Year of Five Emperors
Rome had five emperors in the year 193 and learned that the throne could be bought. Commodus was strangled on the last day of 192, and the praetorian prefect who had arranged it installed Pertinax, an elderly and respected senator who had risen from a freedman's family through the army. Pertinax tried to restore discipline and finances, which meant paying the guard less than they had been promised, and was killed in the palace after eighty-seven days. What followed is the episode that shocked contemporaries. The praetorians announced that the empire would go to whoever offered the most, and conducted an auction from the walls of their camp. Didius Julianus, a wealthy senator, outbid Pertinax's father-in-law and was proclaimed, and was hated in the streets from the first day. The provincial armies then made their own nominations: Pescennius Niger in Syria, Clodius Albinus in Britain, and Septimius Severus in Pannonia, who was closest to Italy and moved fastest. Severus marched on Rome, the senate condemned Julianus, and he was killed in the palace after sixty-six days asking what he had done wrong. Severus disbanded the praetorian guard entirely, replacing it with men from his own legions, then destroyed Niger in the east and Albinus in Gaul over the following four years. His advice to his sons, as reported, was to enrich the soldiers and despise everyone else. The lesson of 193 was drawn repeatedly over the following century, in which some twenty-six emperors were proclaimed and almost all died violently.
- Year: 193 CE
- Category: Political
