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Emperors and Usurpers

in the Later Roman
Empire
Civil War, Panegyric, and the
Construction of Legitimacy
ADRASTOS OMISSI
1
3
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‘Daddy, it’s quite boring for me for you to work.’

To Chloé, to Leo, to Milo, to Rafe
Preface
sine ira et studio
Virtue consisted in winning: it consisted in being bigger, stronger, hand-

somer, richer, more popular, more elegant, more unscrupulous than other
people—in dominating them, bullying them, making them suffer pain,
making them look foolish, getting the better of them in every way. Life
was hierarchical and whatever happened was right. There were the strong,
who deserved to win and always did win, and there were the weak, who
deserved to lose and always did lose, everlastingly.
I did not question the prevailing standards, because so far as I could see
there were no others. How could the rich, the strong, the elegant, the
fashionable, the powerful, be in the wrong? It was their world, and the
rules they made for it must be the right ones.
George Orwell, ‘Such, Such Were the Joys’¹
This book was born of a simple observation, that very little had been written
on the history of usurpation in the later Roman Empire. It seemed to me
strange that, in an age so dominated by civil war, historians had not seen fit to
subject usurpation to detailed scrutiny. The obvious thing to do, therefore,
seemed to be to write the absent book myself. In its conception, it was a
monograph upon civil war and usurpation from the end of the crisis of the
third century to the fall of the Empire in the West and the emergence of the
new, Constantinopolitan Empire in the East. The book was to consider why
usurpations occurred, how they were undertaken, and in what ways they
played themselves out. Above all, it was to shine some much-needed light
upon the shadowy regimes of the late Empire’s great usurpers, men like
Carausius, Maxentius, Magnentius, Magnus Maximus, and Constantine III.
As is often the case at the beginning of a new project, perhaps the first lesson
that my research had to teach was that there was a very good reason that this
book had not already been written. Historians, whatever their subject and
period, are at the mercy of their sources. Although we can approach them
creatively or innovatively, reimagine them or augment them with new discov-
eries, we can ultimately only see our periods through the prism of their
sources. And in this instance the sources clung jealously to their secrets.
Usurpers are elusive figures, their biographies usually no more than a few
¹ From It is What I Think by George Orwell. Published by Secker. Reprinted by permission of

The Random House Group Limited. ©1999. In P. Davison (ed.), The Complete Works of George
Orwell, vol. XIX: It Is What I Think (Rev. edn. London, 2002), 378–9.
viii Preface
clipped phrases, their policies unknown, their adherents anonymous but for
the occasional name that falls accidentally, like loose change, from this or that
source. What I might build from the sum of these disjointed parts, I began to
see, would be a Frankenstein’s monster which might bear the semblance of a
connected historical account but would in fact be little more than a series of
rumours and invectives strung together in order.
This tight-lipped refusal of the sources to yield the details I desired of them
pushed me to new questions. Why was it (other, perhaps, than naive expect-
ations) that I was unable to find the details that I was searching for? What
processes had served to destroy them? Perhaps most importantly of all, what
might I learn from looking at the sources not with an eye for what they could
tell me, but for what it was their authors were trying not to tell me? Not only is
the book richer because of this shift in attitude, but the process has also been a
personally transformative one, and helped to move me from the comforting
but immature position of one who views the past as an independent reality,
accessed more or less directly through sources more or less thickly populated
with facts, to that of one who understands, at least vaguely, that the past is text.
The hope to find a past independent of the text is as vain as the hope to find a
thought independent of a thinker. Tacitus, at the opening of his Annales, made
a profession of that virtue which all ambitious historians claim and which all
sensible historians know to be an impossibility, to report the past sine ira et
studio, without bitterness and without partiality. Yet to view the world—
through text, through monuments, or even through the windows of the eyes
and the ears—is to view it studio: with partiality, with intention, with agenda.
There is no history without partiality.
The book is divided into nine chapters. Chapter I provides the reader with
some context by way of an account of the history of imperial power between
its inception and the outbreak of the third-century crisis. It attempts to
provide some explanation for the deeply chaotic nature of the imperial
succession and the near imponderability of such questions as ‘what is usurp-
ation?’ Chapter II is perhaps the most important chapter in the whole work, a
justification of the value of the project and—I hope—a convincing demon-
stration not only of how we can use panegyric to understand civil war but also
of the fact that panegyric constituted one of the most important primary
sources available to Roman historians and that, therefore, panegyric underpins
all primary material relating to imperial history that we possess from the
period. Chapters III–IX then set about the body of the project, examining how
the panegyrics present individual usurpations and working chronologically
through the span of the period as defined by the textual corpus of the surviving
prose panegyrics. Each chapter attempts to describe how the panegyrics of the
period constructed the narrative of inter-imperial conflict, to use those nar-
ratives to understand the behaviour of the emperors and courts that they
praised, and to demonstrate the way in which the panegyrics have shaped
Preface ix
subsequent historical source material. Chapter X then provides something of a
postscript, examining from a historical rather than a textual point of view why it
is that the book has the upper chronological boundary (the death of Theodos-
ius) that it has and offering some very general remarks on how the office of
emperor changed in both East and West during the fifth century. I conclude, as
one ought, by telling my reader the things they ought to think after having read
the preceding pages, in case I have failed to make them think them.
This book is not, in and of itself, either a history of usurpation or a political
history of the period in question. It assumes a certain familiarity with late
Roman history and as such—lamentably—will constitute a poor introduction
to the topic. Nevertheless, I hope that it will be of use to students as well as to
researchers and I have made an effort to make it as accessible as the material
allows. In particular, I have tried to make sure that quotations from original
sources and from modern scholarship in languages other than English are
provided in translation (at least when quoted in the main text) and that
technical terms in Latin and Greek have been translated or glossed.
The debts of gratitude that I have accrued in the long course of this work,
which began life as a doctoral project undertaken in 2009 at St John’s College,
Oxford, are too many to comprehensively acknowledge, though certain names
cannot go unmentioned. Thanks first is owed to my doctoral supervisor, Neil
McLynn, who helped above all to redirect an obsession with swords, horses,
and armour into an attempt to write history. Neil’s guidance helped to bring
this project to life and without him it would not exist in any recognizable form.
I am also deeply indebted to the patient teachers who took a monoglot
Masters’ student and gave him the tools to work with his sources, in particular
to Mary Whitby, to Juliane Kerkhecker, and to Ida Toth. To Ida I also owe
a great debt for the confidence she has placed in me as a teacher over the years,
and the opportunities that this trust has afforded me. I would also like to
express my gratitude to those kind friends who have read drafts of parts or all
of this work, and whose comments have greatly enriched it, in particular to
Lydia Matthews, Alan Ross, Michael Hanaghan, and to my brother, Cesare
Omissi, who pored over the whole manuscript with a humbling diligence.
Many are the gaffes and blunders from which they all have saved me, and such
as remain are solely my responsibility. My thanks also to Enrico Emanuele
Prodi, who helped to make up for rare failings in the Bodleian Library.
To Oriel College, Oxford, I also owe a great debt of thanks for having provided
me with a Junior Research Fellowship from 2014–17, during which years the
writing of this book was undertaken. Finally, it must be stressed that none of
this work would have been possible without generous funding from the States
of Jersey, from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, and from the British
Academy, all of whom have, at various stages, awarded me grants that have
thereby made it possible for me to devote myself to study and research.
x Preface
My thanks goes also to various seminar series and conferences at which
I have been able to air some of the ideas contained within the book and to
receive feedback from peers and senior colleagues; in particular: the Institute
of Classical Studies Graduate WIP seminar in London, the Oxford University
Byzantine Society Graduate Conference 2012 and 2013, the conference ‘Use of
Antiquity’, held in Vienna in 2012, the History Research Seminar at Hull, the
Late Roman and the Late Antique and Byzantine Studies research seminars at
Oxford, the Leeds International Medieval Congress 2013 and 2015, the con-
ference ‘Medial (re)presentations’. held in Göttingen in February 2015, and to
the 9th biennial Celtic Conference in Classics, held in Dublin in 2016.
Similarly, I am deeply indebted to the board of OUP’s ‘Oxford Studies in
Byzantium’ series for taking this work on, in particular to Elizabeth Jeffreys,
who was a champion of this book when it needed one, and to James Howard-
Johnston, as mild-tempered and supportive an editor as one could hope to
work with. I would also like to thank the team at OUP—in particular Charlotte
Loveridge, Georgina Leighton—and my copy editor, Ben Harris, whose dili-
gence and helpfulness made the business of preparing the manuscript an easy
and a pleasant one.
I must also offer my thanks to Mark Humphries and to Mark Whittow, who
examined the DPhil thesis on which this work was based and whose encour-
agement and support gave me the confidence to believe that it might make a
book worth reading. Both have since proven great mentors, and have made the
baffling road of academic life an easier one to tread. It is with a heavy heart,
and still with a sense of disbelief, that I must add to these thanks the tragic
coda that Mark Whittow will never be able to read them. I owed to Mark and
impossible debt of gratitude for his help over the years, for the belief he always
seemed to place in me, and for his infectious energy and positivity. I shall miss
him dearly.
Finally, for their love, support, and, above all, patience, I want to say thank
you to my family, to Chloé, to Leo, to Milo, and to Rafe. Without you all busily
working away at giving me a life filled with love and fun and little daily
adventures, there is no way that I would have ever had the heart to finish
this project. Like it or not, this book is dedicated to you.
Contents
List of Figures xiii

List of Abbreviations xv
Typographical Note xix
PART I
I. Usurpation, Legitimacy, and the Roman Empire 3
Why usurpation?: the problem of the imperial succession 3
‘This litany of manifest usurpers and rebellious generals’: why had
the imperial succession become so unstable by the third century? 12
‘The difference between a tyrant and a king is one of deeds,
not of name’: how was usurpation understood in the late
Roman Empire? 21
‘Let these things go unspoken’: usurpation and modern research 34
II. Usurpation, Legitimacy, and Panegyric 41
Known unknowns, and unknown unknowns: how to use
panegyric as a source 47
‘In which I would tell many lies’: who dictated the content
of panegyric? 54
‘And would be viewed with favour by those who knew them
to be such’: panegyric, audience, and influence 59
Propaganda and power 66
PART II
III. A House Divided Against Itself 71
IV. ‘At last Roman, at last restored to the true light of Empire’:
Diarchy, Tetrarchy, and the Fall of the British Empire
of Carausius 75
Birthing the late Roman state: diarchs, tetrarchs, and a new
language of power 76
Emperors and bandits: the British Empire under
Carausius and Allectus 80
V. Tyranny and Betrayal: Constantine, Maximian, Maxentius,
and Licinius 103
Constantine’s usurpation: Constantine, Galerius, and Maximian 103
The tyrannus: Maxentius and the rewards of civil war 116
Notable by his absence: Licinius and the rise of the
Constantinian dynasty 142
xii Contents
VI. Tyranny and Blood: Constantius, Constans, Magnentius,

and Vetranio 153
Smiling for the cameras: the sons of Constantine, 337–50 154
The son of the father: Constantius the tyrant-slayer 163
VII. Usurper, Propaganda, History: The Emperor Julian 193
The voice of a usurper: Julian’s rise to power 193
Bleaching the stains: Julian’s sole rule 208
VIII. Panegyric and Apology: The Accession of Jovian and the
Usurpation of Procopius 223
The need for victory: Jovian and the demands of imperial
rhetoric 223
The enemy inside: Valentinian, Valens, and Procopius 228
‘He who sought rule for himself behind the cloak of a little boy’:
the usurpation of Valentinian II 250
IX. Dismembering the House of Valentinian: The Usurpation
of Theodosius and the War with Magnus Maximus 255
‘And nobly he made the vote his own’: the usurpation of
Theodosius 255
Divided loyalties: the usurpation of Magnus Maximus 263
X. Crisis and Transformation: Imperial Power in the Fifth Century 291
Conclusion: Those Made Tyrants by the Victory of Others 301
Appendix I: The Panegyrics 307
Appendix II: Quantifying Usurpation: Notes to Accompany Figure I.2 313
Bibliography 317
Index 339
List of Figures
I.1. The Roman Empire in AD 271. 11

Image by Michael Athanson.
I.2. Usurpations in the Roman Empire, 27 BC–AD 455. 20
V.1. The battle of the Milvian Bridge as depicted on the south
face of the Arch of Constantine. 136
THE ARCH OF CONSTANTINE (https://open.conted.ox.ac.uk/resources
/images/arch-constantine), © Steve Kershaw, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 3.0.
VI.1. Consular issue for the year 346, minted at Antioch and
depicting upon its reverse the imperial brothers, nimbate, each
holding a sceptre and globe and dressed in their consular robes. 163
Numismatica Ars Classica NAC AG, Auction 31, lot 157.
VIII.1. Coins of a) Procopius, b) Julian, and c) Valens, showing the
resemblance between the images of Procopius and Julian. 232
a) Photo courtesy of 51 Gallery—iBelgica; b) Photo courtesy of Triskeles
Auctions; c) © Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford.
IX.1. The relief from the Column of Theodosius, showing a group
of supplicant figures whose attire, in particular the Chi Rho
shield, show them to be the members of an imperial bodyguard. 288
Deutsches Archäologisches Institut Istanbul negative
no. D-DAI-IST-R1186. Photographer: W. Schile.
List of Abbreviations
PRIMARY MATERIAL
* Unless otherwise stated, abbreviations for primary sources follow guidelines

set out in the Oxford Classical Dictionary
Ambr., de ob. Theod. Ambrose, de obitu Theodosii
Ambr., Ep. Ambrose, Epistulae
Ambr., Ep. extra coll. Ambrose, Epistulae extra collectionem
Amm. Ammianus Marcellinus
Ath., Apol. ad Const. Athanasius, Apologia ad Constantium
Ath., Apol. contra Ar. Athanasius, Apologia contra Arianos
Art. Pass. Passio Artemii
Aur. Vict., Epit. pseudo-Aurelius Victor, Epitome de Caesaribus
Claud., de bello Gild. Claudian, de Bello Gildonico
Claud., Man. Theod. cons. Claudian, Panegyricus dictus Manlio Theodoro consuli
Chron. 354 Chronographus anni CCCLIIII
Coll. Av. Collectio Avellana
Cons. Const. Consularia Constantinopolitana
CTh Codex Theodosianus
Cyr. Jer., Ep. ad Const. Cyril of Jerusalem, Epistula ad Constantium
Eph., Hym. cont. Iul. Ephraem, Hymni contra Iulianum
Eunap., V. Soph. Eunapius, Vitae Sophistarum
Euseb., HE Eusebius, Historia Ecclesiastica
Euseb., VC Eusebius, Vita Constantini
Greg. Tur., Hist. Gregory of Tours, Decem Libri Historiarum
HA Historiae Augustae
Joh. Ant. fr. Joannis Antiocheni Fragmenta (K. O. Müller, Fragmenta
Historicorum Graecorum, vol. IV (Paris, 1851))
Jul., Ep. ad Ath. Julian, Epistula ad Athenienses
Jul., Caes. Julian, Caesares
Jul., Or. Julian, Orationes
Lact., de Mort. Lactantius, de Mortibus Persecutorum
Orat. ad sanct. Oratio ad sanctos
Origo Origo Constantini Imperatoris
Philost., HE Philostorgius, Historia Ecclesiastica
Prisc., de Laud. Priscian, de Laude Anastasii imperatoris
Ps. Psalms
Ruf., HE Rufinus, Historia Ecclesiastica
Soc., HE Socrates, Historia Ecclesiastica
Soz., HE Sozomen, Historia Ecclesiastica
Sulp. Sev., Chron. Sulpicius Severus, Chronica
xvi List of Abbreviations

