The Flavian Amphitheatre in Rome, Vespasian's Public Works Made Visible
The Colosseum, begun by Vespasian around 72 AD. It was raised on the drained lake of Nero's Golden House, on ground the previous emperor had taken from the city — which is precisely what made the site worth building on and what the new dynasty wanted understood.
Vespasian came to power in 69 with no dynastic claim and an empty treasury. His answer to both problems was construction, and the choice of ground was an argument in itself: where Nero had made a private lake, the Flavians put a public amphitheatre paid for out of the spoils of Jerusalem. The same reign restored the Capitol, began the Temple of Peace, and reorganised the taxes that funded them. Public works were not decoration for this regime; they were the means by which it explained itself to a city that had just watched four emperors in a year. See Vespasian and the transformation of Rome's public works.
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