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[Assistant] The collapse of the Parthian Empire and the rise of the Sassanids.


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[Assistant] For 400 years, the Parthian Empire had successfully ruled the remains of the old Persian Empire. And, when it was united, it was more than a match for their neighbor to the west.


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[Assistant] But their devolved governmental structure and highly contested dynastic struggles.


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[Assistant] Meant that more often than not, the Parthian Empire was not united.


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[Assistant] In the early 200s AD, a royal family down in the southwest of the empire.


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[Assistant] That is, they were among the kings who the Parthian king of kings ruled. Began to get ambitious about their fortunes.


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[Assistant] They muscled out other aristocratic families and pretty soon were the dominant power in the region.


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[Assistant] With the Parthian royal family engaged in yet another dynastic struggle back in the eastern half of the empire,


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[Assistant] The eldest son of this family, a man named Sharpor, established an almost completely autonomous kingdom near the Red Sea.


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[Assistant] After a dynastic struggle of their own brought his brother Artashire to power.


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[Assistant] The new king forced neighboring provinces to swear fealty to him and his family.


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[Assistant] Now that he was operating across borders, the Parthian king finally took notice of what was going on, and sent one of the neighboring governors to crush Artashire. But Artashire won the battle handily.


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[Assistant] So the Parthian king decided he needed to go put this upstart in his place and personally led an army to do just that.


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[Assistant] But in the ensuing battle, Artashir not only crushed the Parthian army, but killed the king in the process.


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[Assistant] In 224, Artashire entered Tessifon and had himself crowned King of Kings.


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[Assistant] With Artashire's victory, the Parthian Empire, as it had been known, came crashing down.


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[Assistant] Replaced by what we call today, the Sassanid Empire.


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[Assistant] The name Sassonid likely derives from the name of Artashire's grandfather, who was the one who initiated the ambitions of the family.


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[Assistant] For the next 400 years, the Sassanids would rule an empire that at its height would extend from Egypt to India and from Saudi Arabia to Russia.


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[Assistant] We will have much more to say about the Sassanids as we move forward. So for now, I'll stick with the particular machinations of its first king, Artashire.


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[Assistant] Not unlike Vologassis, who kicked off a war with Rome in the 160s AD, because he took his string of domestic victories as proof that he was indestructible.


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[Assistant] Artishere was similarly convinced of his own irresistibility.


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[Assistant] Following his crowning as the new King of Kings, he marched around the old dominions of the Parthians and established his own, far more centralized authority.


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[Assistant] By 2.30, he felt secure enough at home to begin looking beyond the frontier.


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[Assistant] No one would ever accuse Artashirov thinking small, and when he surveyed his new country, he believed that what was really his birthright was all the territory that had once encompassed old Persia. This meant Syria and Egypt.


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[Assistant] But I'll come back to Artashire and his coming invasion of Rome next week. And for now, we'll get back to Alexander as he tried to hold his own empire together.


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[Assistant] In 225, probably figuring that it was never too soon to begin producing legitimate heirs, Julia Mamia arranged for her now 16 year old son to marry the daughter of a prominent senator.


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[Assistant] But soon after the wedding, Julia discovered something horrible. Alexander actually liked his wife, and wanted to spend time with her.


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[Assistant] This of course cut into Julia's own time with the Emperor and was no doubt all kinds of threatening to her position as the preeminent woman in Alexander's life.


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[Assistant] First, Alexander's father-in-law was accused of trying to turn the Praetorians against the young emperor. And for this crime, he was executed.


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[Assistant] Whether or not he actually did what they say he did is still an open question. And then second, in the aftermath of the scandal, Alexander's wife was exiled to Libya


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[Assistant] The emperor was heartbroken, but he refused to go against his mother's wishes.


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[Assistant] This inability to stand up to his mother was the downside of Alexander's naturally mild temperament.


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[Assistant] This temperament was mostly great for the empire. He never slaughtered people at the drop of a hat, or plundered states whenever the fancy struck, or started wars for no reason.


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[Assistant] But he also could never bring himself to challenge his mother, even when she began to become a liability.


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[Assistant] For these reasons, the reign of Alexander, as good as it was in comparison to his predecessors, was not all roses.


