Are they and welcome to emperors of Rome a podcast about the rulers of the ancient

Roman Empire I'm your host Matt Smith and with me as always is Dr.

Riana Evans, a lecturer in ancient Mediterranean studies at Latrobe University.

This is episode X, X, X I.

Enter Vespation.

When we last left the Civil War of 64 CE,

fighting had come to the streets of Rome

and Vitellius had been dragged out

and unceremoniously executed.

From Judea in the east will come Vespasian and he will establish the Flavian dynasty.

But before he gets to that, it's worth learning about Vespasian's past to see what man we're going to be dealing with.

He's Rianna Nevins.

Vespasian comes from the equestrian band of Roman society, so that's not the top tier. He's not from a

senatorial background. And that means that his family is still very wealthy. He

has a good education, but it's a very unexpected place to find an emperor a because we

expect them to come from the Giulio Claudian family and we don't really have any of

them left and b because if we're going to get them from anywhere else we would

expect them to be senatorial people who have had consuls in their family or at

least high up magistrates and the family of the Flavians have neither of these. His father is a tax collector,

which is considered a very low profession, certainly by someone like Cicero, who's one of the few people

we know who writes about work, tax collecting is dealing with money, it's grubby.

And of course, then as now it's universally hated,

...