Domitian

Domitian was Roman emperor from AD 81 to 96, the last of the Flavians, and was condemned to official oblivion after his murder. Born in Rome in AD 51, the younger son of Vespasian, he grew up in modest circumstances before his father seized power in the year of four emperors, and was trapped on the Capitoline during the fighting of AD 69, escaping disguised as a worshipper of Isis. He held nominal honours under his father and his brother Titus without real responsibility, and succeeded Titus in 81. He governed attentively and without pretence of republican forms. He raised soldiers' pay by a third, the first increase in a century, revalued the coinage to its Augustan silver standard and maintained it until war costs forced a reduction, and built or restored much of central Rome after the fire of 80, including the Colosseum's completion, the Forum Transitorium and an enormous palace on the Palatine. He enforced provincial administration strictly, and the provinces were well governed by contemporary accounts. He campaigned on the Rhine and Danube, annexed the Agri Decumates, and fought a difficult war against the Dacians under Decebalus, settling for a subsidised peace that Trajan later overturned. He took the title censor perpetuus, dressed as a triumphator in the Senate, and was addressed in correspondence as dominus et deus — master and god. After Saturninus's revolt in 89 he executed senators freely. He was stabbed by court officials in September 96, in a plot involving his wife's household. The Senate ordered his name erased from inscriptions. Tacitus and Pliny wrote under his successors and had reason to blacken him.

• Lived: 51 CE – 96 CE
• Nationality: Italian
• Roles: ruler