Hello, and welcome to the history of Rome.

Episode 73, The Only Man Who Improved.

At the beginning of his histories, a tacitist claims that the year 69 AD was very nearly

the last of Rome's existence.

While this can be easily set aside as dramatic exaggeration, there is no doubt that the

last 18 months had taken their toll on the Empire.

Rome's had been lost, property had been destroyed, and the rule of law had been thrown out

the window.

It would take more than a year of civil war to destroy the Empire, but if things had

gone on like they had been going since the suicide of Nero, the Romans very well could

have been facing the end of their civilization.

Luckily for the Romans, by the time the Senate recognized Bespasian as Emperor in the last

days of December 69 AD, the civil wars had already swept up all the legions from Spain

to Syria and deposited them in Italy to fight it out.

Anyone who was in a position to make a bid through the throne had already tried, so there

was no one left to perpetuate the cycle of ascension and deposition once Bespasian's forces

had overthrown Vatelius.

So things did not go on as they had, and Roman civilization survived, battered, but far

from beaten.

An important thing to take away from this reality is to understand that there was nothing

special or divine or cosmic about Bespasian's rise.

Unlike Marius or Sulla or Julius Caesar or Augustus, he did not really possess the phenomenal

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