Vespasian Quotes

Vespasian continued his down-to-earth line in self-deprecating wit right up until his last words: ‘Oh dear, I think I’m becoming a god …

As to the ancient historians, from Herodotus to Tacitus, we credit them as far as they relate things probable and credible, and no further: for if we do, we must believe the two miracles which Tacitus relates were performed by Vespasian, that of curing a lame man, and a blind man, in just the same manner as the same things are told of Jesus Christ by his historians. We must also believe the miracles cited by Josephus, that of the sea of Pamphilia opening to let Alexander and his army pass, as is related of the Red Sea in Exodus. These miracles are quite as well authenticated as the Bible miracles, and yet we do not believe them; consequently the degree of evidence necessary to establish our belief of things naturally incredible, whether in the Bible or elsewhere, is far greater than that which obtains our belief to natural and probable things.

the leather thong binding his

According to Suetonius, Vespasian continued his down-to-earth line in self-deprecating wit right up until his last words: ‘Oh dear, I think I’m becoming a god …

Vespasian. The emperor had been raised in the Sabine countryside,

When Vespasian and Titus, shortly after coming to power, conducted a census,

this on the grounds that, as Vespasian drily put it, ‘they had forgotten how to be free’.

You’ll feel like Jesu Himself in the End Times, when He will descend on Rome with Augustus and Vespasian on His left and right hands, to establish the final dominion of the Caesars across the stars.

Think, let us say, of the times of Vespasian; and what do you see? Men and women busy marrying, bringing up children, sickening, dying, fighting, feasting, chaffering, farming, flattering, bragging, envying, scheming, calling down curses, grumbling at fate, loving, hoarding, coveting thrones and dignities. Of all that life, not a trace survives today. Or come forward to the days of Trajan; again, it is the same; that life, too, has perished. Take a similar look at the records of other past ages and peoples; mark how one and all, after their short-lived strivings, passed away and were resolved into the elements. More especially, recall some who, within your own knowledge, have followed after vanities instead of contenting themselves with a resolute performance of the duties for which they were created. In such cases it is essential to remind ourselves that the pursuit of any object depends for its value upon the worth of the object pursued. If, then, you would avoid discouragement, never become unduly absorbed in things that are not of the first importance.

According to Suetonius, Vespasian continued his down-to-earth line in self-deprecating wit right up until his last words: ‘Oh dear, I think I’m becoming a god …’ The whole process of becoming, or not becoming, a god is the theme of a long skit probably written in the mid 50s CE by Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Can you remember, Acte...how much easier our belief in Nero made life for us in the old days? And can you remember the paralysis, the numbness that seized the whole world when Nero died? Didn't you feel as if the world had grown bare and colorless all of a sudden? Those people on the Palatine have tried to steal our Nero from us, from you and me. Isn't splendid to think that we can show them they haven't succeeded? They have smashed his statues into splinters, erased his name from all the inscriptions, they even replaced his head on that huge statue in Rome with the peasant head of old Vespasian. Isn't it fine to teach them that all that hasn't been of the slightest use? Granted that they have been successful for a few years. For a few years they have actually managed to banish all imagination from the world, all enthusiasm, extravagance, everything that makes life worth living. But now, with our Nero, all these things are back again.

Trajan was a good man,’ Hadrian went on, rubbing a hand thoughtfully down the dog’s long back. ‘It’s necessary for an emperor to be a good man, if he wishes to last. Augustus knew that – a ruthless despot, really, but he calculated a very nice pose as a likeable fellow. Intelligent of him, because ruthless despots get themselves murdered – Caligula, Nero, Domitian. The good men rule long years – Vespasian, Trajan. My name will be listed with theirs. But they were good men by nature, and I am not. I know how to be cruel. I also know how to put on a good show, so few people know it. Hunting helps keep it in check; allowable bloodshed, as it were . .

So perhaps there is no such thing as a good death. Does it really make any difference if you are forced to slit your wrists or if you die on the battlefield? Is Vespasian’s death – managing a final joke on becoming a god – somehow better than Nero’s? Nero had to commit suicide when it became clear that rebellion had forced him from the throne. He eventually drove a dagger through his throat – with the help of his secretary, Epaphroditus – after wailing repeatedly, ‘qualis artifex pereo’ – ‘Such an artist! But still I die!’ Surely none of us wants to die by being stabbed through the neck by someone who usually does our filing. Yet Vespasian is just as dead as Nero, in the end. The only difference is that he gets a better write-up, which is all any of us can really hope for.

the Temple was rebuilt, but by then the religion of Israel had been marked forever by the piety of the exile. Alongside the single Temple, where blood sacrifice was celebrated, arose numerous synagogues, places for meeting and for prayer, and the dominium of the priests yielded to the growing influence of the Pharisees and Scribes, men of the book and of study. In 70 A.D., the Roman legions again destroyed the Temple. But the learned rabbi Joahannah ben-Zakkaj, slipped covertly out of Jerusalem through the siege and obtained permission from Vespasian to continue the teaching of the Torah in the city of Jamnia. The temple has never been rebuilt since, and study, the Talmud, has become the real temple of Israel.24 This complex relationship to the Talmud is in fact a key to understanding the life and work of Mark Rothko.