Sulp. Sev., Dial. Sulpicius Severus, Dialogi
Sulp. Sev., V. Mart. Sulpicius Severus, Vita Sancti Martini
Symm, Or. Symmachus, Orationes
Symm., Rel. Symmachus, Relationes
Syn., de Reg. Synesius, de Regno
Theodor., HE Theodoret, Historia Ecclesiastica
Theoph. Theophanes, Chronographia
Zon. Zonaras, Epitome Historiarum
SECONDARY MATERIAL
AC Acta Classica
AE L’Année Épigraphique
AJP American Journal of Philology
AncSoc Ancient Society
ANRW Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt
AW Ancient World
Barnes, Constantine T. D. Barnes, Constantine: Dynasty, Religion and Power in
the Later Roman Empire (Malden, 2011)
BZ Byzantinische Zeitschrift
CAH Cambridge Ancient History
CISA Contributi dell’Istituto di Storia Antica
CIL Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum
CLRE Bagnall, R. S., Cameron, A., Schwartz, S. R., and Worp,
K. A., Consuls of the Later Roman Empire (Atlanta, 1987)
CP Classical Philology
CQ Classical Quarterly
CW The Classical World
DNP Der Neue Pauly
DOP Dumbarton Oaks Papers
Galletier Galletier, E. (ed. and tr.), Panégyriques Latins: texte établi
et traduit par Édouard Galletier (3 vols. Paris, 1949–55)
GOTR Greek Orthodox Theological Review
GRBS Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies
Heather-Moncur P. J. Heather and D. Moncur (trs), Politics, Philosophy,
and Empire in the Fourth Century: Select Orations of
Themistius (Translated Texts for Historians 36.
Liverpool, 2001)
Historia Historia: Zeitschrift für alte Geschichte
HSCP Harvard Studies in Classical Philology
ICUR Inscriptiones Christianae Urbis Romae
ICUR n. s. Inscriptiones Christianae Urbis Romae nova series
ILS Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae
IstMitt Istanbuler Mitteilungen
List of Abbreviations xvii

JLA Journal of Late Antiquity
JTS The Journal of Theological Studies
JRA Journal of Roman Archaeology
JRS Journal of Roman Studies
LSA The Last Statues of Antiquity
MAAR Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome
NC The Numismatic Chronicle
Nixon-Rodgers Nixon, C. E. V., and Rodgers, B. S. (eds and trs), In
Praise of Later Roman Emperors: the Panegyrici Latini
(Berkeley, 1994)
PLRE Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire
RE Paulys Realencyclopädie der classischen
Altertumswissenschaft
REA Revue des Études Augustiniennes
REAnc Revue des Études Anciennes
RhM Rheinisches Museum
RIC Roman Imperial Coinage
RIDA Revue Internationale des Droits de l’Antiquité
RSdA Revista Storica dell’Antichita
YCS Yale Classical Studies
Typographical Note
Throughout this text, ‘West’ and ‘East’ (capitalized) have been used as
shorthand for ‘the Western Roman Empire’ and ‘the Eastern Roman Empire’.
It ought to be noted that no official and formalized separation existed between
the Empire’s two halves at any point during this period, but the terms
are nevertheless a useful shorthand for an empire in which emperors frequ-
ently operated with a division of responsibility portioned on a west/east
axis. Likewise, I have capitalized the adjectives ‘Western’ and ‘Eastern’ as if
they were proper adjectives (as ‘English’, ‘French’) when they refer to these
territories. Where ‘west’, ‘western’, ‘east’, and ‘eastern’ appear without capit-
alization, they are being employed in their more usual sense.
Part I
Usurpation, Legitimacy, and the

Roman Empire
Treason doth never prosper, what’s the reason?

For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.
John Harington, Epigrams IV.5
Roman imperial government proved to be one of the most enduring political

institutions ever established in human history. From 27 BC until AD 1453, a
period of very nearly fifteen centuries, a virtually unbroken line of men clai-
ming the title of Emperor of the Romans ruled over a Mediterranean territory
that outlasted the rise and fall of countless would-be rivals, successors, and
conquerors. Across five centuries in the West, and fifteen centuries in the East,
the legitimacy of Roman imperial government was virtually never called into
question. Romans took it for granted that theirs was a divinely appointed
order, even one that mirrored the divine order itself. Yet if imperial govern-
ment itself was never truly challenged, the same cannot be said for individual
emperors, who faced an unending struggle to gain the acceptance of their
subjects, a struggle whose symptoms were treason trials, usurpation, and the
near perpetual civil wars that characterized the Roman polity. What follows is
an attempt to consider the imperial office over its history, to look at how
emperors were created, and to understand why imperial power and usurpation
were so intertwined.
WHY USURPATION?: THE PROBLEM

OF THE I MP E RI AL SU CCES S I ON
Roman imperial power can only properly be understood in the context of

usurpation. From the death of Commodus in AD 192 to the accession of the
child emperor Valentinian III in the West in 423, no decade was without civil
war and conflict over the imperial succession, and virtually no emperor
4 Emperors and Usurpers in the Later Roman Empire

reigned who did not have to face military challenge to his rule. In western
Europe and North Africa, only the disappearance of imperial power brought
an end to this perpetual cycle. In the East, the creation of a new imperial court
centred once more upon a single capital city only served to change the nature
of usurpation and civil war, not to halt its progress. To understand imperial
power, one must understand usurpation. To understand usurpation, we must
understand how imperial power came into being.
From the moment of its creation, Roman imperial power was power usur-
ped. The Roman Republic had been governed by an aristocracy whose mem-
bers competed with one another for power and prestige within a political
system the express function of which was to limit the concentration of power
in individual hands. But during the first century BC, as the spoils of conquest
poured into Roman coffers, the regulations that governed the Republic began
to break down and powerful men fought with one another to rule a Roman
state that now spanned the Mediterranean. Twice, in 88 and 49 BC, Rome itself
was invaded by Roman armies. In 44, the man who had declared himself
perpetual dictator of the Roman state, Julius Caesar, was cut down upon the
senate floor.¹ Chaos reigned, and the man who brought order did so at sword
point, presiding over a restored Republic that was a monarchy in all but name.
Born Gaius Octavius, he died Imperator Caesar Divi Filius Augustus. He
brought a final end to the civil wars of the Republic by defeating Antony
and Cleopatra, first at Actium (2 September 31) and then at Alexandria
(1 August 30).²
When Octavian returned to Rome from Egypt, he made a great show of
laying down his powers and restoring authority to the senate. But the actuality
was different. Octavian was the wealthiest man in the Roman world, he
commanded the loyalty of the armies, and, in the course of fourteen years of
fighting had built an enormous patronage network among the Roman elite. In
January 29 he took up his fifth consulship. He was to hold the office every year
until 23, and twice more after that. In 27, in order to pacify provinces still in a
chaotic condition, the senate voted to him control of a provincia that was
composed of Spain, Gaul, Egypt, and Syria, handing over to his direct admin-
istration not only an enormous territory, but the majority of the Roman army
(twenty of twenty-six legions).³ At the same time the senate declared him
¹ Both Caesar and Rome’s other famous would-be sovereign, Sulla, had engineered dictator-
ships for themselves not bounded by time constraints, as the office had traditionally been in the
early Republic (its last occupant before Sulla being Gaius Servilius Geminus in 202 BC):
J. F. Gardner, ‘The Dictator’, in M. Griffin (ed.), A Companion to Julius Caesar (Oxford, 2009),
57–60.
² R. Syme, The Roman Revolution (Reissue first paperback edn. Oxford, 2002), 294–300;
C. Pelling, ‘The triumviral period’, CAH X (2nd edn. Cambridge, 1996), 54–65.
³ J. A Crook, ‘Political History, 30 B.C. to A.D. 14’, CAH X, 78–9; Syme, Roman Revolution, 326.
Usurpation, Legitimacy, and the Roman Empire 5

princeps, ‘first citizen’, and awarded him the cognomen Augustus.⁴ In 23, he
was granted consular imperium which gave him the right not only to govern his
own extensive provincial holdings, but to interfere in other provinces when he
deemed it necessary.⁵ At the same time he acquired tribunicia potestas, the right
to call the senate, to sit on the consuls’ platform, to speak first when the senate
was in session, to veto legislation, and to administer the grain supply that kept the
city alive. These powers were set with fixed terms, but Augustus so controlled the
operation of Roman government that their renewal was a formality, a formality
enacted in 18, in 13, in 8, and in 3 BC, and in AD 13.⁶ Sacral authority was also
devolved to him in 12 BC, when he was made pontifex maximus, high priest of the
Roman state.⁷ Coupled with his military and executive authority, Augustus thus
had concentrated in his hands a diversity of powers which the Republic had
expressly existed to prevent being controlled by a single individual.
Augustus had thus created for himself a packet of powers each of which,
individually, was grounded in Republican principles but which, taken to-
gether, ensured him a dominance over the Roman state that was a monarchy
in all but name. To ensure the continuation of his novel position, Augustus
had ensured that his successor, Tiberius, was invested with many of these
powers while he was still alive. Upon Augustus’ death (19 August 14), the
senate voted to Tiberius the few remaining powers that he lacked and, in
so doing, the principate became an institution.⁸ Tiberius was acclaimed as
Tiberius Caesar Divi Augusti Filius Augustus by the senate and by Augustus’
praetorian guard, but it was not they who had given Tiberius his powers;
Augustus had.⁹ These powers were passed on to his grandson, Gaius (known
to us as Caligula). As Augustus had done with him, so Tiberius marked
Caligula out during his own lifetime as his intended successor, heaping hon-
our and responsibility onto him.¹⁰ And as Tiberius had done, Caligula ensured
⁴ This name is difficult to translate, but perhaps can be rendered as ‘the majestic one’ (with its
Greek equivalent Σεβαστός). It was inherited by Augustus’ successors, however, and quickly
became, with Caesar, less a name than an imperial title (cf. D. Kienast, Römische Kaisertabelle:
Grundzüge einer römischen Kaiserchronogie (Darmstadt, 1996), 24–6).
⁵ J.-L. Ferrary, ‘The Powers of Augustus’, in J. Edmondson (ed.), Augustus (tr. J. Edmondson.
Edinburgh Readings in the Ancient World. Edinburgh, 2009), 90–136, esp. 110–17. Ferrary
argues against the general consensus that this power amounted to imperium proconsulare, which
he sees as a later term.
⁶ Crook, ‘Political History’, 70–112. ⁷ Res gestae 10; Kienast, Kaisertabelle, 27.
⁸ J. Rich, ‘Making the Emergency Permanent: Auctoritas, potestas and the evolution of the
principate of Augustus’, in Y. Rivière (ed.), Des reformes augustéennes (Rome, 2012), 80–1.
⁹ The senate’s vote was clearly considered an important formality for this transition, yet the
fact that Augustus’ powers would pass to another individual had been made very clear by
Augustus, and Tiberius had, after the death of Augustus’ grandsons, long been lined up for the
role. Augustus formally bequeathed his powers to Tiberius in his will: Syme, Roman Revolution,
338–9; J. Wiedemann, ‘Tiberius to Nero’, CAH X, 202–7.
¹⁰ A story, however, not without its complications: A. Barrett, Caligula: The corruption of
power (London, 1989), 27–41, 50–9.

his own smooth adoption of his predecessor’s powers through his control of
the praetorians, the only military force in Italy, stationed within the imposing
walls of the Castra Praetoria, overlooking the city and the senators, ensuring
their good behaviour.¹¹ That was on 16 March 37, when Tiberius died. But by
January 41, Caligula had lost the support of the praetorians; they murdered
him in a palace corridor while he made his way to the baths.¹²
Caligula’s assassination revealed the institutional strength of the principate.
While the individual emperor had been found wanting, the idea of imperial
power stood firm and the hope entertained by certain members of the senate
that the Republic could be restored were dashed within a few hours of
Caligula’s death. The question was not whether someone would succeed Caligula,
but who. While the senate debated this question in the curia, however, the
praetorian guard had already chosen a candidate and acclaimed him Augustus.
With the only serious military force in the city backing him unanimously,
Claudius’ assumption of power could not seriously be challenged.¹³ The senate
had no choice but to consent to the decision of the soldiers.
Claudius’ successor, the infamous Nero, took power on 13 October 54, after
Claudius died from poisoning. The stepson of Claudius, through his wife
Agrippina, and the emperor’s adoptive heir, Nero came to the throne shortly
before his eighteenth birthday. His thirteen-year reign was marked by escal-
ating violence against the senatorial class, a deeply unpopular taste for public
performances in the theatre and the circus, and, following the fire of AD 64, a
monumental building programme in Rome, the scale of which drained his
treasury sufficiently to interrupt grain distribution and military pay in the city.
As open rebellions broke out in the provinces and Nero’s support dwindled, he
was finally forced to suicide on 9 June 68.¹⁴
Nero’s sudden death brought imperial power to its first major crisis. For the
first century of its existence, the imperial office had been controlled by a single
family, the so-called Julio-Claudians, who had carefully managed the succes-
sion of the domus Caesaris as a familial possession. But what happened when
the pater familias of the domus Caesaris died intestate? In 41, the swift action
of the praetorians in promoting the dead emperor’s uncle, Claudius, within
hours of Caligula’s death had silenced debate before it could truly begin and
had affirmed the primacy of the Julio-Claudian line. But by 68, one hundred
¹¹ S. Bingham, The Praetorian Guard: A History of Rome’s Elite Special Forces (London, 2013),
15–33.
¹² Joseph., AJ XIX.1–2; Suet., Calig. 58; Dio Cass., LIX.29.5–7. The conspirators also murdered
his wife and infant daughter, dashing the little girl’s head against a wall.
¹³ Dio Cass., LIX.29–LX.1; Joseph., AJ XIX.2–3; B. Levick, Claudius (London, 1990), 29–40;
J. Osgood, Claudius Caesar: Image and power in the early Roman empire (Cambridge, 2010),
29–32.
¹⁴ M. T. Griffin, Nero: The End of a Dynasty (2nd edn. London, 1984), 164–82; J. Malitz, Nero
(Oxford, 2005), 99–108.

