The Lex Vespasiana is a bronze tablet made in 69 AD to commemorate the emperor Vespasian’s acceptance of various imperial privileges from the Senate and people of Rome. Today, the Lex Vespasiana is installed in the Capitoline Museum. In the 14th century Life of Cola di Rienzo, written by an anonymous contemporary, it was hanging in the Lateran. Cola, who “alone knew how to read and interpret” its inscription, uses the tablet as a historical precedent for his argument, in a well-received speech, that the Senate, and people, i.e. the barons, of Rome, had too much power and that the emperor and pope ought to regain their former primacy in the city.

Vespasian did not inherit the Roman Empire, but came to power through bloodshed, and the Lex Vespasiana repeatedly tries to create a continuity between his rights as emperor and those of his Julio-Claudian predecessors, emphasizing with each item that the divine Augustus and Tiberius had also been granted the same privileges. Cola, as reported by the author of the Life, adapts the language of the tablet to better fit his time or match to his interpretation, but the point is clear: just as Vespasian gave his decrees more authority by recalling the laws of “legitimate” (or deified) emperors, so does Cola use the example of his city’s former glory days to legitimize his reforms.