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[Assistant] Though the dark storm clouds still seem to be biding their time, they were also constantly swirling and shifting and generally making everyone nervous.


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[Assistant] Alexander's move to try to correct the exorbitant pay of the soldiers was a source of constant concern as uprisings and mutinies broke out to the tune of at least a couple of rebellions a year.


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[Assistant] These incidents were kept local and isolated and put down one by one as soon as they cropped up.


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[Assistant] Making matters worse was the fact that the Praetorians were not exempt from mutiny, as they had already so amply demonstrated when they rioted against Ulpian.


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[Assistant] So the Imperial family had to remain on guard, not just against insurrection in the provinces, but also insurrection in their own backyard.


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[Assistant] This fear took down the second great member of Alexander's governing council in 229.


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[Assistant] When Cassius Dio was exiled from Rome following threats by the Praetorians, but they had grown tired of the sarcastic historian.


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[Assistant] And after enrolling as a senator during the reign of Commodus, he served in a variety of administrative posts during the reign of Septimius Severus.


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[Assistant] He became so trusted by the emperor that his political career was capped by Stimpses, the governor of both Africa and Pannonia, two of the most important provinces in the empire.


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[Assistant] After Severus's death, Dio seems mostly to have retired from public life, and spent the bulk of his time completing an 80-volume history of Rome.


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[Assistant] Written in Greek, the history begins with the arrival of Aeneas in Italy and went right up to the present day. That is, the reign of Alexander.


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[Assistant] The only fragments remain of the monumental work today. The history by Cassius Dio is one of the most important resources we have in piecing together the story of the Roman Empire.


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[Assistant] When Alexander and with him some semblance of sanity came to power, Dio returned to public life to serve on Alexander's council, and it is said that he was held in particular esteem by the young emperor.


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[Assistant] That esteem is what made it so difficult for Alexander to react to the latest threats emanating from the Praetorian camp. The guard did not like Dio, and they wanted him gone.


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[Assistant] But at first, Alexander tried to buck them and back his favorite historian.


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[Assistant] To demonstrate his loyalty, he and Dio shared a console ship in 229, but that only inflamed the guard even further. Facing a bloody coup or abandoning his friend, Alexander was forced to choose the latter.


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[Assistant] Following their shared console ship, Cache's deal was sent back home to Basidia, where he died soon after.


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[Assistant] But Alexander would not have long to mourn for his dead advisor.


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[Assistant] The new king of Parthia. Wait, is it even still Parthia anymore?


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[Assistant] had suddenly decided that he was going to invade Roman territory.


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[Assistant] He had gathered a massive army on the banks of the Tigris and was making periodic raids into the Empire. And this wasn't small-time banditry either.


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[Assistant] By the looks of things, the new monarch of the east was planning something huge.


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[Assistant] Next week, Alexander will get his first taste of war.


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[Assistant] After the young emperor fails to settle things peacefully, he will need to muster an army to take on the most serious foreign threat to the empire since the days of the Marco Manic Coalition.


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[Assistant] But before we go this week, I want to let you all in on something that the history of Rome has been working on for the last few months that is so close to being finalized that I'm going to go ahead and reveal its existence now, a little bit in advance of a formal announcement that I'll be making very soon. No, it's not a book. Not yet. But how about this?


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[Assistant] An official history of Rome, Roman history tour.


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[Assistant] All I'm going to say about it right now is that if you've ever thought about wanting to plan a Roman history themed vacation and we're thinking maybe May 2011 sounded like a good time to go, well, then you should hold off for a minute on booking tickets until you have a chance to check out the details of the official history of Rome, Roman history tour.


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[Assistant] Those details will be coming shortly and I can't tell you how excited I am about it because with a little luck, I'll see you in Rome.


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[Assistant] The mildness of Marcus, which the rigid discipline of the Stoics had been unable to eradicate, formed at the same time the most amiable and the only defective part of his character.


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[Assistant] His excellent understanding was often deceived by the unsuspecting goodness in his heart.


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[Assistant] So begins chapter four of Edward Gibbon's decline and fall of the Roman Empire, also known as the chapter where it starts to get really good and isn't quite so super boring anymore.