years of paranoid treason trials had so effectively extirpated the imperial
family that there existed no obvious successor. The Empire now faced a
question that had been effectively sidestepped for as much as a century: who
could be emperor, and by whose authority were emperors to be created?
The Republican clothing in which the imperial office had been garbed
allowed the senate to flatter itself with the notion that the power to select
and to create an emperor lay with it alone. As a body, they wrote to Servius
Sulpicius Galba, governor of the Spanish province of Hispania Tarraconensis,
to announce that they had declared him the new emperor. But the events of
the following year were to demonstrate yet again that it was not senators but
soldiers that made emperors. On 15 January 69, Marcus Salvius Otho was
declared emperor by the praetorians and Galba was murdered in the Forum.
The armies on the Rhine, however, had already refused to offer Galba their
allegiance and had declared their general, Vitellius, emperor on 1 January 69.
They were marching on Rome. Nor did the defeat of Otho by the Rhine
legions in the spring bring the conflict to an end. On 1 July 69, Vespasian, the
general who had been charged with suppressing the Jewish rebellion that had
begun in 66, was also declared emperor by the armies gathered at Alexandria
in Egypt. Vespasian’s forces likewise marched into Italy, invaded the capital,
and murdered Vitellius. Vespasian was recognized as emperor by the senate in
December 69, and the so called ‘Year of the Four Emperors’ was at an end.¹⁵
It is a simplification, but not necessarily a misleading one, to say that the
accession of Galba in 68 marked the beginning of a steady broadening of the
criteria which qualified an individual for imperial power. Formerly, descent
from the first emperor, Augustus, had been an important precondition. Galba,
through his wife, was distantly connected to the family, but Vespasian was, at
least in relative terms, a new man, he, his brother, and his uncle being the first
men of senatorial rank in his family.¹⁶ More important, however, for the future
of the imperial office was the fact that, in the words of Tacitus, ‘the secret of
the Empire had been uncovered: that an emperor could be made elsewhere
than Rome.’¹⁷ The year 69 proved conclusively that provincial armies pos-
sessed the power, de facto, to create emperors, and from 69 onwards they
possessed it de jure as well. Vespasian dated the beginning of his reign not
from 21 December 69, when the senate had confirmed him as Augustus, but
from 1 July, when his soldiers had hailed him by this title in Alexandria.¹⁸ An
emperor began at his acclamation.
¹⁵ For the events of 68–69, see K. Wellesley, The Year of the Four Emperors (3rd edn. London,
2000); B. Levick, Vespasian (London, 1999), 43–64; E. Flaig, Den Kaiser herausfordern: die
Usurpationen im Römischen Reich (Frankfurt, 1992), 240–416.
¹⁶ Levick, Vespasian, 4–13.
¹⁷ Tac., Hist. I.4: evulgato imperii arcano posse principem alibi quam Romae fieri.
¹⁸ Wellesley, Year of the Four Emperors, 120; A. Pabst, Comitia imperii: Ideelle Grundlagen des
römischen Kaisertums (Darmstadt, 1997), 169.

When Vespasian’s dynasty collapsed, in September 96, with the murder of
his second son Domitian, power eventually passed, after the brief reign of
Nerva, to Trajan. Like Vespasian, Trajan belonged to a powerful Italian family,
but Trajan was Spanish-born, making him the first non-Italian emperor.¹⁹ His
successor, Hadrian, was likewise a Spaniard. Not only did Hadrian bring to a
final halt the process of expansion which, in theory and in practice, had
characterized Roman foreign policy for some five centuries; he also spent
more than half of his twenty-one-year reign outside Italy.²⁰
The period 96–180, that is from the accession of Nerva to the death of
Marcus Aurelius, is often remembered as a golden age of the Empire. Edward
Gibbon declared, in the opening paragraph of his Decline and Fall, that
‘During a happy period of more than fourscore years, the public administra-
tion was conducted by the virtue and abilities of Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, and
the two Antonines [Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius]’ and modern scho-
lars have frequently been happy to acquiesce in this assessment.²¹ Happy it
may have been, but Gibbon’s count of five emperors simplifies the growing
complexities of imperial power, for it is all too often forgotten that the number
of men who held imperial power was in fact seven. First, at the death of
Antoninus Pius in 161, two emperors, Antoninus’ adoptive sons Marcus
Aurelius and Lucius Verus, were created joint Augusti with equal powers
over the Roman state, an unprecedented move but one that was to become
increasingly common and to have profound effects on the conception of
imperial power.²² Verus died in 169, but this experiment in power-sharing
was to be repeated, and eventually to become a virtually permanent feature of
imperial government. Eight years later, in 177, three years before he was
himself to die, Marcus Aurelius created his son, Commodus, as Augustus,
an innovation that was likewise to become a norm.²³
¹⁹ J. Bennett, Trajan: Optimus Princeps (2nd edn. London, 2005), 1–3.

²⁰ H. Halfmann, Itinera Principum: Geschichte und Typologie der Kaiserreisen im Römischen
Reich (Stuttgart, 1986), esp. 184–5; A. R. Birley, Hadrian: The restless emperor (London, 1997), 1.
²¹ E. Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (ed. J. B. Bury. 7 vols.
London, 1896–1900), I 1.
²² HA M. Antoninus 7.5–6; HA Verus 3.8–41; Dio Cass., LXXI.1; Eutr., VIII.9. The equality of
their status is variously affirmed and denied in the sources, and an unofficial seniority of Marcus
appears to have been recognized: cf. A. R. Birley, Marcus Aurelius (Rev. edn. London, 2000),
116–17.
²³ O. Hekster, Commodus: An Emperor at the Crossroads (Dutch monographs on ancient
history and archaeology 23. Leiden, 2002), 38–9. On the custom of emperors promoting their
children, see H. Börm, ‘Born to be Emperor: The Principle of Succession and the Roman
Monarchy’ in J. Wienand (ed.), Contested Monarchy: Integrating the Roman Empire in the
Fourth Century AD (Oxford Studies in Late Antiquity. Oxford, 2015), 239–64, esp. 239–43.
Manoeuvring of imperial children had in fact been going on from the earliest days of the Empire.
Augustus, who had no male heirs, had clearly been preparing his grandsons for the succession
(B. Parsi, Désignation et investiture de l’empereur romain: 1er et 2e siècles après J.-C. (Université
de Paris, 1963), 9).

Marcus died in 180, and Commodus ruled alone for twelve years. He had,
so his critics maintained, little interest in the business of government and
engendered the disgust of the senatorial class with his love of appearing in
gladiatorial bouts in the Colosseum. On the final day of 192, he was mur-
dered.²⁴ With no designated heir, the Empire again descended into warfare.²⁵
In many ways, the events of 69 may be said to have replayed themselves. In the
immediate aftermath of Commodus’ murder, Pertinax was proclaimed em-
peror in Rome, but he ruled for only three months before being murdered by
the praetorians, who sold the title to the highest bidder.²⁶ Meanwhile, provin-
cial armies elevated their commanders: Lucius Septimius Severus was declared
on the Danube and Gaius Pescennius Niger in Syria.²⁷
Septimius Severus, the eventual victor in this civil war, was not only the first
non-European to take the purple (he had been born to a family of mixed
Italian-Punic descent in Leptis Magna), but his accession, like Claudius’s and
Vespasian’s, demonstrated just how little power the senate possessed as an
agent in the imperial succession.²⁸ After his acclamation in May 193 by the
troops at Carnuntum, on the Danube, the senate had declared him a public
enemy. By June 193 Severus had invaded the city, and the senate was forced to
declare him Augustus, a title he held until his natural death in February 211.²⁹
Severus made his children, Caracalla and Geta, Augusti while he was still
living, in 197 and 209 respectively. Their joint rule after Severus’ death lasted
only ten months; Caracalla murdered his brother in their mother’s arms and
ruled alone until his own murder in April 217.³⁰
He was succeeded by a man named Macrinus who, as well as probably
having been involved in Caracalla’s death, was the first man to claim imperial
power who did not hail from a senatorial family.³¹ His position as praetorian
prefect, commander of the emperor’s bodyguard, placed him in an important
²⁴ Hekster, Commodus, 77–83.

²⁵ D. S. Potter, The Roman Empire at Bay AD 180–395 (Routledge History of the Ancient
World. 2nd edn. London, 2014), 85ff.
²⁶ Potter, Roman Empire at Bay, 95–9 (note that Potter has serious doubts about the
accusation of auctioning off imperial power).
²⁷ Herod., II.8–9; A. R. Birley, ‘The Coups d’Etat of the Year 193’, Bonner Jahrbücher 169
(1969), 247–80, and Septimius Severus: the African Emperor (Rev. edn. London, 1999), 97ff.;
J. Osgood, ‘Ending Civil War at Rome: Rhetoric and Reality, 88 B.C.E.–197 C.E.’, The American
Historical Review 120:5 (2015), 1694.
²⁸ Later commentators claimed that Severus never lost his African accent (HA Sept. Sev. 19.9).
²⁹ Dio Cass., LXXIV.14–LXXV.2; Herod., II.10–14. Birley, Septimius Severus, 97ff.
³⁰ Dio Cass., LXXVIII.1–LXXIX.6; Herod., IV.1–12. Potter, Roman Empire at Bay, 122–46.
³¹ It is occasionally stated that he was the first man who took imperial power who was not
himself a senator (e.g. M. Grant, The Severans: The changed Roman Empire (London; 1996), 23);
this is not strictly true, since Claudius, by virtue of his illness, had been excluded from the
senatorial cursus honorum and so, despite being member of an aristocratic family, had not
himself formally entered the senate prior to his accession. On Macrinus’ accession and the rise of
the equestrian class, see M. Kulikowski, ‘Regional Dynasties and Imperial Court’, in Wienand
(ed.), Contested Monarchy, 135–48, esp. 135–9. Also: I. Mennen, Power and Status in the Roman

position at the moment of transition from one emperor to another, despite his
own low status.³² Eighteen years later, in the early spring of 235, the first
commoner in imperial history was created emperor. Julius Maximinus (later
known as Maximinus Thrax, ‘Maximin the Thracian’) was a first-generation
Roman, the son of barbarian parents, and had joined the army as a mere
private soldier, rising through the ranks to a military prefecture under Severus
Alexander (r. 222–35). When Severus’ soldiers mutinied and murdered their
emperor, it was to Thrax that they turned, and they ‘hailed him as emperor’.³³
This date is generally taken to mark the start of the so-called third-century
crisis, a fifty-year period in which more than eighty men may have claimed
imperial power (historical records from this time are so poor that it is difficult
to separate the real emperors from the fictional) in a string of short, invariably
violent reigns that frequently saw numerous rivals simultaneously claiming
supreme power.³⁴ The crisis was a nadir in the imperial order and a regular
succession all but collapsed. In 260, a separatist empire, ‘the Empire of the
Gauls’, was proclaimed under Postumus, with its headquarters at Trier. The
Gallic Empire was, until its collapse in 274, ruled as a state completely
independent from the rest of the Empire and with its own (unruly) imperial
succession.³⁵ In the East, it was mirrored by the Palmyrene Empire under
Zenobia and her children, 270–3 (see Fig. I.1).³⁶ It took a series of ruthless,
reforming emperors who had risen up through the military (Claudius Gothicus,
268–70; Aurelian, 270–5; Probus, 276–82; Diocletian, 284–305), the easing of
Persian aggression in the East, and a total restructuring of the Empire’s army
and administration to bring this crisis to an end. But though the chaos of
the third century was not to be repeated, the imperial succession was now to
be forever dominated by the spectre of usurpation. Under the principate,
Empire, AD. 193–284 (Impact of Empire 12. Leiden, 2011), 193–246; Potter, Roman Empire at
Bay, 225–8.
³² Despite the importance of the guard, Macrinus was the first prefect to personally take
imperial power (barring the ill-fated usurpation attempt of Nymphidius Sabinus in 68: W. Eck,
‘Nymphidius 2,’ DNP VIII, 1072).
³³ HA Maximini Duo 7. Potter, Roman Empire at Bay, 167–71.
³⁴ G. Alföldy, ‘The Crisis of the Third Century as Seen by Contemporaries’, Greek, Roman,
and Byzantine Studies 15 (1974), 89–111; F. Hartmann, Herrscherwechsel un Reichskrise:
Untersuchungen zu den Ursachen und Konsequenzen der Herrscherwechsel im Imperium Roma-
num der Soldatenkaiserzeit (3. Jahrhundert n. Chr.) (Europäische Hochschulschriften, Reihe III,
Geschichte und ihre Hilfswissenschaften 149. Frankfurt am Main, 1982); S. Williams, Diocletian
and the Roman Recovery (London, 1985), 15–23; C. Ando, Imperial Rome AD 193–284: The
Critical Century (Edinburgh, 2012), 146–223; Potter, Roman Empire at Bay, 215–80.
³⁵ I. König, Die gallischen Usurpatoren von Postumus bis Tetricus (München, 1981);
J. F. Drinkwater, The Gallic Empire: Separatism and Continuity in the North-Western Provinces
of the Roman Empire A.D. 260–274 (Stuttgart, 1987).
³⁶ R. Stoneman, Palmyra and Its Empire: Zenobia’s Revolt Against Rome (Ann Arbor, 2004),
esp. 111–27 (though to be treated with caution!); A. Watson, Aurelian and the Third Century
(London: 2004), 57–88; P. Southern, Empress Zenobia: Palmyra’s Rebel Queen (London, 2008).
Eboracum
Londinium
Augusta Treverorum (Trier)

Durocortorum
Carnuntum
Burdigala
Lugdunum
Ravenna

Narbo
Rome Nicomedia
Tarraco Thessalonica
Emerita Augusta Ancyra Nisibis
Nicopolis Edessa
Corduba Ephesus
Tingi Antioch
Corinth
Carthage Syracuse Palmyra
Caesarea
Cyrene
Alexandria
Separatist Empires
The Gallic Empire
The Palmyrene Empire
Fig. I.1. The Roman Empire in AD 271.

