Domitian, touchy about his baldness, reportedly wrote a book on hair care
According to the biographer Suetonius, the emperor Domitian was so sensitive about going bald that he wore wigs and even wrote a book about looking after hair. Suetonius also painted him as a paranoid tyrant. Modern historians are more generous, seeing a ruthless but efficient ruler whose programmes helped set up the peaceful second century.
Born in Rome on 24 October 51, Domitian came from a family that had climbed fast. His great-grandfather, a centurion, disgraced himself by fleeing the battlefield at Pharsalus in 48 BC, but married a very rich woman; his grandfather collected taxes in Asia and worked as a banker in what is now Switzerland; and his father Vespasian became consul in the year Domitian was born and emperor in 69, after the civil war called the Year of the Four Emperors.
Domitian grew up largely alone. His mother and sister died early, while his father and brother Titus commanded armies abroad, and by 18 he had lost almost all his close relatives. He studied rhetoric and literature, could quote Homer and Virgil aptly, wrote poetry and was a skilled archer. Under his father and brother he received honours but no real responsibility. Suetonius describes him as tall and handsome in youth, though with cramped toes, and later bald and pot-bellied. He was said to be suspicious, remote and fond of solitude, with an odd, sometimes self-mocking humour.
The Praetorian Guard declared him emperor when Titus died in 81, and his 15-year reign was the longest since Tiberius. He revalued the coinage, strengthened frontier defences and rebuilt much of Rome. His general Agricola pushed deep into Caledonia, now Scotland, while in Dacia he failed to defeat King Decebalus. Appointing himself censor for life, he set out to police public and private morals and sharply curbed the Senate's powers.
The army and ordinary Romans liked him; senators loathed him. Court officials assassinated him on 18 September 96, and his adviser Nerva took over the same day. The Senate condemned his memory, and writers such as Tacitus and Pliny the Younger fixed the tyrant image that later scholars have questioned.
Source: Domitian
