O dear, I think I’m becoming a god!

Over time, one ends up accidentally and incidentally collecting a massive hairball of out-of-context factoids.  Things which are strictly true but often not understood.  Or, at least, that is my experience.  

For instance - "O dear, I think I’m becoming a god!” supposedly the last words uttered by Roman Emperor Vespasian (9-79AD).  This is reported by Suetonius in his Life of Vespasian.  

I had always assumed that this was just Vespasian continuing in the tradition of towering egotism and madness of some of his near predecessors such as Caligula and Nero.  

Later, as I became more familiar with Vespasian's accomplishments, that interpretation was inconsistent with what I learned of him.  He was an accomplished general, leading the successful invasion of Britain under Emperor Claudius.  He was savvy.  On the death of Nero, AD 69 became the Year of Four Emperors as four individuals sought to become the next emperor.  Vespasian being the fourth and surviving emperor.  His reign lasted ten years.  He reformed the tax system, launched a campaign of public works, brought peace to the empire, patronized the arts, and was generous to citizens and cities in extremis.  He was the first of the second imperial dynasty.  The first was the Julio-Claudian Dynasty ending with Nero.  Vespasian was the first member of the following Flavian Dynasty.  

He was witty and that was actually the context for his supposed famous last words.  From Suetonius.

Book Eight: XXIII Quotations and Jests 

 

He was very apt with his Greek quotations, recalling Homer, for example, at the sight of a tall man with a grotesquely long penis:

‘Covering the ground with long strides, shaking his long-shadowed spear,’

And when a wealthy freedman Cerylus, changed his name to Laches and claimed to be freeborn to escape paying death duties to the State, Vespasian commented (in the spirit of Menander):

‘…O Laches, Laches,

When life’s over, once more

You’ll be Cerylus, just as before.’

But most of his wit referred to disreputable means of gaining wealth, trying to make them seem less odious with his banter, and turning them into a jest.

Vespasian once turned down a request from a favourite servant who asked for a stewardship for a man he claimed was his brother then he summoned the man himself, appropriated the commission the applicant had agreed to pay the servant, and appointed him immediately. When the servant raised the matter again, Vespasian advised him: ‘Find yourself another brother, the one you thought yours turned out to be mine.’

Suspecting, on a journey, that the muleteer had dismounted and was shoeing a mule to create a delay so a litigant could approach him, Vespasian insisted on knowing how much the muleteer had been paid to shoe the animal and promptly appropriated half.

When [his son] Titus complained about a new tax Vespasian had imposed on the public urinals, he held a coin from the first payment to his son’s nose, and asked if it smelt unpleasantly. When Titus replied in the negative, Vespasian commented; ‘Yet it’s made from piss!’

Receiving a deputation who reported that a huge statue had been voted him at vast public expense, he demanded to have it erected at once, holding out his palm and quipping that the pedestal was ready and waiting.

Even the nearness of great danger or death failed to stem the flow of his humour. When the Mausoleum of Augustus split open, he declared the portent appertained to Junia Calvina, she being of the Julian line, while the streaming tail of the comet that simultaneously appeared indicated the long-haired King of the Parthians. On his death-bed he joked: ‘Oh dear! I think I’m becoming a god.’

The obscure joke here is that the emperors of the Julio-Claudian dynasty were sometimes revered as gods during their lives but always raised to godly status at their death.  "I think I'm becoming a god" is a euphemism for the imminent approach of death.  

Quite a different meaning than that which I had assumed from contextless quote.  You can almost see a witty twinkle in this late bust of Vespasian:

Vespasian Bust, circa 75AD, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen

Click to enlarge.

Daniel Voshart has done a photorealistic reconstruction of Vespasian based on four near contemporary statues of him.

Click to enlarge.