[Julian] was reckoned the reincarnation of Titus the son of Vespasian, in the glorious outcome of his campaigns very like Trajan, as merciful as Antoninus, and in his striving after truth and perfection the equal of Marcus Aurelius, on whom he endeavoured to model his own actions and character.

Ancient Rome According to legend, the ancient city of Rome was built by Romulus and Remus. They were twin sons of Mars, the god of war. An evil uncle tried to drown the boys in the Tiber River, which runs through present-day Rome. They were rescued by a wolf who raised them as her own. Many years later, Romulus built a city on Palantine, one of the Seven Hills of Rome. The city was named after him. The manager of our hotel suggested we see ancient Rome first. So we hopped on the metro and headed to the Roman Forum. According to my guidebook, this was once the commercial, political, and religious center of ancient Rome. Today, ruins of buildings, arches, and temples are all that are left of ancient Rome. I closed my eyes for a moment, and I could almost hear the shouts of a long-ago political rally. I especially liked the house of the Vestal Virgins. It once had 50 rooms and was attached to the Temple of Vesta. She was the goddess of fire. The nearby Colosseum was originally called the Flavian Amphitheater. It reminded me of a huge sports stadium. Emperor Vespasian began building it in A.D. 72. It had 80 entrances, including 4 just for the emperor and his guests. It had 3 levels of seats with an awning along the top to protect spectators from the sun and rain. It could hold up to 50,000 people!

as was I born to Matthias in the first year of the reign of Caius Caesar. I have three sons: Hyrcanus, the eldest, was born in the fourth year of the reign of Vespasian, as was Justus born in the seventh, and Agrippa in the ninth.

The siege of Jerusalem was completed by Vespasian’s son, Titus. Romans destroyed the Second Temple in Jerusalem and used the treasures they found there to finance the building of the great Colosseum in Rome.

Jerusalem suffered destruction in 70 A.D. by the Romans, when Roman soldiers, under General Titus, son of Vespasian the emperor, tore down the Temple. The Jews were severely persecuted and hunted down until they made their last stand at Masada. Hadrian, then the emperor, crushed all Jewish survivors that rebelled, and the rest fled into other nations. There was no Israel—no Jewish state—until Midnight May 14-15, 1948, when Israel was reborn as a nation.

When the American novelist Howard Sturgis lay on his deathbed he was cared for so solicitously by his life partner that at one point Sturgis had to remind him, "A watched pot never boils"—surely one of the wittiest comments ever made while dying, unless you consider what the socialite Drue Heinz said when nearing the end—"They won't even let you take a book"—or the emperor Vespasian, who remarked on his deathbed, "I think I am turning into a god.

If Vespasian had a vice, it was greed. The emperor and his favorites had shamelessly exploited their positions to accrue enormous wealth, treating the Roman state as a moneymaking scheme for insiders. Vespasian famously put a tax on the city’s latrinae, claiming a share of the money made by the sale of urine to fullers, who used it to clean wool. Thus the saying, “Even when you piss, the emperor takes a percentage.

It is ascertained that the eclipses complete their whole revolution in the space of 223 months, that the eclipse of the sun takes place only at the conclusion or the commencement of a lunation, which is termed conjunction, while an eclipse of the moon takes place only when she is at the full, and is always a little farther advanced than the preceding eclipse. Now there are eclipses of both these stars in every year, which take place below the earth, at stated days and hours; and when they are above it they are not always visible, sometimes on account of the clouds, but more frequently, from the globe of the earth being opposed to the vault of the heavens. It was discovered two hundred years ago, by the sagacity of Hipparchus, that the moon is sometimes eclipsed after an interval of five months, and the sun after an interval of seven; also, that he becomes invisible, while above the horizon, twice in every thirty days, but that this is seen in different places at different times. But the most wonderful circumstance is, that while it is admitted that the moon is darkened by the shadow of the earth, this occurs at one time on its western, and at another time on its eastern side. And farther, that although, after the rising of the sun, that darkening shadow ought to be below the earth, yet it has once happened, that the moon has been eclipsed in the west, while both the luminaries have been above the horizon. And as to their both being invisible in the space of fifteen days, this very thing happened while the Vespasians were emperors, the father being consul for the third time, and the son for the second.   Detailed table of contents

In the past, some Kabbalistic scholars were familiar with the detailed instructions needed to activate the Kabbalistic secrets when absolutely necessary. These secrets could be used to accomplish what could not be achieved by natural means. The rumor states that Rabbi Johanan ben Zakkai used it to escape from besieged Jerusalem, and to obtain permission from the Roman general Vespasian to open a major Torah study center in Jabneh. This information was relayed to Rabbi Eliezer ben Horkenos, who in turn conveyed it to Rabbi Akiba.