Image by Michael Athanson.

emperors had executed senators and family members on an industrial scale in
order to prevent conspiracies arising in the palace; by the third century,
usurpers could arise at any military outpost and the war for allegiance had
become a perpetual one.
‘ THIS LITANY OF MANIFEST USURPERS

AND REBELLIOUS GENERALS’ : WHY HAD
THE I MPERIAL SUCCESSION BECOME SO
UNSTABLE BY THE THIRD CENTURY?
The apparent collapse of the imperial succession into chaos during the third
century was by no means purely the result of changes in the nature of the
imperial office. Economic and social factors as well as the emergence of
powerful new enemies on the Empire’s European and Near Eastern borders
placed strain upon the Empire that stretched it to breaking point. Changes to
the imperial succession should be seen in coordination with these broader
historical developments. Yet these factors alone are insufficient to explain the
state of near constant civil war that the Empire found itself in between the end
of the second and the middle of the fifth centuries. Why was the imperial
succession so chaotic?
As the preceding survey has attempted to show, one of the greatest barriers
to a stable succession was the superfluity of potential candidates for the role.
Under the Julio-Claudians, the succession had been limited to those who, by
blood or by adoption, could claim membership of the divine family of
Augustus. AD 69 had shown that such concerns no longer mattered. No slave
ever became an emperor, nor did a barbarian, a eunuch, or a woman.³⁷ Beyond
this, however, the field was an open one, insofar as any man capable of
commanding military support could be acclaimed emperor by his soldiers,
with an increasing professionalization of the military through the third cen-
tury hugely increasing the potential for strong men to rise.³⁸ But the supply of
³⁷ Eunuchs were so universally detested that their exercise of power always depended upon
the support of a patron or patrons (K. Hopkins, Conquerors and Slaves (Cambridge, 1978),
172–96). Many emperors were claimed to be the sons of freedmen (e.g. Pertinax, Diocletian), but
the stigma associated to slavery itself was too great to ever allow a slave to take power
(H. Mouristen, The Freedman in the Roman World (Cambridge, 2011)). Emperors were made
whom it would seem probable were the children of barbarian parents (e.g. Maximinus Thrax,
Magnentius, Silvanus), but no one born upon the far side of Rome’s borders ever took power for
themselves. Women could, on occasion, exercise considerable power through male relatives (e.g.
Julia Maesa through her grandsons Elagabalus and Severus Alexander, Justina through her son
Valentinian II). Perhaps the only woman ever to rule Roman territory in her right was the
Palmyran queen Zenobia, who created the Palmyrene Empire (see above, n. 36).
³⁸ J. B, Campbell, War and Society in Imperial Rome, 31 BC–AD 284 (London, 2002), 113–19.

imperial armies was such that, in moments of crisis, competing claims were
almost inevitable. AD 69 was the Year of the Four Emperors, 193 was the Year
of the Five Emperors, and 238 the Year of the Six Emperors.
In part, this change had occurred because of the waning influence of the
senate in the management of the Empire. Early emperors had sought to
present themselves as members of the senate and to cast themselves merely
as the princeps, the first citizen.³⁹ Yet while this presentation may have helped
to palliate the imposition of autocracy on a polity as proudly Republican as the
Roman, it did little to change the realities of the emperor’s near absolute
power.⁴⁰ The lex de imperio Vespasiani, for instance, a document recording the
senate’s confirmation of Vespasian’s authority in 69, couched his rule very
much in terms of government through the senate. At the same time, however,
it made abundantly clear that any decision Vespasian presented to that body
was to be accepted without challenge.⁴¹ Furthermore, as the second century
wound on, emperors were increasingly required to be away from Rome,
supervising campaigns, and when the emperor moved, the executive and
judicial functions of the state moved with him, and the increasing physical
distance between the emperor and the senate only reinforced that body’s
powerlessness.⁴² The growing power and influence of provincial elites increas-
ingly competed with the senate’s traditional cursus honorum, and membership
of that ancient but restricted body was no longer the defining marker of
power and influence.⁴³ This might have been good news for social and political
mobility within the Empire, but for the imperial succession it had the effect of
bringing more cooks to the broth.
Acclamation by the senate had also formerly given to the imperial office the
illusion that the senate was its elective body. But numerous conflicts between
soldiers and the senate (Claudius, Vespasian, Septimius Severus, Maximi-
nus Thrax) in which, in every instance, the senate was forced to yield to the
soldiers, demonstrated that this was nothing but a polite fiction, generated
by Augustus’ own propagandistic insistence that his position was held in
³⁹ A. Wallace-Hadrill, ‘Civilis Princeps: Between Citizen and King’, JRS 72 (1982), 32–48.
⁴⁰ Occasionally, the mask of senatorial accountability might slip. Tiberius made a great show
of reluctance to shoulder all of Augustus’ responsibilities but said that he would take any
individual office the senators assigned him. Asinius Gallus took this show of modesty at face
value and asked Tiberius what he would like to be assigned, which met with a frosty reply from
the emperor in waiting, who merely repeated that he would not reject anything assigned to him.
Asinius Gallus fell instantly to backtracking: cf. Tac., Ann. I.11–12.
⁴¹ CIL VI.930; Brunt, ‘Lex de Imperio Vespasiani’, 95–116.
⁴² This was already true in the time of Augustus. When Augustus was not in Rome foreign
embassies travelled to him rather than to the senate (Crook, ‘Political History’, 82). cf. Herodian’s
‘Rome is where the emperor is’ (I.6.5); C. Kelly, Ruling the Later Roman Empire (Cambridge MA,
2004), 114–37.
⁴³ J. Weisweiler, ‘Domesticating the Senatorial Elite: Universal Monarchy and Transregional
Aristocracy in the Fourth Century AD’, in Wienand (ed.), Contested Monarchy, 17–41.

obedience to the Republican customs and the democratic will of the Roman
people.⁴⁴ The senate confirmed—and so helped to legitimate—emperors, but
it could neither oppose an imperial proclamation, nor could it topple an
emperor without the direct support of the military.⁴⁵ Senators could still
become emperor, of course, as numerous third-century examples demonstrate
(Pupienus and Balbinus, Decius, Valerian), and the power of individual sena-
tors could still be prodigious, but the senate as a body was set into terminal
decline by the creation of the office of emperor and, by the third century, it had
disappeared into total insignificance, its acclamation of a new emperor noth-
ing more than a rubber stamp.
Hand in hand with the waning influence of the senate upon the succession
came the gradual eclipse of Rome as a meaningful political centre for the
Empire. This again had profound effects upon the stability of the imperial
succession. Military changes in the Empire had forced emperors increasingly
to vacate the city for the frontiers, and in so doing the Empire had been
stripped of a centre of power for which all parties competed. As noted above,
Tacitus observed, of 68, that a terrible secret had been uncovered when the
soldiers found they could make emperors outside Rome. But in both 69 and
193, even though emperors had been made outside the city, control of Rome
was still their ultimate goal. By the end of the third century, however,
Rome had lost anything but ideological significance. Numerous cities nearer
to strategic frontiers—Mainz, Trier, Milan, Sirmium, Nicomedia, Emessa,
Antioch, and others—began to acquire importance. These cities were increas-
ingly ornamented with the trapping of rule—palaces, barracks, hippo-
dromes—that permitted the normal exercise of imperial power far from
Rome.⁴⁶ Emperors like Macrinus and Maximinus Thrax might conduct the
entirety of their reign outside the city, being made emperors in the field by
soldiers and dying in the field at the hands of soldiers. This drew criticism, but
it didn’t change the realities of power.⁴⁷
⁴⁴ Perhaps the only counterexample to this trend in imperial history was the election of Nerva
in 96: J. D. Grainger, Nerva and the Roman Succession Crisis of AD 96–99 (London, 2003), 1–3.
⁴⁵ This contradiction (and its violent consequences) is brought out in A. Winterling, Politics
and Society in Imperial Rome (tr. K. Lüddecke. Chichester, 2009), 110–11.
⁴⁶ T. Brown, Emperors and Imperial Cities, AD 284–423 (DPhil. Oxford, 2002); F. Millar, The
Emperor in The Roman World (31 B.C.–A.D. 337) (London, 1977), 40–53; E. Mayer, Rom ist dort,
wo der Kaiser ist: Untersuchungen zu den Staatsdenkmälern des dezentralisierten Reiches von
Diocletian bis zu Theodosius II (Monographien 53. Mainz, 2002); B. Ward-Perkins, ‘A Most
Unusual Empire: Rome in the Fourth Century’, in C. Rapp and H. A. Drake (eds), The City in the
Classical and Post-Classical World: Changing contexts of power and identity (Cambridge, 2014),
109–29.
⁴⁷ Potter, Roman Empire at Bay, 232–7 argues that the intense efforts on the part of Philip the
Arab to commemorate the Roman millennium were an attempt to ‘heed the examples of both
Macrinus and Maximus, which showed what happened to men with local support who failed to
solidify their positions at Rome with sufficient alacrity’ (quote at 233).

So pronounced was this centrifugal tendency that entirely independent
imperial hierarchies could spring up outside of Italy, as did the Gallic Empire,
from 260–74, or the Palmyrene Empire from 270–3. Though ultimately these
territories were recaptured under Aurelian, nevertheless what is striking about
them is that they coexisted with one another for so long, a thing that would
have been unthinkable in the first century AD. As the Empire had grown
increasingly Romanized, the ability of regional factions to control power
without reference to Rome destabilized the political order. In the fourth
century, rival courts might watch each other warily across the open expanse
of the Mediterranean for years, as did Constantine and Licinius between 313
and 324, or Magnus Maximus and Theodosius between 383 and 388.⁴⁸
Controlling the succession was also so difficult because the Empire was so
big. It stretched from Cumbria to Upper Egypt, from Morocco’s Atlantic coast
to the fringes of Georgia and Armenia, surrounding the Mediterranean basin
and encompassing a territory, at its height, of nearly two million square miles,
today occupied by more than fifty independent nations on three continents.⁴⁹
This territory was defended by an army that, by the fourth century, was
composed of half a million men.⁵⁰ As Augustine lamented in his de Civitate
Dei, ‘the very breadth of the Empire has brought forth wars of a worse sort –
social or rather civil wars.’⁵¹ In moments of crisis, a pattern endlessly replayed
was that regional armies were pitted against one another and could be united
only through conflict, a tendency made worse by the loss of Rome as a
recognized centre. This was also a product of the highly centralized nature
of the imperial system. Even the most powerful provincial governor or
regional general lacked the recognized authority to undertake certain activities
reserved to the emperor: to appoint men to high office or to demote them from
it; to raise soldiers at his own discretion; to mint coins; to alter laws; and so on.
When crisis struck a region, the emperor might be 3,000 miles away, he might
be incompetent, or he might simply be too busy to react. During the third
century, the Danube in particular was almost constantly rocked by usurpation
as the legions stationed there attempted to secure an emperor near at hand to
manage their pay and to defend this vulnerable frontier.⁵² In 248, Decius, the
⁴⁸ On regionalization, see Kulikoski, ‘Regional Dynasties’, 135–48.

⁴⁹ R. Taagepera, ‘Size and Duration of Empires: Growth-Decline Curves, 600 B.C. to 600 A.D.,’
Social Science History 3:4 (1979), 118 and 125ff.
⁵⁰ A. H. M. Jones, The Later Roman Empire, 284–602: A social, economic and administrative
survey (3 vols. Oxford, 1964) II, 679–86 for various estimates of imperial military manpower;
W. Treadgold, Byzantium and Its Army, 284–1081 (Stanford, 1995), 43–59; R. Rees, Diocletian
and the Tetrarchy (Edinburgh, 2004), 17–18.
⁵¹ August., de Civ. D. XIX.7.
⁵² German scholars have called this ‘Bedürfnis nach Kaisernähe’: Hartmann, Herrscherwech-
sel un Reichskrise, 140–8; A. Demandt, Der Fall Roms: Die Auflösung des römischen Reiches im
Urteil der Nachwelt (München, 1984), 48.

general sent to put down one such rebellion under Pacatianus, had no sooner
arrived in the region than he was himself proclaimed emperor.⁵³
Rebellion and usurpation also flourished because there was no institutional
means by which to control or regulate the behaviour of emperors. The
emperor’s will had the force of law and there was no court of appeal from
decisions made by him.⁵⁴ He was unimpeachable and unquestionable and
the only way to oppose an emperor, therefore, was to kill him. It is because of
this that the third century saw so many of its emperors murdered by their
subjects as a corrective on their behaviour, emperors like Caracalla, Elagabalus,
Maximinus Thrax, Gallienus, and more besides. Rebellion, increasingly synon-
ymous with usurpation, was the only way to challenge an emperor.⁵⁵ Further-
more, the emperor’s enmity was essentially a death sentence, and a man with an
army who had fallen from imperial favour would thus often choose usurpation
rather than face the certain death of submission. In April 175, Avidius Cassius
seized imperial power in Egypt, having heard a false report of Marcus Aurelius’
death. He soon learned that this information was incorrect and Marcus was in
fact alive, but having undertaken an act of supreme disloyalty (despite perfectly
loyal intentions) he was thus forced to prosecute a war against the emperor
whose legacy he had usurped power in order to defend.⁵⁶ In 286, the naval
commander Carausius was accused of stealing from the provincials of Gaul and
Britain, and was sentenced to death by the emperor Maximian. Faced with a
choice between submission and certain death or rebellion and the hope of
survival, Carausius chose rebellion.⁵⁷
It was not simply the Empire and the challenges it presented, however, that
helped to ensure a cycle of instability; the office of emperor itself encouraged
challenge and competition in three important ways, all of which, ultimately,
stemmed from the fact that the imperial office had arisen as an improvised de
jure justification of a de facto reality under Augustus. The first of these was the
fiction of the emperor’s meritocratic position. Despite ample evidence to the
contrary, Romans continued to pretend, throughout the history of the Empire,
that theirs was a polity ruled by the best man, a fiction given some weight by
the fact that in the first two centuries of imperial rule, only two emper-
ors, Vespasian and Marcus Aurelius, were succeeded by their natural sons.⁵⁸
⁵³ Zon. XII.19; Zos. I.21–22; cf. Potter, Roman Empire at Bay, 236–7.
⁵⁴ Ulpian, the great third-century legal commentator, had declared both that ‘the princeps is
unbound by the law’ (Dig. I.3.31) and that ‘what pleases the princeps has the force of law’ (Dig.
I.4.1); Millar, Emperor in The Roman World, 507–27.
⁵⁵ This association was complete enough in the mind of late Roman authors that it is often
difficult to distinguish rebellion from usurpation in the sources: cf. J. Szidat, Usurpator tanti
nominis: Kaiser und Usurpator in der Spätantike, 337–476 n. Chr. (Wiesbaden, 2010), 28–9.
⁵⁶ Dio Cass., LXXII.17–31. ⁵⁷ On Carausius, see Chapter IV, p. 81.
⁵⁸ Two out these three natural sons—Domitian and Commodus—were ultimately murdered
by their subjects.

