Imperator Titus Caesar Vespasianus Augustus

Two months after the death of his father and the start of Titus' reign as Augustus, a thunderous roar had been heard in Rome. People had fled to their homes and prayed to Zeus for protection. Days later, reports came in that Mount Vesuvius had erupted. Soon enough, more reports of the absolute destruction arrived along with the first ash-covered refugees. Pompeii and Herculeum were lost in less than a day. Thousands of souls ferried across the river Styx. May the gods of the dead look over their souls.

That this was the work of the Gods was not in doubt. Titus consulted the Priests on Aventine hill and made public sacrifices to pray for Neptune's forgiveness. Neptune was the god of the seas and volcanos exploded when he shook the earth. He was not known as a kind or forgiving God. Most of the people in Rome agreed that Neptune had been displeased with the lack of morals displayed by the people of Pompeii.

The area was known for its open displays of gambling and whoring. Many men of senatorial and equestrian rank own country estates near the coast of Mount Vesuvius and have been known to visit Pompeii to partake in the less than savory indulgences. Titus had, in his more youthful days, also spent several summers indulging in the pleasures of Pompeii. Many members of the Senate had assured Titus that the destruction was due to the lack of morals displayed by the people of Pompeii. This was a sign from the gods to return to the morals of their more noble ancestors. However, whispers among the plebians of Rome said that this was a sign that the gods did not support Titus and that they were displeased with his ascension to the Purple.

It was not an auspicious start to Titus' reign.

Titus had organized the relieve efforts. Coordinating lines of wagons with food and wine. He had personally gone to the cities near the coast of Mount Vesuvius to give gold to the local city administrators. He gave enough gold to build apartments and purchase grain for the refugees during the cold winter months. He had his administrators keep records of who died. If someone wealthy had died without heirs their property and wealth was confiscated by the state and used to house and support survivors. He had also assigned some of his own personal slaves to oversee the use of the coin, so it would not be excessively hoarded by the officials.

His brother Domitian had argued that Titus should not place the gold in the hands of city officials at all, nor accept that any of it might be used to line the pockets of the local senatorial class. Titus had laughed at his brother's naivety. As long as the gold taken by the senatorial administrators was not in excess and they performed their duties by looking after the refugees of Mount Vesuvius, then Titus considered it gold well spent. Domitian still harbored a great distaste for all those of senatorial class and was young enough that he still believed government could exist without corruption. While Titus understood the root of Domitian's anger, he also knew not even the great Augustus himself could rule the empire without the support of the senate and people of Rome.

He made it known around Rome and the entire empire that he would personally visit Mount Vesuvius and that his court would look after the refugees. It would not do to be accused of being uncaring or inactive in times of crisis, especially not so soon after the death of his well-loved father.

Mount Vesuvius was only a week's ride from Rome on horseback. However, since he had with him many wagons of coin and food along with three thousand of the Praetorian Guard it had taken Titus more than two weeks before arriving at the site of the eruption. It would ultimately take him another three weeks of visiting villages and dropping off supplies before he would get back to Rome.

He had been expecting the dead. He had been expecting refugees. He had not been expecting the size of the area now laying in deathly silence, covered in ash. Titus had led armies, he had burned fields and forests to starve the enemies of Rome, he had destroyed houses and plundered cities, executed hundreds by sword and by cross, but he had never seen destruction and death on such a scale.

Roads were impassable, forests and all the animals they had once contained burnt or buried, the ocean near Vesuvius littered with rotting dead fish. The smell of sulfur and rot was inescapable and the silence almost deafening. This was truly the work of a wrathful god. Titus had always been religious; all good Romans were. However, sitting on his horse and overlooking the massive amount of death that had been a thriving coastal city mere weeks before, Titus believed in a way he never had before.

The gods truly were powerful and terrifying.

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This was not the first time Titus had heard about the spirit who walked among the ashes of Pompeii and looked over the sailors. Titus had assumed that the spirit had appeared before one or a few people to aid them in their darkest hour or give warnings before returning to the realm of the gods. A powerful protective spirit, no doubt, but one who disappears as quickly as they appear. However, the reports sitting on his desk now spoke not of a protective spirit, but a Semi-Deus of flesh and blood. A boy born from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius.