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[Assistant] Marcus, suffering from the defect of excessive kind-heartedness, had sealed his legacy as the last good princeps by entrusting the empire to his son, whose legacy everyone agrees is that he was one of the worst emperors of all time.


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[Assistant] But Gibbon himself is not quite as harsh on communists as you might think.


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[Assistant] In Gibbon's estimation, Commodus' failure was not that he was cruel or bloodthirsty or evil, but simply that he was weak.


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[Assistant] Ascending to the throne at the age of 19 in March of 180 AD, Commodus naturally fell under the sway of older, savvier men who manipulated the young prince into satisfying their own ambitions.


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[Assistant] Once he had spent a few years as a mere puppet, the dark habits of his advisors simply ingrained themselves onto his character, and from then on, the weakness of his soul became indistinguishable from the cruelty that manifested as a result.


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[Assistant] In the end, though, he seemed to have learned his lessons a little too well, and he turned out to be far savvier and far crueler than any of his advisors, and he was only caught out and killed after a good three or four complete and bloody turnovers of personnel within his inner circle. That's Gibbon's assessment, anyway. Others are not quite so quick to let Commodus off the hook.


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[Assistant] They see in him from the get-go a self-absorbed hedonist who was intellectually vacant, obsessed with sport, and likely a sociopath to boot.


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[Assistant] He was Lucius Verus without any Marcus Aurelius to keep him in check.


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[Assistant] He was Nero and Caligula combined, topping both in scandal, debauchery, and murderous frivolity.


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[Assistant] Still others though, loved Commodus, and, at least for the majority of his reign, thought he was the absolute bee's knees.


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[Assistant] Now what group of compulsive contrarians would take such a contradictory line on a man so universally reviled by history? Why, the people of Rome, of course.


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[Assistant] The story of the reign of Commodus, and like the story of the reign of Domitian, was chronicled by the Roman aristocracy, and they, to a man, loathed him and everything he ever did.


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[Assistant] The general population never got a say in the way Roman history was written. So all the bits about how Commodus was, for a long time at least, a beloved figure, comes as something of a surprise to modern ears.


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[Assistant] But unlike Demission, who comes by his bad rap somewhat, but not totally unfairly, Commodus, I think, earned his in spades.


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[Assistant] There was, for example, no underlying soundness of policy to go with the cruelty. No greater vision for the empire, beyond when the next set of games was going to be.


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[Assistant] And unlike Demission's Reign of Terror, which, as I mentioned, was comparable to the political murders of dear old Uncle Claudius,


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[Assistant] Communists went back to the well of blood time and time again in a purge and prescription cycle that came around every three to five years as men fell from favor and others rose to take their place.


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[Assistant] But if there was one thing that Commodus did really well, at least until the very end, it was keeping the people in the street eating out of his often extended hand.


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[Assistant] The people in the street didn't really care what Senator Commodus was in the process of humiliating, or what governor he was in the process of assassinating. What they cared about, honestly, was games.


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[Assistant] And boy, did comedists ever give them what they wanted.


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[Assistant] Polar opposite of Marcus and his few begrudging spectacles, Commodus embraced the games like no emperor before or since, and the people ate it up.


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[Assistant] By the end though, he had driven the empire deep, deep into debt and had gone so far off his rocker that even his previously adoring masses turned on him.


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[Assistant] But for the better part of a decade, we should always remember that his enemies were in the Senate, and just about nowhere else.


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[Assistant] Commodus made it plain from the very beginning that his reign was not going to be like that of his father's.


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[Assistant] Shipping the corpse of Marcus to Rome for burial and deification and etc, etc. Commodus stayed and camped along in the Danube to finish what his father had started.


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[Assistant] And by that I mean just that. Finish what his father had started.


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[Assistant] Despite the pleas of Claudius Pompeianus and the other leaders who had poured their blood and sweat into the German campaigns.


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[Assistant] Commonus announced his intention to wrap things up and head home.


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[Assistant] But the work is undone, as father's old phalanx of lieutenants cried.


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[Assistant] It will only take another year, and then we can all bask in the glory of having defeated the barbarians and added new territory to the empire, just as your father always wanted.


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[Assistant] It was practically his dying wish that you should lead us to victory. But Commodus was having none of it.


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[Assistant] He would come to final terms with Marco Manai and Quadi and then head back to Rome as soon as possible.