Fictive though it might have been, the concept of rule by the best and the
notion of an elective office meant that the political climate of the Roman world
was favourable to the deposition of monarchs deemed unsuitable.⁵⁹ The
proportion of Roman emperors murdered by their subjects is, accordingly,
enormous. On the final page of his weighty The Emperor in the Roman World,
Fergus Millar provides a list of emperors who ruled between 27 BC and AD 337,
a total of sixty names.⁶⁰ Of these sixty, an astounding forty-one were either
murdered by their soldiers, by a court conspiracy, by a rival emperor, or else
killed themselves in the wake of an unsalvageable political defeat. Between the
death of Septimius Severus in 211 and the accession of Diocletian in 284, only
four emperors did not die at Roman hands: Decius, who died in battle against
the Goths; Valerian, who died in Persian captivity; Claudius, who died of
plague; and Carus, who died of natural causes or of a battle wound while
campaigning against the Persians. For the Romans, regicide was the expected
end for a ruler, not an occasional aberration.
The second feature of the imperial office that ensured its instability was the
absence of objective criteria by which one accession might be marked out from
another. Emperors had no required place of coronation, as Rheims was for
French kings.⁶¹ As we have seen, Rome had begun to lose this title by 68, and
had lost it utterly by the third century. There was no recognized elective body
whose vote, once given, could not legally be challenged, as were the Great
Council of Venice or the Cardinals of the Catholic Church.⁶² As we have seen,
the senate had only ever held this role in name, and by the third century even
that had faded into insignificance. The Empire had no sacred objects, the
possession of which confirmed the right to rule, as the Three Sacred Treasures
were for Japanese emperors.⁶³ Emperors were expected to wear purple and
purple was supposedly reserved only for members of the imperial family, but
as frequent legislation on the subject shows, the colour was regularly used to
adorn the clothes of non-imperial persons, and in a moment of need a purple
garment could usually either be found or be improvised; Ammianus tells
us that the usurper Silvanus (355) made an imperial garment for himself
⁵⁹ A. E. Wardman, ‘Usurpers and Internal Conflicts in the 4th Century A.D.’, Historia 33:2
(1984), 227–8.
⁶⁰ Millar, Emperor in The Roman World, 657. Millar’s list is far from a comprehensive roster
of everyone who claimed the imperial title during that period, omitting (not unreasonably) the
majority of the usurpers and separatist emperors of the third century, but it provides a
convenient list of the most important names.
⁶¹ R. E. Giesey, ‘Inaugural Aspects of French Royal Ceremonials’, in J. M. Bak (ed.), Coron-
ations: Medieval and Early Modern Monarchic Ritual (Berkeley, 1990), 35–45.
⁶² Great Council: J. J. Norwich, A History of Venice (London, 2003), 166–7. Cardinals:
F. J. Baumgartner, Behind Locked Doors: A History of the Papal Elections (Basingstoke, 2003).
⁶³ D. C. Holtom, The Japanese Enthronement Ceremonies: With an account of the Imperial
regalia (2nd edn. Tokyo, 1972), 1–44.

from the purple decorations on his soldiers’ standards.⁶⁴ Numerous emperors
attempted to look to religion to help underscore their position, but since each
emperor claimed to be the highest religious authority in the state, as pontifex
maximus, appeals to the religious sphere had little independent force as a
vehicle for distinguishing emperors from one another.⁶⁵
Perhaps the sole objective criterion that provided some exclusive benefit to
those who could claim it was dynastic connection, whether real or adoptive, to
a previous emperor. The biological accident that prevented a clear patrilineal
succession in the Empire’s first two centuries should not blind us to the fact
that imperial power was, from the time of Tiberius, treated as a possession of
the emperor and handed on in his will. Clear designation of an intended heir
was a policy that began under Augustus and which provided the best avail-
able guarantee of an orderly succession.⁶⁶ Dynastic considerations could have
powerful results; when Macrinus became emperor after the assassination of
Caracalla, he sent Caracalla’s family into exile in Syria. But when Julia Maesa,
Septimius Severus’ sister-in-law, began to circulate the rumour that her
grandson, Elagabalus, was Caracalla’s illegitimate son, it was sufficient incen-
tive (along with the promise of rich donatives) to encourage soldiers based at
Emesa to declare him emperor.⁶⁷ Indeed, the potential legitimating force of a
familial relationship to a former emperor was powerful enough that emperors
even began to fabricate their dynastic relationships, writing back connections
with respected emperors of the past in order to bolster their claim to power.
Septimius Severus declared himself the adoptive son of Marcus Aurelius and
the brother of Commodus.⁶⁸ Constantine, in an effort to help distinguish
himself from the other tetrarchs, claimed descent from Claudius Gothicus.⁶⁹
Theodosius claimed descent from Trajan.⁷⁰
⁶⁴ Amm., XV.5.16; cf. XXVI.6.15. W. T. Avery, ‘The “Adoratio Purpurae” and the Importance
of the Imperial Purple in the Fourth Century of the Christian Era’, Memoirs of the American
Academy in Rome 17 (1940), 66; M. Reinhold, ‘Usurpation of Status and Status Symbols in the
Late Roman Empire’, Historia 20:2 (1971), 283–4.
⁶⁵ A. Pabst, Comitia imperii: Ideelle Grundlagen des römischen Kaisertums (Darmstadt, 1997),
18–19.
⁶⁶ Augustus worked exceptionally hard to designate a clear heir during his lifetime, though
was repeatedly frustrated by accidents of mortality. Others took great interest in this designation,
as it was widely recognized that this heir would inherit not merely Augustus’ (enormous) private
wealth, but his public status: B. Severy, Augustus and the Family at the Birth of the Roman Empire
(London, 2003), 68–78.
⁶⁷ Potter, The Roman Empire at Bay, 149–51.
⁶⁸ O. Hekster, Emperors and Ancestors: Roman rulers and the constraints of tradition (Oxford,
2014), 205–21.
⁶⁹ Pan. Lat. VI.2 and V.2.5, 4.2; Jul., Or. I.6d–7a. On the fictitious nature of this association,
see R. Syme, Historia Augusta Papers (Oxford, 1983), 63–79; Hekster, Emperors and Ancestors,
225–33.
⁷⁰ C. Kelly, ‘Pliny and Pacatus: Past and Present in Imperial Panegyric,’ in Wienand (ed.),
Contested Monarchy, 236–8.

As powerful and natural as dynastic principles might have been, however,
they proved a very poor legitimating tool. Of the three sons of emperors who
ruled between 27 BC and AD 192 (Titus, Domitian, and Commodus) two were
murdered by their subjects. Indeed, other than Titus, no son of an emperor
who ruled after his father died a natural death until Constantine in 337. Under
the late Empire, the same problem continued; dynastic ties were generally
sufficient to ensure a son came to power, but could do little to protect him if
his rule proved unacceptable to his most powerful subjects (in particular, the
high command of his military). Constans and Valentinian II were two such,
sons of emperors brought down by their inability to manage their militaries.⁷¹
Dynastic connection was clearly a strong bargaining chip in the contest to be
acclaimed emperor, and it seems to have held particular appeal for soldiers
who, throughout the Empire’s history, showed themselves willing to proclaim
distinctly unmilitary usurpers by virtue of descent (Claudius, Elagabalus,
Gordian III, Valentinian II). But dynasty proved poor armour in defending
an emperor once on the throne. Excepting the Julio-Claudians, whose succes-
sion was maintained through adoption, no imperial dynasty managed to
establish itself into the third generation until 337, with the sons of Constan-
tine, and no dynasty managed to reach its fourth generation until the accession
of Constantine IV in 654.⁷² Like any other criterion we might point to by
which an accession might be measured as legitimate, dynastic ties might help
bring a man to the throne but they were a poor tool to help him keep it.
The third and final feature of the imperial office that tended towards
endemic usurpation was that it became increasingly acceptable that emperors
would not—again in contrast to medieval kings—rule alone. Joint rule had
theoretical precursors, not least the old Republican principle that the state was
ruled by two equal magistrates, the consuls. From the very earliest days of the
Empire, emperors had associated their prospective heirs with themselves via
imperial titles.⁷³ Though resisted under the earliest emperors, true joint rule
first occurred in March 161, under Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus.⁷⁴ After
Aurelius and Verus, joint rule was never truly abandoned, and various regimes
turned to diarchies, triarchies, and even tetrarchies to address their political
problems. But the concept of collegiate government likewise admitted the
potential for usurpation; it created the possibility, albeit an infrequently
⁷¹ See Chapter VI, p. 163, and Chapter IX, pp. 289–90.

⁷² W. E. Kaegi, Byzantine Military Unrest, 471–843: An interpretation (Amsterdam, 1981),
166–9. Constantine IV passed power on to his son, Justinian II, in 685 so the dynasty continued
to break records by entering a fifth generation: J. F. Haldon, Byzantium in the Seventh Century:
the transformation of a culture (Cambridge, 1990), 41–78.
⁷³ E.g. Kienast, Kaisertabelle, 24–7. The imperial titles Caesar and Augustus began as family
names, but soon became formal titles.
⁷⁴ HA M. Antoninus 7.5–6; HA Verus 3.8–41; Dio Cass., LXXI.1; Eutr., VIII.9.

realized one, that a usurper need not be in conflict with the reigning emperor,
but might be welcomed by him into joint rule.⁷⁵
By the end of the second century, therefore, there existed within the
imperial system a number of factors which, under best conditions, could
prove to be incredible strengths: imperial power was open to a wide variety
of candidates, encouraging excellence; it was not dependent upon the deci-
sions of a distant centre but could be created organically in response to crises;
it allowed the possibility for innovation and flexibility within its own (unwrit-
ten) constitution; it was (theoretically) not dependent on the accidents of
biology which, in hereditary monarchies, allow utterly incapable rulers to
take the throne. But under the difficult conditions of the third century a
trident of regional dissent, military defeat, and financial collapse brought the
imperial system into crisis, and the cracks opened dangerously wide. Usurp-
ation became so common as to be plausibly described as a fundamental feature
of Roman imperial government.
The result of all this was a chaotic and unregulated succession. Displayed
graphically (see Fig. I.2), the scale of this problem is striking.⁷⁶ The graph
represents every year from 27 BC, when Octavian was declared Augustus, until
AD 455, when Valentinian III died and the idea of a united Empire and of
Western imperial power can safely be said to have vanished in all but name.
4
Usurpations
0
25 1 25 50 75 100 125 150 175 200 225 250 275 300 325 350 375 400 425 450
Year
Fig. I.2. Usurpations in the Roman Empire, 27 BC–AD 455.
⁷⁵ This was something that actually happened in the case of Constantine, of Theodosius I,
and—briefly—of Magnus Maximus (see Chapter V, p. 105, and Chapter IX, pp. 266–7).
⁷⁶ On the composition of this graph, see Appendix II.

A clear period of calm runs from 27 BC until around the end of the second
century AD, punctuated only by isolated crises. After this, there is an explosion:
there were more usurpations in the three decades from 192–222 than in the
preceding 220 years. All told, this graph shows 103 usurpations, an average of
slightly fewer than one every four and a half years. If we begin our count from
192, that average rises to almost one usurpation every two and a half years.
Usurpation had come to define Roman imperial power.
‘ THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A TYRANT AND A KING

IS ONE OF DEEDS, NOT OF NAME’ : HOW W AS
USURPATION UNDERSTOOD IN THE L ATE
RO MAN E MPIRE?
A graph like Figure I.2 invites an important question: how are we to define
usurpation in a system as confused as the Roman?⁷⁷ This question may be
roughly broken into two, namely: how did the Romans define usurpation, and
how is it defined in this volume? That the answers to these two questions will
be different from one another may initially strike readers as undesirable. If our
definition of usurpation is to be historically meaningful, ought it not to marry
with the definition that the Romans themselves used? Despite the obvious
appeal of this logic, to follow a Roman definition proves to be impossible
because the Romans did not define usurpation in any constitutionally mean-
ingful way. Contemporaries did not provide objective definition as to what
marked a ruler legitimate or illegitimate. Rather, they defined just rule in
contrast to tyranny, and did so in explicitly moral, rather than constitutional,
terms. When looking back into history, Roman historians and orators were
happy to denounce individuals as illegal or unjust claimants to power, but
political necessity ensured that the emperor under whom they lived and wrote
was always legitimate, just, and a model of virtue.
Perhaps the defining statement for the establishment of the imperial office is
the Res Gestae Divi Augusti, ‘The Deeds of the Divine Augustus’, a political
autobiography composed (or at least brought into its final form) shortly before
Augustus’ death in AD 14. The text was included, along with Augustus’ will, in
the documents officially delivered to the senate on his death and it was
published widely, being inscribed in both Latin and Greek in many cities
across the Empire, including upon a pair of bronze pillars in front of Augustus’
⁷⁷ ‘Wie die Usurpationen in der Spätantike wahrgenommen und nach welchen Kriterien sie
bewertet wurden, wäre Thema eines eigenen Buches’ (Szidat, Usurpator tanti nominis, 25).
Szidat’s assessment stands and the following is little more than a brief survey, highlighting key
themes.

gargantuan mausoleum in Rome.⁷⁸ In the text, Augustus explicitly drew atten-
tion to the fact that he had refused the dictatorship, and that he had taken up
no power that was contrary to mos maiorum, ‘ancestral custom’. He governed,
he claimed, through legally appointed powers, given ‘by decree of the senate’
(senatus consulto). He was at pains, too, to stress that his position was not one
that had been taken but one that had been given and, furthermore, that
had been laid down when the crisis that occasioned it was ended. Importantly,
Augustus claimed that he ruled the entire Republic ‘by the consent of all’ (per
consensum universorum), a claim given credibility by the fact that before
Actium he had ordered the entire population of the territories he adminis-
tered in the western Mediterranean to swear personal allegiance to him in an
oath that mirrored that sworn by soldiers to their commander.⁷⁹ It is in this
tension between military dictatorship and a Republican ideology in which the
emperor ruled though the sovereign power of the people, exercised with their
full consent, that the distinctive character of Roman imperial power is to
be found.
The right of soldiers to create emperors was so fundamental to the Romans
as to have been an axiom that needed virtually no explanation.⁸⁰ As I showed
in the previous section, if there had ever been any doubt as to the reality of this
situation, the accession of Vespasian firmly laid this to rest. Vespasian dated
his reign from the day when the soldiers stationed in Alexandria swore the
oath of allegiance to him. Tacitus, in his Histories, puts the following statement
in the mouth of Mucianus, the governor of Syria, who declared to Vespasian,
‘Moreover you have proof in the case of Vitellius himself that an army can
make an emperor.’⁸¹ One of the emperor’s formal titles, and the word fre-
quently used in Latin to refer to an emperor, was imperator, which simply
meant ‘commander’. Although, after the first century AD this word was used
exclusively to refer to Roman emperors, it nevertheless reinforces the fact that
the emperor’s position was thus fundamentally grounded in his relationship
with the military.⁸² This was more than a simple manifestation of the idea that
might was right. The soldiers did not only provide the emperor with the
requisite force to ensure that his will was obeyed; they were, for the Romans,
the theoretical underpinning of imperial power. The emperor, through the
⁷⁸ A. E. Cooley (ed. and tr.), Res Gestae Divi Augusti: Text, Translation, and Commentary
(Cambridge, 2009), 3–22.
⁷⁹ Res Gestae 25.2; Syme, Roman Revolution, 284–5.
⁸⁰ Jer., Ep. 146.1: ‘ . . . the presbyters always elect one of their own number, calling him to a
higher station, and name him bishop, just as an army makes an emperor . . . ’; J. Weisweiler,
‘Domesticating the Senatorial Elite’, 37.
⁸¹ Tac., Hist. II.76.
⁸² Q. Iunius Blaesus, in AD 22, was the last Roman commander not of the imperial family to be
hailed imperator (Tac. Ann. III.74), after which time the titled passed solely into the use of,
initially, the imperial family, and then solely emperors themselves (L. de Libero, ‘Imperator’,
DNP VI, 954–5).

