Father-to-son succession wasn’t necessarily the way for Roman Emperors. Far from it, says LJ Trafford, who draws on research for her book Ancient Rome’s Worst Emperors to illustrate how not to become a successful Roman Emperor. Buying the position when you’re drunk? Agreeing because a mob of thugs has a blade to your throat? Probably not the best start to your reign.
My latest book has the juiciest of titles, Ancient Rome’s Worst Emperors. Having considered emperors from right across the Roman empire’s 400-year history for inclusion in the book there was one thing that stood out for me from my research; how rare smooth handovers of power from one emperor to the next were.
The first son to succeed his father as emperor was Titus, who became Rome’s 10th emperor in AD79. This doesn’t happen again until Commodus succeeds his father Marcus Aurelius a full 100 years after Titus’ ascension.
A smooth succession doesn’t necessarily have to be a son following his father. The Antonine Dynasty which ruled from 96–180 was characterized by its use of adoption, the incumbent emperor would himself select a worthy successor from outside his own gene pool and train him up for the job.
That Edward Gibbon, author of Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, selects this period as the peak of Roman civilisation shows what a winning strategy this was.
However, much as I haven’t written a book about successful emperors, (because where’s the fun in that?) I’m similarly not much interested in smooth ascensions to power. I’ve selected three tales of becoming emperor from those 400 years that stood out for me.
Buying it: Didius Julianus
Didius Julianus became emperor in what one historian describes as “an event so extraordinary, tawdry and demeaning that even now it seems barely credible that the Roman Empire could have stooped so low.”1
The year was 193 and the praetorian guard had just gone and murdered the emperor Pertinax. The motivations behind this murder were flimsy in the extreme.
The Praetorian Prefect Laetus, regretted that he had made Pertinax emperor, because Pertinax used to rebuke him as a stupid babbler of various secrets.”2 There was also something around Pertinax stamping out corrupt practices that the praetorians had personally benefited from.
Bumping off Pertinax raised a question; if the praetorian guard were the emperor’s personal bodyguards, what were they if there was no emperor? The answer was horrifying: unemployed.
Which is when they had a genius idea, one that would both solve the emperor sized hole and enrich them all personally. They would sell the emperorship to the highest bidder.
The praetorians’ plan was soon the topic of discussion everywhere, including at a dinner party one Didius Julianus was attending. We’ll assume it was towards the end of this dinner after much food and delightful conversation had been had and everyone was a bit pissed, because it’s absolutely the only explanation for this. “A mob of parasites persuaded him to leave his dining couch and hurry… All the way to the camp they urged him to seize the prostrate empire.”3
Now many a poor group decision has been made at the end of an evening out, such as sambuca shots, ‘borrowing’ traffic cones or choosing to urinate under the full glare of a CCTV camera whilst doing a thumbs up to the camera.
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But deciding you should be emperor and heading off to buy your way into the position from the very same soldiers who have murdered the previous holder of the post only days earlier is the sort of decision that is only made after a swimming pool of the red stuff.
But that’s exactly what Didius Julianus did, turning up at the Praetorian Camp he promised “to give each soldier more gold than he asked for or expected to receive”.4 The praetorians rubbed their hands with glee and opened their gates to the new emperor.
It would be the next day that the praetorians would learn that Didius Julianus was nowhere near as rich as he’d claimed to be and that the gold he’d promised the soldiers he didn’t have.
Given what they’d done to Pertinax it is altogether surprising that Didius Julianus didn’t find himself the recipient of an immediate mass stabbing. But the praetorians had no need to strain their stabbing arms because in the provinces three other men had declared themselves emperor; one of them could deal with Didius Julianus. Which is what happened only three months after the praetorians had sold him the emperorship.
Being emperor or else: Gordian I
In 238 Gordian, the Roman Governor of Africa, was enjoying a quiet night in when a bunch of armed youths overpowered his household guards and burst into his home. This shocking event proved all the more shocking when the youths didn’t murder him but instead “draped him in a purple cloak and greeted him with the imperial honours.“5
It transpired that earlier that day the youths had voiced their discontent with the recent increase in taxes by murdering the procurator who’d introduced them.
This had seemed like a jolly good idea at the time and they’d all done a bit of gleeful celebrating before somebody remembered that Roman emperors tend to look unfavourably on people going about murdering their appointed officials.