During his retreat, he lost most of his army and much of his war equipment. Had our people listened to the warning of Yeshua, this would have been the time to flee to the mountains. But instead, they celebrated their victory over Gallus and were emboldened in their rebellion. Soon after that, Vespasian was dispatched with two legions, and his elder son, Titus, came with another. By 69 AD they had conquered most of Judea and laid siege to Jerusalem. At this point escape was basically impossible.

The ‘good’, such as Augustus, Vespasian and Marcus Aurelius, are possessed of every Roman virtue; the bad – the majority, in the retelling – have a capacity for derangement exceeded only by the imagination of their biographers. Tiberius, Caligula, Nero, Vitellius and Domitian became bywords for perversion, madness, decadence, greed and sadism; one historian commented wryly that ‘history is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies’10

peaceful empire Hadrian inherited was by no means long-established, and the recent past provided both lessons for would-be tyrants and examples of successful, survivable, rule. At the time of Hadrian’s birth Rome was ruled by the benign and thrifty Vespasian, whose most notorious deed was taxing urinals.

At one point, the drainage of gold became so serious that Roman Emperor Vespasian was forced to discourage the import of Indian luxury goods and ban the export of gold to India.

The Talmud relates how Rabbi Johanan ben Zakkai was smuggled out of Jerusalem during its siege, gained the favor of Vespasian, and was given permission to establish an academy for learning at Jamnia (Jabneh or Yavneh).[47] Here he and Rabban Gamaliel II established a new center for Jewish life which continued, with adaptations and additions, the traditions of the Pharisees, and nothing but those traditions. Thus began Rabbinic Judaism.

Vespasian

A loaf of bread cost a quarter of a sesterce. So did a glass of wine.2 We know from graffiti at Pompeii that a prostitute, perhaps not a very elegant one, charged half a sesterce for her services. Entrance to the public baths was just twice that. Roman soldiers earned 1,200 sesterces a year and although there were some perks, they had to buy their own equipment. A casual labourer earned perhaps 2-3 sesterces a day – when he got work. A charity scheme to support poor children, presumably at a fairly basic level, paid between 10 and 12 sesterces a month. A lecturer in rhetoric under Vespasian received 100,000 sesterces a year and this was considered remarkable. It was a similar amount to the purchase price of a first-rate, intelligent slave in the second century, when lessening warfare had reduced the market. One foot of road cost 22 sesterces to lay and a large and elaborate tomb anything from 100,000 to half a million sesterces.

In Rome, the dense ruin of the Forum has a few unmistakable landmarks. Turning up a cobbled slope towards the green peace of the Palatine, the visitor immediately confronts one of them: an uncompromising, fairly well-preserved ceremonial arch. The Arch of Titus was erected posthumously to celebrate the eponymous prince’s triumphs in Judea during the reign of his father, Vespasian, and during the childhood of Hadrian. One of the relief carvings shows the removal of the sacred texts, trumpets and menorah of the Jewish Temple. They were not to return to Jerusalem for 500 years and the Temple itself was never rebuilt.

Helvidius Priscus spoke his mind; the emperor Vespasian killed him. In this effeminate age it is instructive to read of courage. There are members of the U.S. Senate and House who are terrified apparently if the president of the United States tells them, urges them, to vote a certain way that may be against their belief. So in this day of few men with great courage—relatively few—let us take a leaf out of Roman history and remember Helvidius Priscus.

Helvidius fearlessly looked Vespasian in the eye and said, “You will do your part, and I will do mine: It is your part to kill; it is mine to die, but not in fear: yours to banish me; mine to depart without sorrow.” And eventually he was banished; he was kicked out of the parlor, and later executed. He lost his job. He lost his life. Those two things we fear losing most. But while he had those things, he actually used them.

It is in your power not to allow me to be a member of the senate,” Helvidius replied, “but so long as I am, I must go in.” “Fine,” Vespasian said with surprise, “but you better not say anything.” “Do not ask my opinion,” Helvidius told him, “and I will be silent.” “But I must ask for the Senate’s opinion,” Vespasian told him, growing angrier. “And I must say what I think right,” was Helvidius’s reply.