A young man of myth and legend that would be equivalent to only Titus himself. As Augustus of Rome, Titus knew that he too, would ascend to Olympus as a god upon his death, as his father had done before him, and Emperor Claudius before him all the way back to Jullius Ceasar. However, before death Titus was fully human. The son of a Neptune, one of the greatest and oldest gods, now walks among the Roman people in the village of Gaeta. If Titus made haste on horseback, he could reach Gaeta by sunset tomorrow.

"Slave! Bring a message to the Praetorian Prefect Tiberius Alexander, we ride out to Gaeta in an hour!"

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The trip had been a four-day waste of time. Titus had spent a day in Gaeta speaking with the local elite, as much as a small town like Gaeta had elite anyway. He also sent his men to go speak with the refugees and the locals. Thay all spoke of the same man. The son of Neptune born in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. He spoke an archaic version of Greek and could walk beneath the waves with ease. Although he looked human, they had seen him reach into ovens to pick up freshly-baked bricks and dig foundations in rock hard earth without tiring for hours. Crabs were his sacred animal. A young man with mostly black hair except for a section of pure white. When angered he had summoned a storm within minutes. He had led a sacrificial ritual to his father Neptune and the sacrifice had been accepted in a column of flame. A true Semi-Deus. A being of more godly power than anyone had dreamed of seeing in their lifetime.

Of course, the Semi-Deus had left Gaeta a week before Titus' arrival and left no proof of his existence apart from an adoring populace and sacred crab shells.

So, he once more traveled back to Rome without having seen this God-child. He left in the afternoon and spent a night camping in the countryside. Titus slept where his men slept, and ate what they ate. He laughed with his guard around the fire and shared war stories with the younger soldiers. The next day, they rode all day and continued on after dark. Titus knew his men had no problems finding their way home this close to Rome. Domitian met him at the Praetorian camp on the fields of Mars as Titus was dismounting.

"Any luck finding the son of Neptune, brother?"

"No," Titus said, removing his horse's saddle. He had slaves for this, but Titus enjoyed spending time with his horse. She was a good horse. "However, I do not regret the time spent. I quite enjoyed riding the countryside with my guard. It has been some time since I have traveled quickly," Titus grunted as he rolled his shoulders, "though perhaps I am getting too old to ride through the night."

"Shall we head to the bathes then, to scrape some of the sweat and dirt off your august ass?"

Titus smacked his brother, who just laughed.

Most of Titus' one thousand guards went their separate way, but Tiberius Alexander and twelve guards remained with their Augustus. Tiberius Alexander was the captain of the Praetorian Guard and had been Titus' right-hand man since the siege of Jerusalem. Titus could think of no man he trusted more.

Even in the middle of the night, Rome was active and full of life. During the day carts were not allowed on the streets of Rome. Too many children had died beneath the hooves and wheels of carts. Which meant the streets at night were full of wagons, horses and merchants yelling at each other. Though no cart or merchant, no matter how angry, would disturb Titus and his armor-clad guard as they walked through his city. Titus wore armor too, of course, but kept it hidden under his purple imperial tunic.

He sees a woman in a blue dress holding an oil lantern and for a moment Titus' sees Berenice, his Jewish queen. A second look reveals it is not her, merely a lesser woman with similar features. Of course it's not her. Berenice is back in Judea with her brother King Agrippa II. Titus loves her as he has no other. In his heart, she was his wife. But Rome could never accept a Jewish queen as Augusta and Titus would always put the will of the people of Rome over mere womanly desires. If he spends nights reaching out for someone who is not there then that is no one's business but his own.

"Did you order the Bathes of Nero closed for cleaning, Brother?" Domitian asked as they walked past the Pantheon.

"No. Why would the baths need to be closed for cleaning?" Titus asked, his eyes following where his brother pointed across the road past the statue garden to the entrance of the public bathes. Indeed, barely visible from the light of the moon, the entrance to the Bathes of Nero had been roped off with a wooden sign in front reading "closed for cleaning".

