| When civil war broke out in 68 CE, the succession of imperial candidates and the ensuing military chaos forced the people of Rome to confront their system of government and their understanding of imperial power. In order to restore peace, Vespasian had to translate his military victory into stable rule at a point when the concept of the emperor had been under scrutiny. Vespasian's solution was to construct and maintain an informal personal authority that represented a new model of the imperial office that drew from Julio-Claudian precedents and operated within social and cultural parameters established by his predecessors. However, Vespasian did not seek to present himself as the heir to the Julio-Claudian dynasty, but rather as a new imperial founder, a rival for Augustus; he expressed the difference between himself and his predecessors in his interactions with space in the city of Rome, the religious identity that he adopted, the rustic Italian public persona that he developed, and the way he presented the public image of his family as an imperial dynasty to express Rome's Flavian future. In creating this model of imperial authority, Vespasian drew from a range of Roman cultural traditions and historical exempla from the Julio-Claudian period and earlier, including narrative topoi , notions of gender and the family, the traditions and memories associated with Roman urban topography, and models of leadership that emerged in military contexts.;The early months of Vespasian's reign, from his acclamation in July 69 to the Flavian triumph of June 71, show how Vespasian's imperial persona was developed in response to the ideological and political problems that had arisen in the previous century of Julio-Claudian rule, and which the intense experience of the civil war had exposed. By focusing on these early months and considering how Vespasian's imperial persona was formed over time and in response to a variety of factors, including pressure by Rome's elite, it is possible to discern Vespasian's unique conception of imperial power, and to explore how Vespasian and his contemporaries perceived the role of the emperor in Roman society. |
