His older son, named like himself Titus Flavius Vespasianus, was the most fortunate of emperors. Titus died in the second year of his rule and the forty-second of his age, while still “the darling of mankind”; time did not suffice him for the corruptions of power or the disillusionment of desire. As a youth he had distinguished himself in ruthless war and tarnished his name with loose living; now, instead of letting omnipotence intoxicate him, he reformed his morals and made his government a model of wisdom and honor. His greatest fault was uncontrollable generosity. He counted that day lost on which he had not made someone happy with a gift; he spent too much on shows and games; and he left the replenished Treasury almost as low as his father had found it. He completed the Colosseum and built another municipal bath. No one suffered capital punishment during his brief reign; on the contrary, he had informers flogged and banished. He swore that he would rather be killed than kill. When two patricians were detected in a conspiracy to depose him he contented himself with sending them a warning; then he dispatched a courier to relieve the anxiety of a conspirator’s mother by telling her that her son was safe.
His misfortunes were disasters over which he could have little control. A three-day fire in the year 79 destroyed many important buildings, including again the Temple of Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva; in the same year Vesuvius buried Pompeii and thousands of Italians; and a year later Rome was stricken with a plague more deadly than any her history had yet recorded. Titus did all he could to lessen the sufferings caused by these calamities; “he showed not merely the concern of an emperor, but a father’s surpassing love.”102 He died of a fever in 81, in the same farmhouse in which his father had recently passed away. All Rome mourned him except the brother who succeeded to his throne.