Domitian, Emperor of Rome AD 81–96, has traditionally been portrayed as a tyrant and his later years on the throne as a ‘reign of terror’, with his death bringing a restoration of liberty and inaugurating the glorious rule of the ‘five good emperors’. It is less
well known that he was an able, meticulous administrator, a reformer of the economy, with a building programme designed to ensure that Rome not only was the capital of the world but looked it as well.
Brian Jones’s biography of the emperor, the first ever in English and the first in any language for nearly a century, offers a balanced interpretation of the life of Domitian. In taking into account recent scholarship and new epigraphic and archaeological discoveries, The Emperor Domitian proposes that Domitian was a ruthless but efficient autocrat with a sound foreign policy, and rejects the traditional view that dismisses him as a vicious tyrant. His harshness was felt by a comparatively minute, but highly vocal section of the population, who included those who wrote the history of his reign.
Brian Jones argues that his relationship with the court rather than with the senate is central to understanding his policies and in explaining his reputation. The book further challenges many of the assumptions concerning Domitian’s connection with the persecution
of the early Christians.
Domitian remains one of the most important and intriguing of the Roman rulers. Roman historians will have to take account of this new biography which in part represents a rehabilitation of Domitian.