The Year of the Four, Five, Six Roman Emperors

During the Roman Empire, outbreaks of civil war (and the assassinations which often preceded them) were generally intended to change the emperor, not the imperial system. Even though there was a brief moment after the emperor Caligula’s assassination in AD 41 when a change in the political system might have been triggered, the rudderless and leaderless soldiers quickly reverted to the reassuring default mode of imperial rule after conveniently finding Claudius hiding behind a curtain and making him emperor. 

After that ‘crossroads’ moment, the Roman Empire saw periodic spasms of sequential violence which sought to replace one emperor with another, but it seems that the idea was never to restore the republican mode of government. In a bizarrely escalating sequence across successive centuries, there was the ‘Year of the Four Emperors’ in AD 69 after Nero’s suicide in June AD 68 (Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian); then the ‘Year of the Five Emperors’ in AD 193 after Commodus was assassinated on the last day of AD 192 (Pertinax, Didius Julianus, Pescennius Niger, Clodius Albinus, Septimius Severus); and, finally, the ‘Year of the Six Emperors’ in AD 238, after a loose coalition of aristocrats revolted against the incumbent emperor Maximinus Thrax and installed the 80-year-old Gordian I in his place (Maximinus Thrax, Gordian I, Gordian II, Pupienus, Balbinus, Gordian III). There was no ‘Year of the Seven Emperors’, but there could easily have been.

The final incumbent of the ‘Year of the Six Emperors’, Gordian III, was only 11 (or perhaps 13) years old when he was declared princeps. As the author of the Historia Augusta succinctly and wittily observes while discussing the young Gordian III’s sunny personality, ‘nothing except for his age made him unqualified to rule’. The paradox of a flawed imperial system where a child is ‘in control’ is expressly clear here, bringing to the fore the central question of the suitability and interchangeability of the emperors who were being brought to prominence by Rome’s various civil wars. By the time of the ‘Year of the Six Emperors’, which resulted in a child ruler, we have to ask whether the personality of an imperial challenger, or even his basic ability to do the job, really mattered at all.

Yet even before that point, there are valid questions to be asked about the kind of men thrust into the role of emperor by civil wars. The gold coins from the ‘Year of the Five Emperors’ (AD 193) may show some tiny superficial differences between each ruler, but whatever the reality, the overriding impression is one of (bearded) sameness and homogeneity.

Tragedy tyrants

What distinguishes one potential emperor from another against a backdrop of civil war so that they win enough support to mount a challenge is an interesting question. Is it charisma? Talent? Money? Or other factors? And given that the ‘price of admission’ was often fatal, why did any rational challenger want the job of emperor, anyway? In considering this question, it is crucial to remember how chaotically and randomly challengers are generated from around the Empire at different moments, often emerging from vastly disparate geographical areas in response to news travelling slowly from other quarters. It may be that the most significant element in understanding the phenomenon is simply that one group (usually soldiers) is supporting one contender in close proximity to them, while another group (usually soldiers) has instead opted for an alternative contender, who is likewise within easy reach – but neither group necessarily acts because they truly think that they have found the ideal imperial challenger. In other words, what these civil wars are really about are the potential future benefits accruing to those who back the eventual victor, rather than having anything at all to do with an individual challenger’s calibre, competence or even desire for the job. In AD 69 Verginius Rufus, selected against his will as a would-be emperor by soldiers distraught at Otho’s suicide, was begged to take on the role. He had a narrow escape after making a mad dash through the back door of his house just as the impassioned men were breaking in at the front.

Verginius Rufus clearly had a strong survival instinct. Others did not. Elsewhere, the biographer Plutarch, often a sharply perceptive observer of historical events, in his account of the short-lived emperor Galba introduces the expressive concept of the ‘tragedy-tyrant’ to designate the ephemeral emperors whose lives were cut short by such dramatic reversals of fortune. He uses the term in order to try to capture the disarmingly swift change of rulers during the ‘Year of the Four Emperors’, but the image of the ‘tragedy-tyrant’ could equally well apply to the short-lived emperors of AD 193 or AD 238. In his biography of Galba, Plutarch presents the chilling image of frenzied soldiers mercurially leading in one emperor after leading out another, ‘as if they were passing across a stage’. One reason why this picture is so expressive is that it vividly conveys the idea of successful challengers temporarily playing a part, briefly adopting an imperial mask on their own faces for their deadly ‘walk-on part’ across history’s stage. Who these men really are matters less than the (high-risk) role assigned to them by others. 

