.
Primus faced no more serious opposition as he made his way to Rome. According to Suetonius, Primus' men entered the imperial palace and began looting, finding Vitellius hiding, they at first did not know who he was, and demanded to know the location of the emperor. Soon after telling a lie, someone recognized him, and begging to be spared, he was tied, beaten and humiliated before finally being killed. His body was thrown into the Tiber River.
In the book, “The Year of the Four Emperors,” historian Kenneth Wellesley wrote: “On the evening of of 20 December, it had been quite impossible to summon the Senate. Its members were naturally in hiding, and had no intention of emerging from their places of refuge. On the following day, the Flavian army moved out south-eastwards to protect the capital… and it was now safe to meet. After letters from Vespasian… had been read, it voted to Vespasian, as to Otho in January and Vitellius in April, all the titles and powers whose accumulation express what we understand by 'emperor'.”
Vespasian, still in Egypt, was now officially the princeps, the first citizen of Rome. The Year of the Four Emperors, a bloody period of civil war, now came to close. Vespasian finally arrived in Rome late the following year, and his rule continued until his death from illness in A.D. 79. His 27-year dynasty lasted through his sons, Titus and Domitian. Following the Flavian dynasty, Rome reached its greatest height with the Era of the Five Good Emperors. Rome would not see another large scale civil war until the late second century.
Cody K. Carlson holds a master's in history from the University of Utah and teaches at Salt Lake Community College. An avid player of board games, he blogs at thediscriminatinggamer.com. Email: ckcarlson76@gmail.com