TITO (T. Flavius Vespasianus Augustus), ROMAN EMPEROR. – Son of Vespasian, born in Rome on 30 December 39 A.D., died at Aquae Cutiliae (today Cotilia, near Rieti) on 13 September 81 A.D.
He completed his military training as a tribunus militum in Germany and Britain, and finally in the East as legatus of the XV Apollinaris legion (Suetonius, Vesp., 4; Josephus, Bell. Iud., III, 4 ff.), together with his father, who was engaged in the war in Judaea. When Vespasian was proclaimed emperor by the legions, T. remained as lieutenant to complete the military operations against the Jews (Tacitus, Hist., V, 1; Suetonius, Tit., 5). The Jewish historian Josephus, in Books V and VI of his Jewish War, has left a dramatic account of the defenders’ final defence of Jerusalem; although tormented by hunger, they resisted fiercely during the siege and the final assault by the legions. The Roman soldiers had to work hard to force a passage through the last resistance of the citadel. The Temple had been set on fire, despite the wishes of T. himself, who was acclaimed “emperor” upon its ruins (Josephus, VI, 6). Sulpicius Severus, on the other hand, reports (Chron., II, 30, 6) that the destruction took place on T.’s advice, out of hatred for both the Jewish and Christian religions, since the Christians derived from the Jews: radice sublata stirpem facile perituram. The booty was great, as was the number of prisoners sold or deported. From that moment the Jewish diaspora began. With the war thus ended, T. celebrated his triumph, which was immortalized in the arch bearing his name, completed by his brother Domitian. The decorative panels of the archway recall precisely the cult objects carried away from the Temple as trophies: the table for the sacred loaves, the silver trumpets, and the seven-branched candelabrum (v. Ch. Huelsen, Das Forum Romanum, 2nd ed., Rome 1905, p. 222 ff). In the Middle Ages, the latter object curiously gave its name to the arch, which was known as arcus septem lucernarum.
Later associated by his father with the Empire, T. passed through the highest offices of the state and succeeded him on 24 June 79. Severe and almost ruthless in suppressing crimes of treason when he was his father’s colleague, once he had assumed the imperial purple he proved mild and tolerant, almost wishing to moderate the somewhat absolutist regime established by Vespasian and continued by Domitian. His brief reign was marred by the eruption of Vesuvius, which buried Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Stabiae, and by a disastrous fire that burned Rome for three days; but he dealt with these calamities promptly. He also had a relationship—regarded with suspicion by the people, who remembered the evil arts of the Eastern queens (Cassius Dio, LXVI, 15, 4)—
with Queen Berenice, daughter of Agrippa I, the Jewish sovereign (v. Wilcken, in Pauly-Wissowa, III, 1, cols. 287–89). The relationship subsequently ended, either for reasons of state or also because the queen was older than he was.