Pertinax

Pertinax was emperor for eighty-seven days in 193 and was killed by the guard that had made him. Born in 126 in Liguria, the son of a freed slave who dealt in timber, he taught grammar for a living before entering the army late through patronage. He rose entirely on competence — commands on the Rhine, the Danube and in Britain, the governorships of Moesia, Dacia, Syria and Britain, the prefecture of Rome, and two consulships. Almost no emperor before him had come from so far outside the governing class. Commodus was strangled in his bath on the last day of 192 by conspirators who had approached Pertinax beforehand. He was proclaimed the next morning, having, on his own account, tried to decline. The treasury held about a million sesterces. Commodus had spent everything, and Pertinax began by auctioning his predecessor's property — the concubines, the exotic animals, the chariots — and by restoring the coinage, cancelling trade taxes, and offering vacant land tax-free to anyone who would farm it. He also tried to restore discipline in the Praetorian Guard, which had spent a decade being bribed into acquiescence. He had promised each guardsman 12,000 sesterces and could pay only half. On 28 March a body of some three hundred soldiers marched on the palace. He went out to reason with them, and was cut down. The Guard then auctioned the empire itself, selling it to Didius Julianus for a higher bid, which brought civil war and Septimius Severus. Severus took his name and deified him, which cost nothing.

• Lived: 126 CE – 193 CE
• Nationality: Roman
• Roles: ruler