Vespasian

Titus Flavius Vespasianus came from a modest family in the Sabine country and rose through the army. He commanded a legion in the invasion of Britain under Claudius, and in AD 67 Nero sent him to put down the revolt in Judaea. In AD 69, the Year of the Four Emperors, the eastern legions proclaimed him emperor. He was the last of four men to claim the throne that year and the only one to keep it, founding the Flavian dynasty.

He came to a city scarred by fire and civil war, with its finances in ruins. He raised taxes and rebuilt the Temple of Jupiter on the Capitol. Suetonius says he began an amphitheater in the middle of the city because he had learned that Augustus had planned one. He built it on the site of the lake of Nero's Golden House, turning a private pleasure ground into a public one. An inscription from the building, reconstructed by modern scholars, suggests it was paid for from the spoils of the Jewish War. Suetonius also preserves his dry humor. When his son objected to a tax on urine, Vespasian is said to have held a coin from it to his son's nose and asked whether it smelled.