Tiberius Alexander laughed, "Do you think it's a pair of lovers hoping to have the baths to themselves?"

Titus grinned back, "Let's find out." His men laughed and elbowed each other.

"We have bathes at home," Domitian grumbled, but followed where Titus led.

Tiberius Alexander cut the rope blocking the doorway and their group entered the bathing complex. The changing rooms were empty but they could hear splashing from the large bathing complex beyond. It sounded almost like a waterfall but Titus could only faintly hear two voices. What was going on?

Titus removed his muddied sandals and put on the wooden ones provided by the baths. Normally he would remove all his clothing and scrape his body clean with a strigil for an afternoon in the baths, but the sound of moving water from the chambers beyond was far too intriguing. Titus walked further into the bathing complex knowing his men would follow.

He walked past the empty massage rooms and the smaller thermae, until he got to the several hundred paces wide, open roofed swimming pool. The room that could hold one hundred men held but two young men who had not yet noticed Titus, Domitian or his guards. However, it was not the two men that caught Titus' attention. The water in the room did not fill the swimming pool, instead it raced along the walls like a monstrous snake. The moonlight reflected through the moving, floating water.

"Now jump in! It'll be super fun, I promise!" the younger of the two men exclaimed to his friend in an archaic form of Greek. The young man had unkept black hair with a shock of pure white in the front and he controlled the water snake with merely a twitch of his fingers.

His companion jumped into the floating river snake with apparent glee. His head emerged from the water but he was dragged around the side of the room along the body of the snake at alarming speed. The man's shouts of joy turned abruptly into surprised spluttering when his eyes landed on Titus, Domitian, Tiberius Alexander and the dozen praetorian guards that were standing at the entrance of the room.

The son of Neptune turned to Titus with bright burning green eyes, brandishing a bronze feather. The water snake and the young man it contained fell gently into the tiled pool. "Vespasianus Augustus," the roman man who had been dropped in the pool spluttered. He stood up and bowed awkwardly, his head dipping beneath the water.

To Titus' right, Tiberius Alexander made the Jewish hand sign to ward off the evil eye and whispered a prayer in Hebrew.

"Well," Domitian said calmly, "we found him."

Perseus son of Neptune, a Semi-Deus in the flesh.

Titus steps forward.

"It is an honor to meet you at last, Perseus Son of Neptune. I had set out to find you in Gaeta. If I had known you were coming to Rome, I would have ordered a parade at your arrival and one hundred days of celebration to welcome you properly," Titus said, silently thanking his tutors for teaching him Greek in his youth.

The son of Neptune lowered the feather and spoke, "What? Perseus. No. I have never heard of him. I am… Gaius, uh, son of Gaius. Did you guys see that water? That was weird. I don't know how that happened."

Perseus is a bad liar. Titus was not entirely sure how to respond to such a blatant lie from a being as powerful as this.

"Did you guys not see the sign that said 'closed for cleaning'?" Perseus asked, "You weren't supposed to enter."

"The public baths do not close for cleaning. We employ cleaning staff that work during the day," Titus responded, "and it does not appear as if you are cleaning."

"Uh. This isn't working. Retreat!" Perseus says with a laugh, jumping into the pool. He doesn't swim so much as the water itself pushes him toward his roman friend. Grabbing his friend, Perseus pulls the water of the swimming pool into a giant wave that pushes the two young men up and over the ten-paces-high far wall of the open-air baths. There is a splash on the other side of the wall.

"Perseus! We can't run away from the Augustus!"

"Of course we can Gaius, we're doing it right now! It's not like those guys will be able to jump over the wall. Come on!"

Titus and Domitian shared a look as the voices of the two young men got further away.

"Shall I get the guard to find them, Augustus?" Tiberious Alexander asked.

"No need. I recognized the Roman man. He and his mother were among the refugees who joined our caravan line on the return route from our trip to Mount Vesuvius. I spoke to his mother. I believe he is the nephew of Plinius Secundus, the Navy Commander stationed at Misenum when Mount Vesuvius erupted," Titus said, "We will send their family and any guests of their household an invitation to dinner at the palace."