If civil wars under the Roman Empire are often manifestations of desperate self-interest from collective groups (whether military or political) in response to the chaotic circumstances which were unfolding around them, then the personality of the challengers is hardly very important. One man is much the same as another (and another, and another), as opportunistic soldiers spontaneously back a new challenger simply because they know him. Yet narratives of civil wars created by Roman writers are nonetheless still marked by a strong biographical drive and a keen interest in personality, despite writers’ undoubted acknowledgement of the collective power of the armies. Whether in the form of emotive narratives of Otho’s altruistic suicide in AD 69, killing himself so as not to expose his soldiers to further risk after his defeat by Vitellius in battle, or in descriptions of Vitellius slinking off to hide in a dog-kennel when the soldiers hunt him down shortly before his murder in Rome (or ‘some shameful hiding place’, as the historian Tacitus puts it evasively and periphrastically, artfully signalling the dignity of historical writing as a genre while relaying some degrading material), vivid biographical details abound. Ancient writers and their audiences were intrigued by the personalities of these short-lived emperors, unexpectedly thrust into a prominent role by surges of civil war. Why did Romans enjoy reading accounts of brutal civil wars? Were they ever able to learn productive lessons from their violent past? Or were they doomed to see history repeating itself? 

‘I Forgot to Remember to Forget’

Recurrent civil war was an intensely disturbing and unsettling phenomenon, with disastrous potential to destabilise the Empire and tarnish Roman identity in the long term. No wonder, then, that the Augustan orator and historian Titus Labienus once declared that the best defence against civil war after the event was to forget all about it (Seneca the Elder, Controversiae). This is not an entirely innocent formulation from a man whose own historical writings were burned by decree of the senate. Labienus himself was an outspoken historian, who supported Pompey in an earlier civil war against Caesar and who had thus backed the losing side. 

Labienus’ own personal motives for forgetting about civil war were compelling, but what about the many historians and writers in other genres who turned to it for their subject matter? Why did they choose to immortalise the self-destruction of civil war for posterity? After all, Roman historical narratives were traditionally supposed to be uplifting pieces of writing, engendering a sense of national pride in the face of dogged perseverance against foreign enemies, and not serving as a repository for preserving for posterity embarrassing and degrading sequences of self-inflicted internal trauma. What good could come from raking up the troubles of the past in this way?

One reason why the subject of civil war appealed to ancient writers is their interest in episodes which could be underpinned by a strong moralising foundation in narrating them. Even in the context of grimly self-destructive (civil) warfare, there was no scene so dire that it could not supply some lesson for readers. It was not just the genre of Roman historical writing, strongly marked out by its moralising drive, which embraced this narrative mode. The Roman rhetorician and author Aelian (c.AD 175-235), for example, writing in Greek in his work On the Nature of Animals, assembles some stories about conspicuously loyal creatures. In one of these episodes, in a perhaps less than obvious rhetorical gambit, he looks back at the infamous civil wars which raged across the Roman Empire in AD 69, telling an emotive story about the short-lived emperor Galba – and his dog: 

In one of the civil wars at Rome, when Galba the Roman was murdered, none of his enemies was able to cut off his head, despite countless numbers competing for this trophy, until they had killed the dog at his side. This dog had been reared by him and maintained the most loyal affection to him, fighting on his behalf as he lay prostrate, as though it were a fellow soldier, sharer of the same tent, and friend to the very last. 

Aelian’s pithy story pointedly sets individual canine loyalty against collective human barbarity, simultaneously humanising Galba’s devoted dog and casting his myriad would-be murderers as utter monsters. Bestial humans contrast with a humanised beast, as this sharply moralising vignette condemns the human propensity for killing one another in spasms of dehumanising violence. 

Every detail of Aelian’s little story triggers a sense of indignation, as we are confronted not just with killing, but with the brutal decapitation of an incumbent emperor in public. Spectatorship always elevates shame to higher levels. Even the disturbing concept that Galba’s severed head was a ‘trophy’ packs much indignation into a single Greek word which punches above its weight. The presence of Galba’s lone dog, anthropomorphised as his loyal ‘fellow soldier’, also brings home the emperor’s isolation chillingly. His own soldiers, who should have been defending him, having sworn an oath to do so, are nowhere to be seen in these grim final moments. Galba’s dog emotively stands in for all the Roman troops who failed to protect him, in a canine aristeia, a heroic battle scene from epic poetry, which aligns him with Homeric heroes of the past and prompts Aelian’s readers to reflect upon the bestial tendencies of humans to kill one another in civil war.