soldiers, drew his authority from the people. Through its acclamation, when
an army thus hailed someone as imperator, it communicated the assent of the
entire Roman population.⁸³
The Historia Augusta—a corpus of imperial biographies spanning from
Hadrian to Carinus, purportedly composed by six different authors during the
reigns of Diocletian and Constantine and of dubious value as faithful witnesses
to the events they describe—nevertheless provides fruitful grounds for enquiry
into fourth-century attitudes towards the imperial proclamation.⁸⁴ Perhaps
the most useful section to examine is the part of the work known as the
Tyranni Triginta (Thirty Tyrants), the biographies of (slightly confusingly)
thirty-two usurpers who arose during the time of the emperor Gallienus.
Many of these men may never have existed, or may never have claimed
imperial power, but here the importance is not the accuracy of what is being
described, but the author’s attitude to it. Thirty-two accessions are described,
all of them for men whom the book expressly declares to be tyranni. Yet the
accessions themselves often receive no more comment than the laconic ‘he was
made emperor’ (factus est), ‘he was declared emperor’ (vocatus est or dictus
est), or ‘he took up imperial power’ (sumpsit).⁸⁵ Some, admittedly, are accused
of ‘usurping’ power (usurpare, a word which had, by the fourth century,
acquired many of its modern, negative connotations), but even these are
often praised as being worthy of rule (on which more below).⁸⁶ A detail thus
apparent in the Historia Augusta is that it was considered sufficient to have
been made emperor ‘by the witness of the soldiers’.⁸⁷ The impression thus
garnered is one of extreme pragmatism; soldiers made emperors and that
was that.
⁸³ Dig. I.4.1: Quod principi placuit, legis habet vigorem: utpote cum lege regia, quae de imperio
eius lata est, populus ei et in eum omne suum imperium et potestatem conferat. On the power of
acclamation, see C. Ando, Imperial Ideology and Provincial Loyalty in the Roman Empire
(Berkeley, 2000), 199–205; U. Wiemer, ‘Akklamationen im spätrömischen Reich: Zur Typologie
und Funktion eines Kommunikationsritual,’ Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 86 (2004), 27–73.
⁸⁴ The classic study is H. Dessau, ‘Über Zeit und Persönkichkeit der Scriptores Historiae
Augustae,’ Hermes 24 (1889), 337–92; see also R. Syme, Emperors and Biography: Studies in the
Historia Augusta (Oxford, 1971); R. Baker, A Study of a Late Antique Corpus of Biographies
[Historia Augusta] (DPhil. Oxford, 2014).
⁸⁵ Factus: (10.1, 12.2, 14.1, 33.2); vocatus/dictus: (2.3, 6.1, 9.1); sumpsit (11.1, 15.1, 18.3, 19.3,
21.1, 22.1, 23.2). Also acceptus/accepit (3.4, 16.1); imperare (18.1, 20.2, 30.2, 32.1); appellari/
appellare (24.2, 25.1, 29.1). The Loeb translation of the Tyranni Tringinta frequently (though not
consistently) translates sumpsit (and, at 20.2 and 32.1, imperare) as ‘he seized’, which carries
connotations of force not found in the Latin.
⁸⁶ Usurpare (12.2, 15.4, 27.1); Postumus, who launched a ‘rebellion’ (rebellio), was, along with
the other Gallic emperors, ‘a protector of the Roman name’ (5.5); Regalianus was always
suspected by Gallienus because he dignus videretur imperio (10.8); Claudius, Macrianus, In-
genuus, Postumus, and Aureolus all died while holding power, cum mererentur imperium
(10.14); were it not for Odaenathus taking imperial power, ‘the entire East would have been
lost’ (15.1); Piso is a vir summae sanctitatis (21.1).
⁸⁷ Militum testimonio (HA tyr. trig. 10.15; cf. 3.4).

The Tyranni Triginta is a convenient text, despite the problems of its
historicity, because it provides us with so many accessions of emperors exp-
licitly denounced as tyranni. But the observations that can be drawn from it
hold true when we examine other sources. Emperors were ‘elected’, were
‘created’, were ‘made’, and were ‘declared’.⁸⁸ The decision of the soldiers was
sovereign and any body of soldiers was deemed sufficient to place someone in
power. Perhaps the starkest illustration of this is the usurpation of Eugenius.
In 303, Eugenius was serving as the commander of a unit of 500 men who had
been tasked with deepening the harbour mouth at Seleucia, the port city of
Antioch. So back-breaking was the work that the soldiers revolted, and they
declared Eugenius emperor, wrapping him in a purple robe taken from a
statue. At the head of his soldiers, Eugenius marched inland to Antioch while
his subjects pillaged the surrounding farms, getting very drunk in the process.
When they entered the city at nightfall they made for the palace. When the
citizens of Antioch realized what was happening, however, they rose up and
murdered Eugenius and his soldiers in the streets. This story is intriguing
not only because it shows us that even so insignificant body of soldiers felt
capable of making an emperor, but because the reaction of the emperor then
reigning, Diocletian, demonstrates that he treated this occurrence with the
utmost seriousness, ordering wide-ranging executions of the leading men
in Antioch.⁸⁹
None of this, of course, aims to suggest that the imperial succession was
condemned to be a perpetually disorderly affair, determined at every change of
power by the shouting of an assembled army. Save in dire crisis, decisions
concerning the succession were made by generals, state officials, and emperors
themselves. These decisions, however, had to be communicated to and ratified
by the soldiers in order to have any force. Ammianus Marcellinus, the great
historian of the later Empire, describes a total of nine imperial accessions in
his Res gestae: that of Silvanus (355), those of Julian as Caesar (355) and
Augustus (360), that of Jovian (363), those of Valentinian and Valens (364),
that of Procopius (365), that of Gratian (367), and that of Valentinian II
(375).⁹⁰ Of these, three are certainly to be considered usurpations (Silvanus,
Julian’s acclamation as Augustus, and Procopius) and two more may plausibly
be argued as such (Jovian and Valentinian II). All nine of these acclamations
took place before assembled armies, from the enormous praesental forces that
hailed Valentinian I and Valens to the small assemblage of soldiers that hailed
Procopius in Constantinople. In moments of interregnum, the soldiers, as a
collective mass, suddenly became an enormously dangerous and unwieldy
⁸⁸ For a summary of the terminology of the sources, see Pabst, Comitia imperii, 37–45.
⁸⁹ Lib., Or. I.3, 125, II.10–11, XI.158–62, XIX.45–6, XX.18–20, and ep. 1154/125.
⁹⁰ Amm., XV.5; XV.8; XX.4; XXV.5; XXVI.2; XXVI.4; XXIV.6; XXVII.6; XXX.10.
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left, because he always made me try it. So he may have tried to
ring.”
Dr. Major (turning the head and examining the throat): “It looks
as if he had clutched at his throat rather tightly this time, I must say.
Here is the mark of his thumb on this side and of his four fingers on
the other. Rather deep for the little strength he had. Odd that he
should have imagined that some one else was trying to choke him,
when he was always pressing at his own neck! Throat tuberculosis is
very painful at times. That would explain the desire to clutch at his
throat.”
Miss Liggett: “He was always believing that an evil spirit was
trying to choke him, doctor.”
Dr. Major: “Yes, I know—association of ideas. Dr. Scain and I
agree as to that. He had a bad case of chronic tuberculosis of the
throat, with accompanying malnutrition, due to the effect of the throat
on the stomach; and his notion about evil spirits pursuing him and
trying to choke him was simply due to an innate tendency on the part
of the subconscious mind to join things together—any notion, say,
with any pain. If he had had a diseased leg, he would have imagined
that evil spirits were attempting to saw it off, or something like that. In
the same way the condition of his throat affected his stomach, and
he imagined that the spirits were doing something to his food. Make
out a certificate showing acute tuberculosis of the esophagus as the
cause, with delusions of persecution as his mental condition. While I
am here we may as well look in on Mr. Baff.”
III
CHAINS
A S Garrison left his last business conference in K——, where the

