Background
Domitian was born in Rome, Roman Empire (now Italy) on October 24, 51; the younger son of Vespasian and his wife and Flavia Domitilla Major. He had an older sister, Domitilla the Younger, and brother, Titus Flavius Vespasianus.
Upon his accession, Domitian revalued the Roman currency by increasing the silver content of the denarius by 12%. This coin commemorates the deification of Domitian's son.
Domitian was born in Rome, Roman Empire (now Italy) on October 24, 51; the younger son of Vespasian and his wife and Flavia Domitilla Major. He had an older sister, Domitilla the Younger, and brother, Titus Flavius Vespasianus.
Domitian received the education of a young man of the privileged senatorial class, studying rhetoric and literature. He was able to quote the important poets and writers such as Homer or Virgil on appropriate occasions, and was described as a learned and educated adolescent, with elegant conversation.
Unlike his brother Titus, Domitian was not educated at court. Whether he received formal military training is not recorded, but according to Suetonius, he displayed considerable marksmanship with the bow and arrow.
Domitian held six consulships during Vespasian's reign but only one of these, in 73, was an ordinary consulship. The other five were less prestigious suffect consulships, which he held in 71, 75, 76, 77 and 79 respectively, usually replacing his father or brother in mid-January. While ceremonial, these offices no doubt gained Domitian valuable experience in the Roman Senate, and may have contributed to his later reservations about its relevance.
Domitian came to the throne when his brother Titus died young after only 2 years of rule. Domitian's reign can be considered under two main heads: his administration, which was excellent, and his frontier policy, which was generally successful. Provincial government was so carefully supervised that the Roman biographer Suetonius admits that the empire enjoyed a period of unusually good government and security. Domitian's policy of employing members of the equestrian class rather than his own freedmen for some important posts was also a step forward.
He continued his father’s policy of holding frequent consulates (he was consul ordinarius every year from 82 to 88); he became censor for life in 85, with consequent control over senatorial membership and general behaviour.
The finances, which Titus's fecklessness had plunged into confusion, were restored despite building projects and foreign wars.
The northern frontiers needed Domitian's special attention. His governor Agricola pushed the conquest of Britain into Scotland, invaded the Highlands, and even proposed to add all Ireland to the empire after subduing Scotland. Tacitus, Agricola's son-in-law, writes that Agricola's recall in 84 was due to Domitian's jealousy, but more probably it reflected increasing concern with dangers on the Rhine-Danube frontier.
In Germany, Domitian himself took the field, continuing and extending his father's policy of shortening the frontier by annexing the triangle between the Rhine and Danube.
The latter part of the reign saw increasing trouble on the lower Danube from the Dacians, a tribe occupying approximately what is now Romania. Led by an able king, Decebalus, the Dacians in 85 invaded the empire. The war ended in 88 in a compromise peace which left Decebalus as king and gave him Roman "foreign aid" in return for his promise to help protect the frontier (chiefly against himself).
One of the reasons Domitian failed to crush the Dacians was a revolt in Germany by the governor Antonius Saturninus. The revolt was quickly suppressed, but henceforth Domitian's always suspicious temper grew steadily worse. It was, of course, the people nearest him who suffered, and after a reign of terror at court Domitian was murdered on September 18, 96, in a plot to which even his own wife, Domitia Longina, was a party. The Senate, which had always hated him, hastened to condemn his memory and repeal his acts, and Domitian joined the ranks of the tyrants of considerable accomplishments but evil memory. He was the last of the Flavian emperors, and his murder marked the beginning of the period of the so-called Five Good Emperors.
Religion was a special concern of Domitian, and he vigorously strove to breathe life again into the ancient Roman faith; he built temples and established ceremonies and even tried to enforce morality by law. This zeal for religion may explain the hostility of the Christian writers, for though he was not a persecutor of Christians, he was an ardent propagator of paganism.
During his rule Domitian used both freedmen and knights in his secretariat and his consilium of close advisers, including senators, involved no departure from precedent.
In legislation he was severe, and he incurred censure for attempting to curb vices from which he himself was not immune.
As for Domitian’s administrative decisions, they were not usually revoked.
His military and foreign policy was not uniformly successful. Domitian was the first emperor since Claudius (43) to campaign in person. He energetically defended the empire’s northern borders and improved internal administrative organization, also completing construction programs begun by his father (among which the Colosseum) and building new important architectural complexes such as the imperial palace on the Palatine hill.
From the start Domitian reigned as a complete autocrat, partly perhaps because of his lack of political skills, but partly certainly because of his own nature. Domitian was personally suspicious and unlovable, and the relations between him and those around him began ill and ended worse.
He wore triumphal dress in the Senate; and he presided, wearing Greek dress and a golden crown, over four yearly games on the Greek model, with his fellow judges wearing crowns bearing his own effigy among effigies of the gods. According to Suetonius, a grave source of offense was his insistence on being addressed as dominus et deus (“master and god”).
Quotes from others about the person
Suetonius: "He was tall of stature, with a modest expression and a high colour. His eyes were large, but his sight was somewhat dim. He was handsome and graceful too, especially when a young man, and indeed in his whole body with the exception of his feet, the toes of which were somewhat cramped. In later life he had the further disfigurement of baldness, a protruding belly, and spindling legs, though the latter had become thin from a long illness."
Edward Gibbon: "If a man were called to fix the period in the history of the world during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous, he would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus."
John Foxe: "The emperor Domitian, who was naturally inclined to cruelty, first slew his brother, and then raised the second persecution against the Christians."
In AD 71 Domitian married Domitia Longina, the younger daughter of Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo, a respected general and honoured politician who had distinguished himself for his leadership in Armenia. Domitia divorced her first husband, Lucius Aelius Lamia Plautius Aelianus in order to marry Domitian. In 80, Domitia and Domitian's only attested son was born.