Violent delights

One of the other distinctive attractions for ancient authors writing about civil war was the opportunity to display their narrative skills in describing military conflict in novel and unusual settings. In traditional accounts of Roman history, ancient historical writers often had to relay massive pitched battles and military clashes of various sorts. Formal military encounters between opposing armies drawn up to face one another on an open plain were part and parcel of the genre. Yet by the time of the Roman Empire, these historians were writing for some very experienced and sophisticated readers who had at their finger-tips a vast array of earlier examples and had potentially seen it all before. The impulse of ancient readers to compare and contrast was always strong, particularly when reading historical narratives. Delivering the stamp of originality in that context was challenging; writers had to find creative ways to inject novelty and interest into their historiographical set-pieces.

It may be disturbing, but the warped landscape of civil war gave writers the perfect opportunity to breathe new life into potentially familiar material, as fighting took place in strange places and the normal patterns of conflict evolved into strange new forms. For example, in narrating the final clash between Flavians and Vitellians in Rome in the ‘Year of the Four Emperors’, AD 69, Tacitus brings the urban landscape to life, as the civilian and military worlds collide, but not necessarily in ways which one might have expected:

The scene throughout the city was cruel and distorted. On the one side, fighting and wounds, on the other baths and restaurants: here gory piles of corpses, right next to whores and people like them. All the lusts associated with luxurious leisure, all the crimes associated with the most bitter capture of a town: you would have thought that the city was in a frenzy of madness and partying all at once. Heavily armed troops had clashed in the city before this, twice when Sulla was victorious, once when Cinna won. There was no less cruelty then. What was now so inhuman was people’s indifference and the fact that not even for a moment did they interrupt their pleasures.

In a vivid piece of scene-painting, Tacitus here disarmingly drops his readers right into the heart of the city gripped by a bizarre and dizzying ecstasy of civil war self-destruction. The juxtaposition of conviviality and brutality is sickening, as apparent separation between wartime and peacetime spheres is marked by increasingly blurred boundaries. The disorientating ubiquity of death and destruction in the city is the ultimate memento mori for these partying urbanites, adding a frisson of excitement and a strong reminder that they should enjoy themselves, as death is always around the next corner.

What Tacitus also does here is trigger the impulse in his readers to compare and contrast with previous history (and previous historical writers) by bringing in reference points from the civil wars of the Republic in the form of Sulla and Cinna. He activates the familiar motif of decline and deterioration even from the low standards of past civil wars. This is a race to the bottom: even fighting in the city then was not as degraded as it now became in AD 69. Tacitus also showcases his own talents as a writer and prompts rivalry with previous historians. One of the most extreme instances of in-depth and harrowing civil-war writing from the ancient world is what survives of his Histories (c.AD 109). Originally consisting of 12 books, but now reduced to four-and-a-half as a result of the accidents of manuscript survival, Tacitus’ Histories relays in graphic detail the events of the ‘Year of the Four Emperors’ after Nero’s suicide in June AD 68. This chilling scene of fighting in the city is one of many which contribute to this work being impossible to put down, despite its grim subject matter.

Evergreen war

As David Armitage argues in his book Civil War: A History of Ideas (2017), the most likely legacy of civil war is (unfortunately) renewed civil war. In considering the ‘Year of the Four Emperors’, the ‘Year of the Five Emperors’ and the ‘Year of the Six Emperors’, we can legitimately ask how far these individual years of civil wars are each an isolated phenomenon, generated by the unique historical circumstances operating in AD 69, AD 193 and AD 238, and how far they are interlinked and recurrent manifestations of the same phenomenon – flare-ups of the same self-destructive syndrome hardwired into the imperial structure (despite the long periods of dormancy which separate them).

In the context of discussing why conspicuous gastronomic consumption flourished in the Roman Empire between the Battle of Actium (31 BC) and Galba becoming emperor (AD 68), and then declined under Vespasian and his sons, Tacitus wonders whether ‘in all things there is a kind of cycle – moral as well as seasonal revolutions’. The cyclical phenomenon of civil war in the ancient world can perhaps be seen as a parallel and intertwined case.

However we choose to view these internal conflicts, the recurrence of civil war in the ancient world means that Greek and Roman authors must have been confident that future readers would almost inevitably be confronted by waves of similar self-destruction, and that those trying to make sense of what was happening would turn to events of the past to try to make sense of their contemporary world. If that meant an ambitious writer securing their own slice of posthumous personal fame from these empire-wide convulsions, then that was an incentive to creativity. Writing about civil war unfortunately had the dubious advantage of bringing with it a timeless relevance.

Rhiannon Ash is Professor of Roman Historiography at Merton College, University of Oxford.