tall buildings, and the amazing crowds always seemed such a
commentary on the power and force and wealth of America and the
world, and was on his way to the railway station to take a train for G
——, his home city, his thoughts turned with peculiar emphasis and
hope, if not actual pleasure—and yet it was a pleasure, of a sad,
distressed kind—to Idelle. Where was she now? What was she
doing at this particular moment? It was after four of a gray November
afternoon, just the time, as he well knew, winter or summer, when
she so much preferred to be glowing at an afternoon reception, a
“thé dansant,” or a hotel grill where there was dancing, and always,
as he well knew, in company with those vivid young “sports” or
pleasure lovers of the town who were always following her. Idelle, to
do her no injustice, had about her that something, even after three
years of marriage, that drew them, some of the worst or best—
mainly the worst, he thought at times—of those who made his home
city, the great far-flung G——, interesting and in the forefront socially
and in every other way.
What a girl! What a history! And how strange that he should have
been attracted to her at all, he with his forty-eight years, his superior
(oh, very much!) social position, his conservative friends and equally
conservative manners. Idelle was so different, so hoyden, almost
coarse, in her ways at times, actually gross and vulgar (derived from
her French tanner father, no doubt, not her sweet, retiring Polish
mother), and yet how attractive, too, in so many ways, with that rich
russet-brown-gold hair of hers, her brown-black eyes, almost pupil-
less, the iris and pupil being of the same color, and that trig, vigorous
figure, always tailored in the smartest way! She was a paragon—to
him at least—or had been to begin with.
How tingling and dusty these streets of K—— were, so vital
always! How sharply the taxis of this mid-Western city turned
corners!
But what a period he had endured since he had married her, three
years before! What tortures, what despairs! If only he could make
over Idelle to suit him! But what a wonderful thing that destroying
something called beauty was, especially to one, like himself, who
found life tiresome in so many ways—something to possess, a
showpiece against the certain inroads of time, something wherewith
to arouse envy in other persons.
At last they were reaching the station!
She did not deserve that he should love her. It was the most
unfortunate thing for him that he did, but how could he help it now?
How overcome it? How punish her for her misdeeds to him without
punishing himself more? Love was such an inscrutable thing; so
often one lavished it where it was not even wanted. God, he could
testify to that! He was a fine example, really. She cared about as
much for him as she did for the lamp-post on the corner, or an old
discarded pair of shoes. And yet— He was never tired of looking at
her, for one thing, of thinking of her ways, her moods, her secrets.
She had not done and was not doing as she should—it was
impossible, he was beginning to suspect, for her so to do—and still
—
He must stop and send her a telegram before the train left!
What a pleasure it was, indeed, anywhere and at all times, to have
her hanging on his arm, to walk into a restaurant or drawing-room
and to know that of all those present none had a more attractive wife
than he, not one. For all Idelle’s commonplace birth and lack of
position to begin with, she was the smartest, the best dressed, the
most alluring, by far—at least, he thought so—of all the set in which
he had placed her. Those eyes! That hair! That graceful figure,
always so smartly arrayed! To be sure, she was a little young for him.
Their figures side by side were somewhat incongruous—he with his
dignity and years and almost military bearing, as so many told him,
she with that air of extreme youthfulness and lure which always
brought so many of the younger set to her side wherever they
happened to be. Only there was the other galling thought: That she
did not wholly belong to him and never had. She was too interested
in other men, and always had been. Her youth, that wretched past of
hers, had been little more than a lurid streak of bad, even evil—yes,
evil—conduct. She had, to tell the truth, been a vile girl, sensuous,
selfish, inconsiderate, unrepentant, and was still, and yet he had
married her in spite of all that, knowing it, really. Only at first he had
not known quite all.
“Yes, all three of these! And wait till I get my sleeper ticket!”
No wonder people had talked, though. He had heard it—that she
had married him for his money, position, that he was too old, that it
was a scandal, etc. Well, maybe it was. But he had been fond of her
—terribly so—and she of him, or seemingly, at first. Yes, she must
have been—her manner, her enthusiasm, if temporary, for him!
Those happy, happy first days they spent together! Her quiet
assumption of the rôle of hostess in Sicard Avenue at first, her
manner of receiving and living up to her duties! It was wonderful, so
promising. Yes, there was no doubt of it; she must have cared for
him a little at first. Her brain, too, required a man of his years to
understand—some phases of her moods and ideas, and as for him
—well, he was as crazy about her then as now—more so, if anything
—or was he? Wasn’t she just as wonderful to him now as she had
been then? Truly. Yes, love or infatuation of this kind was a terrible
thing, so impossible to overcome.
“Car three, section seven!”
Would he ever forget the night he had first seen her being carried
into the Insull General on that canvas ambulance stretcher, her
temple bruised, one arm broken and internal injuries for which she
had to be operated on at once—a torn diaphragm, for one thing—
and of how she had instantly fascinated him? Her hair was loose and
had fallen over one shoulder, her hands limp. Those hands! That
picture! He had been visiting his old friend Dr. Dorsey and had
wondered who she was, how she came to be in such a dreadful
accident and thought her so beautiful. Think of how her beauty might
have been marred, only it wasn’t, thank goodness!
His telegram should be delivered in one hour, at most—that would
reach her in time!
Then and there he had decided that he must know her if she did
not die, that perhaps she might like him as he did her, on the instant;
had actually suffered tortures for fear she would not! Think of that!
Love at first sight for him—and for one who had since caused him so
much suffering—and in her condition, torn and bruised and near to
death! It was wonderful, wasn’t it?
How stuffy these trains were when one first entered them—coal
smoky!
And that operation! What a solemn thing it was, really, with only
himself, the doctor and three nurses in the empty operating room
that night. Dorsey was so tall, so solemn, but always so courageous.
He had asked if he might not be present, although he did not know
her, and because there were no relatives about to bar him from the
room, no one to look after her or to tell who she was, the accident
having occurred after midnight in the suburbs, he had been allowed
by Dorsey to come in.
“Yes, put them down here!”
He had pulled on a white slip over his business suit, and clean
white cotton gloves on his hands, and had then been allowed to
come into the observation gallery while Dorsey, assisted by the
hospital staff, had operated. He saw her cut open—the blood—heard
her groan heavily under ether! And all the time wondering who she
was. Her history. And pitying her, too! Fearing she might not come to!
How the memory of her pretty shrewd face, hidden under bandages
and a gas cone, had haunted him!
The train on this other track, its windows all polished, its dining-car
tables set and its lamps already glowing!
That was another of those fool dreams of his—of love and
happiness, that had tortured him so of late. From the first, almost
without quite knowing it, he had been bewitched, stricken with this
fever, and could not possibly think of her dying. And afterward, with
her broken arm set and her torn diaphragm mended, he had followed
her into the private room which he had ordered and had charged to
himself (Dorsey must have thought it queer!) and then had waited so
restlessly at his club until the next morning, when, standing beside
her bed, he had said: “You don’t know me, but my name is Garrison
—Upham Brainerd Garrison. Perhaps you know of our family here in
G——, the Willard Garrisons. I saw you brought in last night. I want
to be of service to you if I may, to notify your friends, and be of any
other use that I can. May I?”
How well he remembered saying that, formulating it all
beforehand, and then being so delighted when she accepted his
services with a peculiar, quizzical smile—that odd, evasive glance of
hers!
Men struck car wheels this way, no doubt, in order to see that they
were not broken, liable to fly to pieces when the train was running
fast and so destroy the lives of all!
And then she had given him her address—her mother’s, rather, to
whom he went at once, bringing her back with him. And so glad he
was to know that there was only her mother, no husband or— And
the flowers he had sent. And the fruit. And the gifts generally,
everything he thought she might like! And then that queer friendship
with Idelle afterwards, his quickly realized dream of bliss when she
had let him call on her daily, not telling him anything of herself, of
course, evading him rather, and letting him think what he would, but
tolerating him! Yes, she had played her game fair enough, no doubt,
only he was so eager to believe that everything was going to be
perfect with them—smooth, easy, lasting, bliss always. What a fool
of love he really was!
What a disgusting fat woman coming in with all her bags! Would
this train never start?
At that time—how sharply it had all burned itself into his memory!
—he had found her living as a young widow with her baby daughter
at her mother’s, only she wasn’t a widow really. It was all make-
believe. Already she had proved a riant scoffer at the conventions, a
wastrel, only then he did not know that. Where he thought he was
making an impression on a fairly unsophisticated girl, or at least one
not roughly used by the world, in reality he was merely a new
sensation to her, an incident, a convenience, something to lift her out
of a mood or a dilemma in which she found herself. Although he did
not know it then, one of two quarreling men had just attempted to kill
her via that automobile accident and she had been wishing peace,
escape from her own thoughts and the attentions of her two ardent
wooers, for the time being, at the time he met her. But apart from
these, even, there were others, or had been before them, a long line
apparently of almost disgusting—but no, he could not say quite that
—creatures with whom she had been—well, why say it? And he had
fancied for the moment that he was the big event in her life—or
might be! He!
But even so, what difference did all that make either, if only she
would love him now? What would he care who or what she was, or
what she had done before, if only she really cared for him as much
as he cared for her—or half as much—or even a minute portion! But
Idelle could never care for any one really, or at least not for him, or
him alone, anyway. She was too restless, too fond of variety in life.
Had she not, since the first six or seven months in which she had
known and married him, little more than tolerated him? She did not
really need to care for anybody; they all cared for her, sought her.
At last they were going!
Too many men of station and means—younger than himself, as
rich or richer, far more clever and fascinating in every way than he
would ever be (or she would think so because she really liked a
gayer, smarter type than he had ever been or ever could be now)—
vied with him for her interest, and had with each other before ever he
came on the scene. She was, in her queer way, a child of fortune, a
genius of passion and desire, really. Life would use her well for some
time yet, whatever she did to him or any other person, or whatever
he sought to do to her in revenge, if he ever did, because she was
interesting and desirable. Why attempt to deny that? She was far too
attractive yet, too clever, too errant, too indifferent, too spiritually
free, to be neglected by any one yet, let alone by such seeking, avid,
pleasure lovers as always followed her. And because she wouldn’t
allow him to interfere (that was the basis on which she had agreed to
marry him, her personal freedom) she had always been able to go
and do and be what she chose, nearly, just as she was going and
doing now.
These wide yards and that ruck of shabby yellow-and-black
houses, begrimed and dirty externally, and internally no doubt, with
souls in them nearly as drab, perhaps. How much better it was to be
rich like himself and Idelle; only she valued her station so lightly!
Always, wherever he went these days, and his affairs prevented
him from being with her very much, she was in his mind—what she
was doing, where she was going, with whom she might be now—ah,
the sickening thought, with whom she might be now, and where—
with that young waster Keene, possibly, with his millions, his
shooting preserve and his yacht; or Browne, equally young and still
in evidence, though deserted by her to marry him, Garrison; or
Coulstone, with whom Idelle had had that highly offensive affair in
Pittsburgh five years before, when she was only eighteen. Eighteen!
The wonder year! He, too, was here in G—— now after all these
years, this same Coulstone, and after Idelle had left him once! Yes,
he was hanging about her again, wanting her to come back and
marry him, although each of them had remarried!
That flock of crows flying across that distant field!
Of course, Idelle laughed at it, or pretended to. She pretended to
be faithful to him, to tell him all this was unavoidable gossip, the
aftermath of a disturbing past, before ever she saw him. But could he
believe her? Was she not really planning so to do—leave him and
return to Coulstone, this time legally? How could he tell? But think of
the vagaries of human nature and character, the conniving and
persuasive power of a man of wealth like Coulstone. He had left his
great business in Pittsburgh to come here to G—— in order to be
near her and annoy him (Garrison) really—not her, perhaps—with
his pleas and crazy fascination and adoration when she was now
safely and apparently happily married! Think of the strangeness, the
shame, the peculiarity of Idelle’s earlier life! And she still insisted that
this sort of thing was worth while! All his own station and wealth and
adoration were not enough—because he could not be eight or ten
people at once, no doubt. But why should he worry? Why not let her
go? To the devil with her, anyhow! She merely pretended to love him
in her idle, wanton spirit, because she could—well, because she
could play at youth and love!
Barkersburg—a place of 30,000, and the train not stopping! The
sun, breaking through for just one peep at this gray day, under those
trees!
The trouble with his life, as Garrison now saw it, was that
throughout it for the last twenty years, and before that even, in spite
of his youth and money, he had been craving the favor of just such a
young, gay, vigorous, attractive creature as Idelle or Jessica—she of
his earlier years—and not realizing it, until he met Idelle, his desire.
And this, of course, had placed him at a disadvantage in dealing with
women like them. Years before—all of fourteen now, think of it!—
there had been that affair between himself and Jessica, daughter of
the rich and fashionable Balloghs, of Lexington, which had ended so
disastrously for him. He had been out there on Colonel Ledgebrook’s
estate attending to some property which belonged to his father when
she had crossed his path at the colonel’s house, that great estate in
Bourbon County. Then, for the first time really, he had realized the
delight of having a truly beautiful girl interested in him, and him
alone, of being really attracted to him—for a little while. It was
wonderful.
The smothered clang of that crossing bell!
But also what a failure! How painful to hark back to that, and yet
how could he avoid it? Although it had seemed to end so favorably—
he having been able to win and marry her—still in reality it had
ended most disastrously, she having eventually left him as she did.
Jessica, too, was like Idelle in so many ways, as young, as gay,
nearly as forceful, not as pretty, and not with Idelle’s brains. You had
to admit that in connection with Idelle. She had more brains, force,
self-reliance, intuition, than most women he knew anything about,
young or old.
But to return to Jessica. At first she seemed to think he was
wonderful, a man of the world, clever, witty, a lover of light, frivolous,
foolish things, such as dancing, drinking, talking idle nonsense,
which he was not at all. Yes, that was where he had always failed,
apparently, and always would. He had no flair, and clever women
craved that.
That flock of pigeons on that barn roof!
At bottom really he had always been slow, romantic, philosophic,
meditative, while trying in the main to appear something else,
whereas these other men, those who were so successful with
women at least, were hard and gay and quick and thoughtless, or so
he thought. They said and did things more by instinct than he ever
could, were successful—well, just because they were what they
were. You couldn’t do those things by just trying to. And gay, pretty,
fascinating women, such as Idelle or Jessica, the really worthwhile
ones, seemed to realize this instinctively and to like that kind and no
other. When they found a sober and reflective man like himself, or
one even inclined to be, they drew away from him. Yes, they did; not
consciously always, but just instinctively. They wanted only men who
tingled and sparkled and glittered like themselves. To think that love
must always go by blind instinct instead of merit—genuine, adoring
passion!
This must be Phillipsburg coming into view! He couldn’t mistake
that high, round water tower!
Ah, the tragedy of seeing and knowing this and not being able to
remedy it, of not being able to make oneself over into something like
that! Somehow, Jessica had been betrayed by his bog-fire
resemblance to the thing which she took him to be. He was a bog
fire and nothing more, in so far as she was concerned, all she
thought he was. Yet because he was so hungry, no doubt, for a
woman of her type he had pretended that he was “the real thing,” as
she so liked to describe a gay character, a man of habits, bad or
good, as you choose; one who liked to gamble, shoot, race, and do a
lot of things which he really did not care for at all, but which the
crowd or group with which he was always finding himself, or with
whom he hoped to appear as somebody, was always doing and
liking.
These poor countrymen, always loitering about their village
stations!
And the women they ran with were just like them, like Jessica, like
Idelle—smart, showy and liked that sort of man—and so—
Well, he had pretended to be all that and more, when she
(Jessica) had appeared out of that gay group, petite, blonde (Idelle
was darker), vivacious, drawn to him by his seeming reality as a man
of the world and a gay cavalier. She had actually fallen in love with
him at sight, as it were, or seemed to be at the time—she!—and
then, see what had happened! Those awful months in G—— after
she had returned with him! The agonies of mind and body!
If only that stout traveling man in that gray suit would cease staring
at him! It must be the horn-rimmed glasses he had on which
interested him so! These mid-Western people!
Instantly almost, only a few weeks after they were married, she
seemed to realize that she had made a mistake. It seemed not to
make the slightest difference to her, after the first week or so, that
they were married or that he was infatuated with her or that he was
who he was or that her every move and thought were beautiful to
him. On the contrary, it seemed only to irritate her all the more. She
seemed to sense then—not before—that he was really the one man
not suited to her by temperament or taste or ideas, not the kind she
imagined she was getting, and from then on there were the most
terrible days, terrible—
That pretty girl turning in at that village gate!
Trying, depressing, degrading really. What dark frowns used to
flash across her face like clouds at that time—she was nineteen to
his twenty-four, and so pretty!—the realization, perhaps, that she had
made a mistake. What she really wanted was the gay, anachronistic,
unthinking, energetic person he had seemed to be under the stress
of the life at Ledgebrook’s, not the quiet, reasoning, dreamy person
he really was. It was terrible!
Tall trees made such shadowy aisles at evening!
Finally she had run away, disappeared completely one morning
after telling him she was going shopping, and then never seeing him
any more—ever—not even once! A telegram from Harrisburg had
told him that she was going to her mother’s and for him not to follow
her, please; and then before he could make up his mind really what
to do had come that old wolf Caldwell, the famous divorce lawyer of
G——, representing her mother, no doubt, and in smooth,
ingratiating, persuasive tones had talked about the immense folly of
attempting to adjust natural human antipathies, the sadness of all
human inharmonies, the value of quiet in all attempts at separation,
the need he had to look after his own social prestige in G——, and
the like, until finally Caldwell had persuaded him to accept a decree
of desertion in some Western state in silence and let her go out of
his life forever! Think of that!
The first call for dinner! Perhaps he had better go at once and
have it over with! He wanted to retire early to-night!
But Jessica—how she had haunted him for years after that! The
whole city seemed to suggest her at times, even after he heard that
she was married again and the mother of two children, so strong was
the feeling for anything one lost. Even to this day certain corners in
G——, the Brandingham, where they had lived temporarily at first;
Mme. Gateley’s dressmaking establishment, where she had had her
gowns made, and the Tussockville entrance to the park—always
touched and hurt him like some old, dear, poignant melody.
How this train lurched as one walked! The crashing couplings
between these cars!
And then, after all these busy, sobering years, in which he had
found out that there were some things he was not and could not be
—a gay, animal man of the town, for instance, a “blood,” a waster;
and some things that he was—a fairly capable financial and
commercial man, a lover of literature of sorts, and of horses, a genial
and acceptable person in many walks of society—had come Idelle.
Think of the dining-car being crowded thus early! And such
people!
He was just settling down to a semi-resigned acceptance of
himself as an affectional, emotional failure in so far as women were
concerned, when she had come—Idelle—this latest storm which had
troubled him so much. Idelle had brains, beauty, force, insight—more
than Jessica ever had had, or was he just older?—and that was what
made her so attractive to men, so indifferent to women, so ready to
leave him to do all the worshiping. She could understand him,
apparently, at his time of life, with his sober and in some ways sad
experiences, and sympathize with him most tenderly when she
chose, and yet, strangely enough, she could ignore him also and be
hard, cruel, indifferent. The way she could neglect him at times—go
her own way! God!
Not a bad seat, only now it was too dark to see anything outside!
These heavy forks!
But to return to that dreadful pagan youth of hers, almost half-
savage: take that boy who shot himself at the age of sixteen for love
of her, and all because she would not run away with him, not caring
for him at all, as she said, or she would have gone! What a sad case
that was, as she had told it, at least. The boy’s father had come and
denounced her to her parents in her own home, according to her,
and still she denied that it had been her fault. And those other two
youths, one of whom had embezzled $10,000 and spent it on her
and several other boys and girls! And that other one who had stolen
five hundred in small sums from his father’s till and safe and then
wasted it on her and her companions at country inns until he was
caught! Those country clubs! Those little rivers she described, with
their canoes—the automobiles of these youths—the dancing, eating,
drinking life under the moon in the warmth of spring and summer
under the trees! And he had never had anything like that, never!
When one of the boys, being caught, complained of her to his
parents as the cause of his evil ways she had denied it, or so she
said, and did still to this day, saying she really did not know he was
stealing the money and calling him coward or cry-baby. Idelle told
him of this several years ago as though it had some humorous
aspects, as possibly it had, to her—who knows? but with some
remorse, too, for she was not wholly indifferent to the plight of these
youths, although she contended that what she had given them of her
time and youth and beauty was ample compensation. Yes, she was
a bad woman, really, or had been—a bad girl, say what one would, a
child of original evil impulse. One could not deny that really. But what
fascination also, even yet, and then no doubt—terrible! He could
understand the actions of those youths, their recklessness. There
was something about sheer beauty, evil though it might be, which
overcame moral prejudices or scruples. It had done so in his case, or
why was he living with her? And so why not in theirs?
How annoying to have a train stop in a station while you were
eating!
Beauty, beauty, beauty! How could one gainsay the charm or
avoid the lure of it? Not he, for one. Trig, beautiful women, who
carried themselves with an air and swing and suggested by their
every movement passion, alertness, gayety of mind! The church
bells might ring and millions of religionists preach of a life hereafter
with a fixed table of rewards and punishments, but what did any one
know of the future, anyhow? Nothing! Exactly nothing, in spite of all
the churches. Life appeared and disappeared again; a green door
opened and out you went, via a train wreck, for instance, on a night
like this. All these farmers here tilling their fields and making their
little homes and towns—where would they be in forty or fifty years,
with all their moralities? No, here and now was life, here and now
beauty—here and now Idelle, or creatures like her and Jessica.
He would pay his bill and go into the smoker for a change. It would
be pleasant to sit there until his berth was made up.
Then, take that affair of the banker’s son, young Gratiot it was,
whom he knew well even now here in G——, only Gratiot did not
know that he knew—or did he? Perhaps he was still friendly with
Idelle, although she denied it. You could never really believe her. He
it was, according to her, who had captured her fancy with his fine airs
and money and car when she was only seventeen, and then robbed
her (or could you call it robbery in Idelle’s case, seeking, restless
creature that she was?) of her indifferent innocence. No robbery
there, surely, whatever she might say.
Those fascinating coke ovens blazing in the dark beside the track,
mile after mile!
Somehow her telling him these things at first, or rather shortly after
they were married and when she was going to make a clean breast
of everything and lead a better life, had thrown a wonderful glamour
over her past.
“Gay Stories”! What a name for a magazine! And that stout old
traveling man reading it!
What a strange thing it was to be a girl like that—with passions
and illusions like that! Perhaps, after all, life only came to those who
sought it with great strength and natural gifts. But how hard it was on
those who hadn’t anything of that kind! Nevertheless, people should
get over the follies of their youth—Idelle should, anyhow. She had
had enough, goodness knows. She had been one of the worst—
hectic, vastly excited about life, irresponsible—and she should have
sobered by now. Why not? Look at all he had to offer her! Was that
not enough to effect a change? While it made her interesting at
times, this left-over enthusiasm, still it was so ridiculous, and made
her non-desirable, too, either as wife or mother. Yet no doubt that
was what had made her so fascinating to him, too, at this late day
and to all those other men in B—— and elsewhere—that blazing
youthfulness. Strange as it might seem, he could condone Idelle’s
dreadful deeds even now, just as her mother could, if she would only
behave herself, if she would only love him and him alone—but would
she? She seemed so determined to bend everything to her service,
regardless,—to yield nothing to him.
No use! He couldn’t stand these traveling men in this smoking
room! He must have the porter make up his berth!
And then had come Coulstone, the one who was still hanging
about her now, the one with whom she had had that dreadful affair in
Pittsburgh, the affair that always depressed him to think about even
now. Of course, there was one thing to be said in extenuation of that,
if you could say anything at all—which you couldn’t really—and that
was that Idelle was no longer a good girl then, but experienced and
with all her blazing disposition aroused. She had captured the reins
of her life then and was doing as she pleased—only why couldn’t he
have met her then instead of Coulstone? He was alive then. And his
own life had always been so empty. When she had confessed so
much of all this to him afterward—not this Coulstone affair exactly,
but the other things—why hadn’t he left her then? He might have and
saved himself all this agony—or could he have then? He was twice
her age when he married her and knew better, only he thought he
could reform her—or did he? Was that the true reason? Could he
admit the true reason to himself?
“Yes, make it up right away, if you will!” Now he would have to wait
about and be bored!
But to come back to the story of Coulstone and all that hectic life in
Pittsburgh. Coulstone, it seems, had been one of four or five very
wealthy young managing vice-presidents of the Iverson-Centelever
Frog and Switch Company, of Pittsburgh. And Idelle, because her
father had suddenly died after her affair with young Gratiot, never
knowing a thing about it, and her mother, not knowing quite what to
do with her, had (because Idelle seemed to wish it) sent her to stay
with an aunt in Pittsburgh. But the aunt having to leave for a time
shortly after Idelle reached there, a girl friend had, at Idelle’s
instigation, apparently, suggested that she stay with her until the
aunt’s return, and Idelle had then persuaded her mother to agree to
that.
That tall, lanky girl having to sleep in that upper berth opposite!
European sleeping cars were so much better!
Her girl friend was evidently something like Idelle, or even worse.
At any rate, Idelle appeared to have been able to wind her around
her finger. For through her she had found some method of being
introduced to (or letting them introduce themselves) a few of these
smart new-rich men of the town, among them two of these same
vice-presidents, one of whom was Coulstone. According to Idelle, he
was a lavish and even reckless spender, wanting it to appear
generally that he could do anything and have anything that money
could buy, and liking to be seen in as many as a dozen public places
in one afternoon or evening, especially at week-ends, only there
weren’t so many in Pittsburgh at the time.
This must be Centerfield, the state capital of E——, they were now
passing without a pause! These expresses cut through so many
large cities!
From the first, so Idelle said, he had made violent love to her,
though he was already married (unhappily, of course), and she,
caring nothing for the conventions and not being of the kind that
obeys any laws (wilful, passionate, reckless), had received him
probably in exactly the spirit in which he approached her, if not more
so. That was the worst of her, her constant, wilful, pagan pursuit of
pleasure, regardless of anybody or anything, and it still held her in
spite of him. There was something revolting about the sheer
animality of it, that rushing together of two people, regardless. Still, if
it had been himself and Idelle now—
How fortunate that he had been able to obtain a section! At least
he would have air!
There had been a wild season, according to her own admissions
or boastings—he could never quite tell which—extending over six or
seven months, during which time Idelle had pretended to her mother,
so she said, to prefer to live with her girl friend rather than return
home. She had had, according to her, her machine, her servants,
clothes without end, and what-not—a dream-world of luxury and
freedom which he had provided and from which she never expected
to wake, and her mother totally ignorant of it all the while! There had
been everything she wished at her finger tips—hectic afternoons,
evenings and midnights; affairs at country clubs or hotel grills, where
the young bloods of the city and their girls congregated; wild rides in
automobiles; visits to the nearest smartest watering-places, and the
like. Or was she lying? He could scarcely think so, judging by her
career with him and others since.
Ah, what a comfort to fix oneself this way and rest, looking at the
shadowy moonlit landscape passing by!
Idelle had often admitted or boasted that she had been wildly
happy—that was the worst of it—that she had not quite realized what
she was doing, but that she had no remorse either, even now—that
she had lived! (And why should she have, perhaps? Weren’t all
people really selfish at bottom—or were they?) Only, owing to her
almost insatiable pagan nature, there were other complications right
then and there—think of that!—an older rival millionaire, if you
please, richer by far than Coulstone, and more influential locally ...
and younger ones, too, who sought her but really did not win her,
she having no time or plan for them. As it happened, the older one,
having been worsted in the contest but being partially tolerated by
her, had become frantically jealous and envious, although “he had no
right,” as she said, and had finally set about making trouble for the
real possessor, and succeeded to the extent of exposing him and
eventually driving him out of the great concern with which he was
connected and out of Pittsburgh, too, if you please, on moral
grounds (?), although he himself was trying to follow in Coulstone’s
footsteps! And all for the love or possession of a nineteen-year-old
girl, a petticoat, a female ne’er-do-well! How little the world in general
knew of such things—and it was a blessed thing, too, by George!
Where would things be if everybody went on like that?
The rhythmic clack of these wheels and trucks over these sleeper
joints—a poetic beat, of sorts!
But Idelle was so naïve about all this now, or pretended to be, so
careless of what he or any one else might think in case they ever
found out. She did not seem to guess how much he might suffer by
her telling him all this, or how much pain thinking about it afterward
might cause him. She was too selfish intellectually. She didn’t even
guess, apparently, what his mood might be toward all this, loving her
as he did. No—she really didn’t care for him, or any one else—
couldn’t, or she couldn’t have done anything like that. She would
have lied to him rather. She had been, and was—although now
semi-reformed—a heartless, careless wastrel, thinking of no one but
herself. She had not cared about the wives of either of those two
men who were pursuing her in B——, or what became of them, or
what became of any of the others who had pursued her since. All
she wanted was to be danced attendance on, to be happy, free,
never bored. The other fellow never counted with Idelle much. In this
case the wife of the younger lover, Coulstone, had been informed,
the conservatives of the city appealed to, as it were. Coulstone,
seeing the storm and being infatuated with his conquest, suggested
Paris or a few years on the Riviera, but, strangely enough, Idelle
would have none of it, or him, then. She wouldn’t agree to be tied
down for so long! She had suffered a reversal of conscience or mood
—even—or so she said,—went to a priest, went into retirement here
in G——, having fled her various evil pursuers.
How impressive the outlying slopes of these mountains they were
just entering!
And yet he could understand that, too, in some people, anyhow,—
the one decent thing in her life maybe, a timely revolt against a too
great and unbroken excess. But, alas, it had been complicated with
the fact that she wasn’t ready to leave her mother or to do anything
but stay in America. Besides things were becoming rather
complicated. The war on J—— C—— threatened to expose her.
Worse yet,—and so like her, life had won her back. Her beauty, her
disposition, youth and age pursuing her—one slight concession to
indulgence or pleasure after another and the new mood or bent
toward religiosity was entirely done away with. Her sensual sex
nature had conquered, of course.
That little cabin on that slope, showing a lone lamp in the dark!
And then—then—
Morning, by George! Ten o’clock! He had been asleep all this time!
He would have to hurry and dress now!
But where was he in regard to Idelle? Oh yes!... How she haunted
him all the time these days! Coulstone, angered at her refusal to
come with him again (she could not bring herself to do that, for all
her religiosity, she said, not caring for him so much any more), but
frightened by the presence of others, had eventually transferred all
his interests from Pittsburgh to G——, and at this very time, on the
ground of some form of virtue or duty—God only knows what!—five
years later, indeed—was here in G—— with his wife and attempting
to persuade her that she ought to give him a divorce in order to
permit him to marry Idelle and so legitimize her child! And he,
Garrison, already married to her! The insanity of mankind!
He must be hurrying through his breakfast; they would soon be
nearing G—— now ... and he must not forget to stop in at Kiralfy’s
when he reached G—— and buy some flowers for her!
But Idelle was not to be taken that way. She did not care for J——
C—— any more, or so she said. Besides nothing would cure her
varietism then or now but age, apparently. And who was going to
wait for age to overtake her? Not he, anyhow. Why, the very event
that threw her into his arms—couldn’t he have judged by that if he
had had any sense? Wasn’t that just such another affair as that of
Coulstone and old Candia, only in this case it concerned much
younger men—wasters in their way, too—one of whom, at least, was
plainly madly in love with her, while the other was just intensely
interested. Why was it that Idelle’s affairs always had to be a
complex of two or more contending parties?
The condition of these washrooms in the morning!
According to her own story, she had first fallen in love, or thought
she had, with the younger of the two, Gaither Browne, of the
Harwood Brownes here in G—— and then while he was still dancing
attendance on her (and all the while Coulstone was in the
background, not entirely pushed out of her life) young Gatchard
Keene had come along with his motor cars, his yacht, his stable of
horses, and she had begun to flirt with him also. Only, by then—and
she didn’t care particularly for him, either—
What a crowded breakfast car—all the people of last
night, and more from other cars attached since, probably!
—she had half promised young Browne that she would marry him,
or let him think she might; had even confessed a part of her past to
him (or so she said) and he had forgiven her, or said it didn’t matter.
But when Keene came along and she began to be interested in him
Browne did not like this new interest in the least, became furiously

