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Historical person
9–79
Vespasian was a successful general who became Roman emperor in AD 69 after the civil wars known as the Year of the Four Emperors. He founded the Flavian dynasty, restored state finances and began major building projects, including the amphitheatre later called the Colosseum. His earlier command in the invasion of Britain and the Judaean War gave him the military reputation that supported his claim to power.
Vespasian is the central character of Robert Fabbri’s Vespasian series, which follows him from youth through military service and imperial accession. He also provides the political setting for Lindsey Davis’s Marcus Didius Falco novels, whose investigations unfold under the new Flavian regime.
In Lindsey Davis’s The Silver Pigs, her information leads to stolen silver-bearing ingots and to senators who hope to exploit the unsettled beginning of Vespasian's reign. In Robert Fabbri’s Tribune of Rome, Sixteen-year-old Vespasian leaves his family estate for Rome, hoping to find patronage and begin the public career expected of a young Roman noble. Other novels featuring Vespasian include Lindsey Davis’s Shadows in Bronze, Lindsey Davis’s The Iron Hand of Mars, Lindsey Davis’s Last Act in Palmyra, Lindsey Davis’s Two for the Lions, and Kate Quinn’s Daughters of Rome.
In non-fiction, Vespasian is discussed in Mary Beard’s Twelve Caesars, Pliny the Elder’s Natural History, and Josephus’s The Jewish War. Mary Beard’s Twelve Caesars approaches the subject through court politics and dynastic power, political ambition and government, and empire, conquest and resistance.
Historical context
Series
The Four Emperors quartet follows the collapse of Nero’s government and the successive regimes of Galba, Otho and Vitellius before Vespasian secures power. Rather than treating AD 68–69 only as a contest among generals, the novels remain close to the Palatine household: secretaries, slaves, freedmen, lovers and entertainers…
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The Eagles of the Empire series follows Roman soldiers Macro and Cato from the reign of Claudius into that of Nero. Their service takes them through the invasion and occupation of Britain, Mediterranean piracy, revolt, imperial court intrigue and Rome’s eastern wars, combining military campaigning with the politics…
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The Vespasian series follows Titus Flavius Vespasianus from obscure young nobleman and soldier to the imperial contender who will found the Flavian dynasty. The novels use Vespasian’s career to move through the Julio-Claudian court, frontier warfare, Britain, Armenia, North Africa, Judaea and the civil-war crisis of AD 69.…
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The Agricola series follows Gnaeus Julius Agricola from an ambitious young military tribune to the governor who carried Roman campaigning into northern Britain. His career unfolds through the Boudican Revolt, Nero’s final years, the civil wars of AD 69 and the consolidation of Flavian rule. Alongside battlefield command,…
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The Gaius Valerius Verrens series follows a Roman officer whose career begins during the Boudican Revolt and carries him through the violent final years of Nero’s reign, the Year of the Four Emperors and the consolidation of Flavian rule. Valerius moves between Britain, Rome, the eastern frontier, Judaea…
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The Centurions trilogy is set during the Year of the Four Emperors and the Batavian Revolt. It follows Roman and Batavian officers whose old comradeship collapses when Galba dismisses Nero’s German bodyguard and Julius Civilis turns a frontier grievance into a major rebellion.
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The Sword of Cartimandua is a Roman Britain sequence following auxiliary cavalry and frontier soldiers from the age of Cartimandua through the Flavian and early Hadrianic period. The books use Brigantian politics, Roman conquest, northern campaigning, Caledonia and Hadrian’s Wall to show Britain as a frontier province where…
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Margaret George’s Nero duology reconstructs the life of Rome’s last Julio-Claudian emperor, beginning with a childhood in which imperial blood makes Nero a target and ending with the collapse of his reign. Told largely through Nero’s own perspective, the series follows his passage through the courts of Caligula…
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M. C. Scott’s Rome series follows Sebastos Pantera, an imperial intelligence agent whose missions take him from Nero’s Rome to the eastern provinces and back into the capital during civil war. Set in the same fictional world as the Boudica novels, the sequence combines espionage with the political…
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The Empress of Rome sequence moves from the civil wars of AD 69 through the Flavian and Nerva–Antonine dynasties. Its fictional families cross generations of slavery, gladiatorial combat, military service and senatorial politics while real emperors repeatedly alter their fortunes. Publication order begins with Mistress of Rome, followed…
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The Claudius Series is Robert Graves’s two-volume fictional memoir of the Roman emperor Claudius and the Julio-Claudian dynasty. I, Claudius follows the imperial family from Augustus to Caligula through Claudius’s wary, observant voice, while Claudius the God covers his own reign and the forces that undermine it. Together…
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The Centurions quartet follows the half-brothers Correus and Flavius Appius Julianus from military apprenticeship during Vespasian’s reign to senior command under Domitian. Correus, born to an enslaved German woman, possesses the skills of a natural soldier but lacks legitimate status; Flavius inherits rank but must struggle to earn…
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The Savage Isle series begins in AD 42, as the death of Cunobeline fractures the political order of southern Britain and Emperor Claudius prepares a Roman invasion. Cullen, an orphan of the Atrebates captured by the Catuvellauni, grows from vulnerable outsider into a warrior whose fate is tied…
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The Roma Trilogy follows generations of the fictional Pinarius family across the long history of Rome. Roma begins with the city’s legendary foundation and continues through the Republic and the rise of Augustus; Empire carries the family through the Julio-Claudian, Flavian and adoptive-emperor periods; Dominus follows the later…
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The twenty Marcus Didius Falco novels follow a Roman informer from AD 70 to 77 during the reign of Vespasian. Falco begins as a poor veteran taking private commissions but becomes an occasional imperial agent, travelling from Rome to Britain, Germania, Syria, Hispania, North Africa, Greece and Egypt.…
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Non Fiction
Biographies, histories and other non-fiction are listed separately from the historical novels above.
