Bible Dictionaries
Vespasian

　　Titus Flavius Vespasianus was Roman Emperor from 1st July a.d. 69 to 24th June (other authorities, 23rd July) 79, and ruled under the style Imperator Caesar Vespasianus Augustus (sometimes Imperator Vespasianus Caesar Augustus). He sprang from an obscure family, his grandfather having been a citizen of the Sabine country-town Reate, who served as a centurion on the side of Pompey against Julius Caesar in the Civil War till the battle of Pharsalus (48 b.c.), after which he returned home.

　　Vespasian was brought up by his grandmother Tertulla on her estate at Cosa in Etruria. Flavius Sabinus, the father of Vespasian, was a highly respected revenue official in Asia Minor, who afterwards removed to Switzerland, where he died. Vespasian’s mother, Vespasia Polla, was of better family than her husband, for her father, a citizen of Nursia in the Sabine country, had been a military tribune, and her brother was a senator.

　　Vespasian was born on 17th November a.d. 9, at Falacrine, a place near Reate. His elder brother, Flavius Sabinus, had attained senatorial rank, and Vespasian was ambitious to follow in his footsteps. As quaestor he was allotted to the province Crete and Cyrene. He held the office of aedile under Caligula, probably in 38, and the praetorship in 39. In this year, on 30th December, his eldest child, the future Emperor Titus (see article , bks. iii-vii., in the composition of which memoirs of Vespasian himself were used; Tacitus, Histories, bks. i-v. (reaching only to autumn 70); Dio Cassius, bk. lxvi., existing now only in the abridgment of Xiphilinus; Suetonius, Vespasian, and later authorities; the rich collection of inscriptions is put together by H. C. Newton, The Epigraphical Evidence far the Reigns of Vespasian and Titus (Cornell Studies in Classical Philology, xvi.), Ithaca, N.Y., 1901. Modern works are V. Duruy, History of Rome, Eng. translation[Note: auly-Wissowa Pauly-Wissowa’s Realencyklopädie.]