Commentary Purg XXI 82-84

Born ca. A.D. 45, Statius was thus about twenty-five when Titus, son of the emperor Vespasian, destroyed in A.D. 70 the second temple in Jerusalem as part of his attack upon the Jews, an event to which Dante will advert in [Par VI 92] (for Dante's sense of the 'just retribution' involved in this event, see the note to that passage).  Titus succeeded Vespasian as emperor (79-81).