Alongside Vespasian’s investiture in AD 69, the Senate elevated his sons, conferring powers that put Titus and Domitian on the imperial ladder. Tacitus is explicit: “praetura Domitiano et consulare imperium decernuntur.” The move turned a settlement into a dynasty, with the Palatine’s family rooms now mapped onto the Curia’s voting tablets.
What Happened
In the same breath that made Vespasian’s authority official, the Senate looked past him. Stability meant succession, and succession meant bringing the emperor’s sons into the constitutional fold. Rome’s governing class had watched one-man rule implode under Nero; it now preferred predictability even if it tasted of monarchy [1][16].
Tacitus gives the crisp summary: “praetura Domitiano et consulare imperium decernuntur”—the praetorship to Domitian and consular imperium decreed—while Titus was granted powers that positioned him as partner and heir [2]. On the Palatine Hill, the household became a political map. In the Curia, the votes tallied a plan: build a team, train it in office, and make Rome expect a Flavian after a Flavian.
The practical effects were immediate. Titus, already the general on the ground in Judaea, now carried Roman authority with the same legal shine as his father. Domitian, the younger, stepped into public life with a magistracy that put him in the Senate’s eye and on the lists. They were no longer “the emperor’s sons.” They were office-holders with dates and duties [1][16].
The city’s spaces—a triangle of power—reinforced the message. From the Forum Romanum up the slope to the Palatine, and across to the Capitoline Museums’ precinct, Rome saw the family and the law moving together. Purple cloth in the palace, white togas with broad crimson stripes in the Senate—colors that aligned rather than collided.
The sounds of that December were procedural: the murmur of assent, the calling of names, the scratch of styluses. But the end of the Year of the Four Emperors had tuned Rome’s ear. Quiet procedure now sounded like survival.
By the time Vespasian and Titus rode in triumph in AD 71, the magistracies had done their work: when father and son appeared together on the Via Sacra, their joint authority looked natural because it had been legally rehearsed. Domitian’s later long reign would prove how far that early investment in roles could carry a younger son [8][22].
Why This Matters
This decision distributed power within the ruling house and groomed successors in public view. It created a bench: Titus as co-ruler in war and administration, Domitian apprenticed in office. That reduced succession risk, reassured the Senate, and signaled to provinces that imperial policy would not lurch with a deathbed [1][2].
The move belongs squarely to “Codified Power and Dynasty.” Flavian ideology did not hide its heredity; it normalized it with magistracies. By making sons the bearers of office, the regime tied family to law, not just to spectacle or birthright [16].
Across the arc, these grants made later events intelligible: Titus’ authority in Jerusalem, his inauguration of the amphitheater, and Domitian’s later assumption of censor perpetuus all sat on a foundation laid in 69. Without these steps, Domitian’s hand on frontiers and morality might have felt like usurpation rather than inheritance [22].
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