The Emperors Who Barely Ruled

Pertinax had the misfortune of following Commodus — an emperor so depraved and theatrical that the Senate greeted news of his assassination with genuine relief. Pertinax stepped in as the responsible adult in the room: a disciplined former general who immediately set about fixing the catastrophic financial mess Commodus had left behind.

His reforms were reasonable, practical, and deeply unpopular with the Praetorian Guard, who had grown accustomed to enormous bonuses and looked upon fiscal responsibility as a personal insult. When Pertinax could not match the bribe they expected, roughly three hundred of them marched into the palace. He reportedly met them with a calm speech. The speech did not go well. He was killed, and his head was paraded through the city on a spear.

What followed was arguably stranger: the Praetorians literally auctioned off the throne to the highest bidder. A wealthy senator named Didius Julianus paid handsomely for it, and lasted all of 66 days before the army decided they preferred someone else. Rome, 193 AD — when empire met farce.

238 AD is sometimes called "the Year of the Six Emperors," which tells you everything about Rome's stability at the time. The Gordians — an elderly, scholarly governor and his son — were proclaimed co-emperors in Africa after a tax revolt against the existing emperor Maximinus Thrax, who was deeply unpopular and apparently very tall.

Gordian II led the African army against loyalist forces and was killed in battle, outnumbered and outmatched. His father, upon receiving the news, hanged himself with his own belt. The entire co-emperorship lasted three weeks. There is something almost Shakespearean in its compression — ambition, hope, catastrophe, and grief folded into less than a month.

The Senate, now in a difficult position having already declared Maximinus a public enemy, scrambled to appoint two more emperors. Those two were murdered by the Praetorian Guard within months. Young Gordian III — grandson of the first — eventually stabilised things, though he too would die suspiciously young. The family had terrible luck.

Galba came to power after Nero's chaotic end, and he looked the part: old, stern, aristocratic, with impeccable military credentials going back decades. The historian Tacitus delivered one of history's most cutting assessments of him — noting that Galba seemed capable of ruling, had he never actually ruled.

His downfall was a combination of stinginess and poor political instincts. The Rhine legions, never consulted about his elevation, refused to swear loyalty. The Praetorian Guard, promised a bonus that Galba refused to pay on the grounds that he "recruited" rather than "bought" his soldiers, began looking for alternatives. They found one in Otho, a former friend of Nero's.

On January 15th, 69 AD, Galba was being carried through Rome in a litter when the Praetorians struck. He reportedly bared his throat and told his assassins to strike if it served Rome. They obliged with enthusiasm. His head was paraded through the city — a theme that recurs with depressing frequency in these accounts — before being sent to Otho as a gift. Otho himself would be dead within three months.

Back to 238 AD — that extraordinary year — where the Senate, following the Gordians' swift disaster, appointed two of their own members as co-emperors. Pupienus was a capable military commander; Balbinus was a cultured administrator. Together they were meant to represent senatorial authority at its finest.

The Praetorian Guard despised them immediately, both for being appointed by the Senate (bypassing the Guard's traditional role in such matters) and simply as a matter of principle. Rome's chaos that year was compounded by a furious riot in the streets and ongoing civil conflict.

After Maximinus Thrax was defeated and killed by his own troops — a small mercy — Pupienus and Balbinus turned on each other in mutual suspicion. They were apparently barely on speaking terms when the Praetorians seized them both, dragged them through the streets, tortured them, and killed them. Rome then installed young Gordian III, aged thirteen, upon the throne. The adults had all failed comprehensively.

When Emperor Tacitus died — of fever, or possibly murder, as was so often the question — his half-brother Florianus simply declared himself successor without bothering to consult the Senate or, crucially, the eastern legions. This was a meaningful oversight.

The eastern armies proclaimed their own candidate: Probus, a distinguished general. The two sides initially prepared for battle in the sweltering heat of Cilicia, but the actual fighting never quite materialised. Instead, Florianus's own troops — wilting in the heat and increasingly convinced they were backing the wrong man — killed him themselves and defected to Probus. Some accounts suggest Florianus opened his veins rather than wait for his soldiers to do it for him.

Probus went on to reign for six reasonably successful years, which in third-century Rome practically qualified as a golden age. He was eventually killed by his own troops, who resented being put to work on construction projects during peacetime. The lesson — that Roman soldiers had strong opinions about their employment conditions — was never quite learned.