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Emperors and Usurpers in the Later

Roman Empire: Civil War, Panegyric,

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OXFORD STUDIES IN BYZANTIUM

OXFORD STUDIES IN BYZANTIUM

Oxford Studies in Byzantium consists of scholarly monographs and editions

Emperors and Usurpers

‘Daddy, it’s quite boring for me for you to work.’

Virtue consisted in winning: it consisted in being bigger, stronger, hand-

¹ From It is What I Think by George Orwell. Published by Secker. Reprinted by permission of

List of Figures xiii

VI. Tyranny and Blood: Constantius, Constans, Magnentius,

I.1. The Roman Empire in AD 271. 11

* Unless otherwise stated, abbreviations for primary sources follow guidelines

xvi List of Abbreviations

List of Abbreviations xvii

Usurpation, Legitimacy, and the

Treason doth never prosper, what’s the reason?

Roman imperial government proved to be one of the most enduring political

WHY USURPATION?: THE PROBLEM

Roman imperial power can only properly be understood in the context of

4 Emperors and Usurpers in the Later Roman Empire

Usurpation, Legitimacy, and the Roman Empire 5

6 Emperors and Usurpers in the Later Roman Empire

Usurpation, Legitimacy, and the Roman Empire 7

8 Emperors and Usurpers in the Later Roman Empire

¹⁹ J. Bennett, Trajan: Optimus Princeps (2nd edn. London, 2005), 1–3.

Usurpation, Legitimacy, and the Roman Empire 9

²⁴ Hekster, Commodus, 77–83.

10 Emperors and Usurpers in the Later Roman Empire

Augusta Treverorum (Trier)

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 27/3/2018, SPi

The Palmyrene Empire

Fig. I.1. The Roman Empire in AD 271.

12 Emperors and Usurpers in the Later Roman Empire

‘ THIS LITANY OF MANIFEST USURPERS

Usurpation, Legitimacy, and the Roman Empire 13

14 Emperors and Usurpers in the Later Roman Empire

Usurpation, Legitimacy, and the Roman Empire 15

⁴⁸ On regionalization, see Kulikoski, ‘Regional Dynasties’, 135–48.

16 Emperors and Usurpers in the Later Roman Empire

Usurpation, Legitimacy, and the Roman Empire 17

18 Emperors and Usurpers in the Later Roman Empire

Usurpation, Legitimacy, and the Roman Empire 19

⁷¹ See Chapter VI, p. 163, and Chapter IX, pp. 289–90.

20 Emperors and Usurpers in the Later Roman Empire

Fig. I.2. Usurpations in the Roman Empire, 27 BC–AD 455.

Usurpation, Legitimacy, and the Roman Empire 21

‘ THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A TYRANT AND A KING

22 Emperors and Usurpers in the Later Roman Empire

Usurpation, Legitimacy, and the Roman Empire 23

24 Emperors and Usurpers in the Later Roman Empire

A S Garrison left his last business conference in K——, where the

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