The devout and patriotic leaders of Jerusalem sacrificed tens of thousands of lives to the cause of freedom. Vespasian and Titus sacrificed tens of thousands more to the cause of civil order....How much better for everyone if all the principal figures of the region had been slithering filth like Josephus.

remained at her side, limp and swaying. Yosef pointed his staff at her so that the tip touched her blood-streaked chest; she stopped. Vespasian shook with fear and cold in spite of the heat emanating from the goddess’s spring; he was vaguely aware of Magnus next to him muttering prayers to every god that he could think of, even Yosef’s. Cogidubnus had raised his Wheel of Taranis and was beseeching the god to strike down this apparition with cleansing lightning.

Anyone with any money will tell you that we are only ever an empty granary away from revolution.

Certain trees also foretold the future, such as the old oak whose branches predicted the destiny of each child of the Flavii (Suet., Vesp., 5, 2), or the cypress on the family land which, having fallen, grew again more strongly than ever to guarantee Vespasian his imperial future

Domitian’s father, the emperor Vespasian, and Domitian’s brother, the emperor Titus,

Among the tens of thousands of prisoners taken by Vespasian in Galilee was the rebel-appointed Jewish governor of the province, Joseph ben Matthias. He was destined to be brought to Rome and executed, but he found a way out. He prophesied to Vespasian that he would be emperor. When in turn the legions indeed proclaimed Vespasian emperor, Joseph was freed from his chains. Although some Romans considered Joseph a Jewish spy, Vespasian and Titus found him useful. After the war, he ended up in Rome living in the palace under their protection, became a Roman citizen named Flavius Josephus, and wrote a detailed history of the revolt that survives today.

The basic rule is that the flimsier the claims to power, the more insistent and extravagant the signs and portents had to be. Vespasian, who became emperor in 69 CE in the civil war after the death of Nero, an outsider with no direct links to earlier rulers, was even credited with performing miracles in almost biblical style. In Egypt, on his way to Rome to take up the throne, he is said to have restored sight to a blind man with his spit, and to have made a lame man walk with his touch. It was one way of compensating for a lack of imperial connections.

was not confident that I could withstand a formal complaint of harassment from a praetor. Vespasian would take it amiss even if I had evidence against the man – and I had none. Well, not at this stage. His rank didn't daunt me, but I would have to be certain first.

Marcus located the other volumes and piled them on the table, then began to skim through the text. From the sternly moralistic Augustus, power had passed to the dour Tiberius, who had ended in utter debauchery and left the world at the mercy of the monstrous Caligula, whose bloody death had led to the reign of the hapless Claudius, cuckolded by one wife, Messalina, and probably murdered by another, Agrippina, who had put her son Nero on the throne and been rewarded with death. After Nero had come four emperors in quick succession: Galba, Otho, Vitellius, and then Vespasian, the bland but competent general who had left the empire to his sons, first the popular Titus, then the suspicious and cruel Domitian. There Suetonius’s account ended, but Marcus needed no historian to tell him about the reigns of Nerva, Trajan, and Hadrian.

Besides Tiberius, Nero, Otho and Vespasian all had their astrologer. Titus, Domitian and Hadrian were sufficiently expert themselves to draw up a horoscope, and Septimius Severus (who married Julia Domna after making enquiries about marriageable daughters of royal blood) dispensed justice in a hall of the palace where his own astral horoscope was painted on the ceiling (DC, 77, 11, 1).

He is telling us who will defect from Vitellius. He wrote this in April. Vespasian wasn’t hailed imperator until the first of July.’ That date had been engraved on my liver since I first heard it. You will find it at my death, if you care to cut me open and look. -- Lady Caenis

I’ve never heard someone standing knee-deep in shit consider themselves lucky,’ Vespasian observed,

They stared at her, all of them, mouths agape, scrambling backwards on the ground. Even her hair snapped with it, wildly writhing around her head, as power uncoiled from her core and flowed to her extremities. She hurled it from her fingertips at the bastard Vespasian Jones. His eyes flew wide with shock, and then he whipped a wand from his sleeve—a wand! Then her own Dark power slammed back into her and through her.

Fakt 6: Die Römer verwendeten eine Mixtur aus Bimsstein und Urin, um sich die Zähne zu putzen. Fakt 7: Außerdem nutzten die Menschen aus dem alten Rom den Urin, um Leder damit zu gerben. Um genug zusammen zu bekommen, sammelten sie ihn aus den öffentlichen Latrinen ein. Kaiser Vespasian führte später auf diese öffentlichen Toiletten eine spezielle Latrinensteuer ein, um seine Staatskasse zu sanieren. Auf genau dieser Steuer basiert auch das Zitat „Pecunia non olet“. Das bedeutet so viel wie „Geld stinkt nicht“.