66 MICHAEL DEWAR
demands of the most outrageous private luxury.^1 The lake that adorned
the pleasure gardens of Nero’s palace was filled in by the Flavians to
form the site for their mammoth amphitheatre, a building which
served both as a locus for public entertainment rather than private
debaucheries and also as a locus for the public execution and humilia-
tion of the enemies of the state. The theme of public rather than pri-
vate luxury continues with the Baths of Titus built just to the north of
the amphitheatre. In addition, the new Flavian dynasty is said to
shame the old and degenerate one by surpassing it in pietas: Nero had
left incomplete the precinct and temple of the Deified Claudius on the
Caelian hill to the east, but this lamentable disrespect towards his
adoptive father is rectified by Vespasian, who, having been raised to
prominence by Claudius as one of his favoured generals, now fulfills
the obligations of pietas as they apply to himself and finishes the con-
struction.^2 As Martial puts it in the best-known formulation of the
theme, Rome has been restored to herself:
hic ubi sidereus propius uidet astra colossus
et crescunt media pegmata celsa uia,
inuidiosa feri radiabant atria regis
unaque iam tota stabat in urbe domus.
hic ubi conspicui uenerabilis Amphitheatri
erigitur moles, stagna Neronis erant.
hic ubi miramur uelocia munera thermas,
abstulerat miseris tecta superbus ager.
Claudia diffusas ubi porticus explicat umbras,
ultima pars aulae deficientis erat.
reddita Roma sibi est et sunt te praeside, Caesar,
deliciae populi, quae fuerant domini.
(Mart. Sp. 2.1–12)
Here where the starry colossus looks upon the constellations from a
closer vantage-point and the lofty scaffolding rises in the middle of the
road, once there shone the hated halls of a savage tyrant, and now in the
whole City there stood a single house. Here where there rises the vener-
able mass of the Amphitheatre, was once Nero’s lake. Here where we
gaze in wonder at the hot baths, a speedy gift, an arrogant stretch of
land had deprived poor men of their homes. Where the Claudian colon-
nade unfolds its far-spreading shade, was the furthest wing where the1 See in general Griffin 1984, 133–42. The most significant ancient sources are
Tacitus (Ann. 15.42), Suetonius (Nero 31, 39.2) and Mart. Sp. 2 (quoted on this page).
2 See Suet. Ves. 9.1 fecit ... templum ... Diui ... Claudi in Caelio monte coeptum
quidem ab Agrippina sed a Nerone prope funditus destructum.