There followed a horrified silence as the youths realised the enormity of what they had done and what it meant for them personally (something horrible for sure).
Until one of their number came up with a foolproof way to evade retribution from the emperor; they would make a new emperor. This new emperor would be beholden to them for his position and so wouldn’t feel much like executing them.
It might have been a kindness to consult with their chosen candidate for emperor, Gordian, about how he felt about this prior to forcing their way into his home. For it transpired that Gordian didn’t much want to be emperor, as he told the youths, and he was certain he wasn’t the best choice either given his age (did I mention that Gordian was in his 80s?)
These reasoned arguments fell on deaf ears. The youths held their swords to Gordian’s throat and told him he could either be emperor or he could be dead. Upon which Gordian decided he could perhaps be emperor after all. He lasted all of a month in the job.
Being a Bit Nearer: Valentinian II
In 375 Emperor Valentinian I unexpectedly dropped dead whilst on campaign fighting Rome’s enemies. The officials of the now deceased emperor stared down at his corpse and had a collective panic.
They needed to fill the emperor-sized gap fast before the legions of soldiers that surrounded them decided to make an emperor from amongst their own ranks.
An event that was unlikely to be of benefit to those officials; in fact it was exactly the sort of scenario that could result in their heads being suddenly unattached from their necks.
Studying a map these anxious administrators noted that, although the dead emperor’s eldest son Gratian was currently 600 miles away fighting yet more of Rome’s enemies, Valentinian I’s younger son, also named Valentinian, was only 100 miles away. They sent for the younger son immediately.
Valentinian II thus entirely owed his position of emperor to being a bit nearer than his brother.6 I can say this with confidence because Valentinian II lacked any other attribute that would qualify him as emperor due to him only being four years old at the time ascension to the Imperial title.
To conclude
We’ve had someone who paid to be emperor (although he technically he didn’t because he didn’t have the money), we’ve had someone forced at sword point to be emperor and we’ve had a pre-schooler become emperor because he was nearer as the crow flies.
Believe it or not these are some of the less dramatic ways in which a new emperor was selected. They are certainly less bloody than many of the successions that feature in my book Ancient Rome’s Worst Emperors.
Ancient Rome’s Worst Emperors by LJ Trafford is published on 30 November, 2023.
Find out more about this book.
LJ Trafford is the author of The Four Emperors series of novels. Her non-fiction books include How to Survive in Ancient Rome and Sex and Sexuality in Ancient Rome.
Her contributions to Historia include:
TV review: I, Claudius
Sex in Ancient Rome
Gladiator sweat and leech hair dye; how to survive in Ancient Rome
The Wedding, a short story set during Nero’s time
Historia’s interview with LJ Trafford
Other features you might find interesting:
Domitian, an unlikely emperor by Simon Turney
Why I write about the ‘obscure’ third century AD and
Why the Roman Empire grew so big by Harry Sidebottom
How Roman was Roman Britain? by Jacquie Rogers
Notes:
- De La Bedoyere, Guy, Praetorian -The Rise and Fall of Rome’s Imperial Bodyguard P.2
- Cassius Dio, History of Ancient Rome, LXXIV.5
- Herodian, Roman History, 2.6.7
- Herodian, Roman History, 2.7.2
- Herodian, Roman History, 7.5.3
- Big brother Gratian didn’t entirely lose out, he got to be co-emperor with his bratty little brother
Images:
- Busts of Roman Emperors in the gardens of Madresfield Court: © Philip Halling for Geograph (CC BY-SA 2.0)
- Commodus as Hercules: Capitoline Museum, Rome, via Slices of Light for Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
- Praetorians frieze Louvre-Lens, Pas-de-Calais, via Jérémy-Günther-Heinz Jähnick for Wikimedia (GNU Free Documentation Licence, Version 1.2)
- Didius Julianus: Musei Capitolini, Palazzo Nuovo, Sala degli Imperatori, Rome, via Romainbehar for Wikimedia (CC0 1.0)
- Gordian I: Capitoline Museum, Palazzo Nuovo, via Jastrow for Wikimedia (public domain)
- Valentinian II: Istanbul; Archaeological Museum via Egisto Sani for Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
