As - Vespasian S C, Spes

Spes — Hope — was a loaded word in Flavian propaganda. Vespasian deployed the personification deliberately after the catastrophic civil war of 69 AD, the Year of the Four Emperors, framing his dynasty as Rome's recovery from near-collapse. By 77–78, well into his reign, the message had shifted from emergency legitimacy to dynastic confidence — both Titus and Domitian were already being groomed as successors, and Spes carried the implicit promise of an ordered succession, something Rome had spectacularly failed to produce a decade earlier.