"While I had heard the Semi-Deus was youthful, it had not occurred to me that the son of Neptune could be more child than god," Domitian said. "I will have to pray to Minerva for guidance."

"A Semi-Deus barely out of his youth," Titus agreed, "one who is the same age as my daughter."

"A dangerous gamble," Domitian said, alarmed, "with a power as uncontrollable as this Semi-Deus seems to be."

"It is whispered that the first Augustus was the son of Apollo. His dynasty ruled over Rome for almost one hundred years. The son of Neptune could legitimize our dynasty for far longer."

"Let's first have dinner with the boy, before you promise your only daughter to him," Domitian counseled. Titus grunted his agreement.

"Men," Titus turned to his wide-eyed guard, "No one is to whisper a word about what happened tonight to a single soul. I will have your silence on this matter, understood?"

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"Julia," Titus called his daughter, knocking on her door.

"I'm busy! Go away!" Julia called from behind the door.

"Do not speak to your father that way. You have ten seconds to hide whatever inappropriate scroll you do not want me to know you are reading before I come in," Titus called back.

There was scrambling behind the door. "I am not reading anything inappropriate! Why would you even say that?"

When ten seconds passed, Titus opened the door. Julia was lounging on a chair, reading a scroll Titus recognized as his own copy of the Aeneid. The blankets on her bed behind her formed a suspicious scroll shaped lump. "I'm studying the history of Rome, father," Julia Flavia said.

"Tell me then, of the role Neptune plays in Aeneas' journey to Italy."

"Neptune calms the storms around Ilia to allow Aeneas and his men to leave safely while sinking the ships of many unworthy Greek kings. He also guides Aeneas and his crew to Italy after Aeneas leaves the unworthy behind in Sicily."

"Wonderful, then you already know of the power of your potential father-in-law."

Julia looked up at Titus for the first time that day, eyes wide. "You found the Semi-Deus in Gaeta? Are you certain? Father, what if he is a common juggler and sorcerer?

Even if I divorce him, being married to some plebian juggler for even a day would destroy my name forever! Please say I am not engaged!"

"You are not engaged," Titus agreed. Julia looked relieved until Titus continued, "I am no fool Julia. I am certain of his godly blood. You will meet him tomorrow night so make sure you look and act your best. He is a powerful man and we cannot afford to upset him. If he proves to be a reliable ally, I do intend to engage you to him. You are already sixteen, I have waited far too long to settle you in a proper marriage."

"If I can prove he is a swindler and a juggler, will you let the matter drop?"

Titus walked across the room and pulled his daughter's face up to meet his eyes, "Do not do anything to anger the gods, daughter. They are not as forgiving as I. If this Perseus is even half as powerful as the people of Gaeta claim, he would be a powerful ally and an incredibly dangerous enemy. Do not allow your pride to anger him. You will not get a second warning."

Julia pressed her lips in defiance but nodded. After a few more seconds Titus releases her and turns to leave.

"Neptune is known as the father of monsters," Julia calls after him, "How many eyes does my future husband have?"

"Two eyes, two legs and zero tentacles," Titus sighs, "I would not wed you to a monster for political gain." Internally, Titus wondered if that was the truth.

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Author Notes:

Notes:

Titus is not a good person. Titus is not an evil person. Titus is very much a product of his time. He is a powerful man in the Roman Empire in 79 AD. I didn't want to focus too much on slavery, antisemitism, and sexism in this fic but it's also inescapable if you write about this time period.

Also, if people don't know about the fascinating love story between Berenice the Jewish queen and Titus the general behind the sacking of Jerusalem, the destruction of the Second Jewish temple and murder of anywhere between 100,000 to one million Jewish people, I would recommend looking into it. I don't know how to feel about it, but it certainly has drama.

If we're talking about interesting historical figures: Tiberius Julius Alexander is also very interesting. A Jewish man from Egypt who enters the Roman political system and becomes governor of Egypt for a time, one of the most powerful political positions in the empire. He is Titus' right-hand man during the siege of Jerusalem and becomes the head of Titus' Praetorian Guard when Titus ascends to the throne. He is likely the highest-ranking Jewish man in the Roman Empire during this period.