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[Assistant] There are two interpretations of why Commodus was so quick to withdraw from the Danube.


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[Assistant] Commodus saw himself playing Hadrian to his father's Trajan.


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[Assistant] That he saw the new German provinces would, rather than add wealth to the empire, prove to be militarily indefensible and become a dangerous drain on the treasury.


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[Assistant] Whatever romantic notions of victory Marcus had forged in the heat of battle, someone, namely Commodus, had to bring some objective, clear thinking to the situation. And the fact of the matter was, the whole campaign had probably been an unforgivable waste of men and money.


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[Assistant] To see it through to the end would not secure his father's legacy. It would damn it as an example of criminal overreach.


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[Assistant] But the other interpretation, and these two rationales are by no means mutually exclusive,


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[Assistant] Is that Commodus had had it up to here with freezing to death in a plague infested legionary camp.


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[Assistant] Not totally insensible to appearances, Commodus did decide to lead a force across the river one last time, where, after picking a suitably overmatched collection of Germans, he beat said overmatched collection of Germans soundly.


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[Assistant] This allowed the new Emperor the necessary optical cover he needed to declare victory and leave.


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[Assistant] He came to terms with the grateful and utterly exhausted Quadi and Marco Manai and in the autumn of 180 AD began the trip back to Rome.


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[Assistant] What we should make of this decision to leave is still open to debate.


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[Assistant] But it is worth mentioning that when the Romans called off the fight this time, the Germans took peace for an answer, and it proved to be more than 70 years before there was once again serious trouble north of the Danube.


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[Assistant] Commodus took the relative peace as proof of the wisdom of his actions.


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[Assistant] But it is also worth pointing out that the various German tribes had just had the snot kicked out of them for the better part of twelve years.


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[Assistant] Their leaders were all dead, and the ranks of their armies had been reduced by plague and war, even worse than the legions had been.


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[Assistant] If Commodus had pursued the same policy a decade earlier, the whole northern empire might have been overrun.


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[Assistant] But he didn't pursue the policy then, he was pursuing it now. And much as it irked the hawks in the senate, and among his own circle of imperial advisors, there was no great fallout to come from abandoning the war.


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[Assistant] As you'll recall from last week's episode, Marcus had been very careful about making sure that there would be no pretenders to the throne when Commodus succeeded him. And in this, he was entirely successful.


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[Assistant] None of his various brothers-in-law had any interest in challenging him, and no one else had the guts or support to pull a fast one on the empire, especially after the fall of Avidius Cassius. But that did not mean that there was not still work to be done.


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[Assistant] In securing their own positions, Marcus and Antoninus Pius had worked assiduously to curry favor within the senatorial class.


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[Assistant] But Commodus, as in all things where his father did one thing, he did the exact opposite.


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[Assistant] Commodus figured his rule would be unchallenged if he won the support of two groups, the soldiers in the field and the masses in the street.


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[Assistant] He had already earned the love of the common soldiers in the army by canceling the war in Germany. Soldiers, in general, love it when you tell them they don't have to slog around dank forests and during guerrilla attacks anymore.


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[Assistant] So upon his return to Rome, Commodus set about earning the love of the people.


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[Assistant] This meant, first, issuing a generous donative to every male citizen in the city. And second, it meant throwing spectacular games to celebrate his ascension.


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[Assistant] Fat with cash and prizes, the people, needless to say, were in Commodus' pocket from day one.


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[Assistant] The Senate, meanwhile, looked on all of this with a mixture of hope and disdain.


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[Assistant] They knew Commodus' reputation and knew that he was still a teenager, but hoped that maybe one day, once he's done proving to everyone what a super wonderful guy he is, that he would get down to the serious business and work with the Senate to govern the Empire responsibly.


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[Assistant] But their hope quickly faded, engulfed by the disdain.


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[Assistant] Because it wasn't just that Commodus planned to ignore the Senate. No, he was about to embark on a policy of openly antagonizing them.


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[Assistant] There doesn't seem to be any real rationale for Commodus' attitude towards the Senate. And his reasoning may not have been any deeper than that he had been born a high prince and was now the undisputed ruler of the Roman Empire.


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[Assistant] He was not as Marcus and Antoninus had been, a member in good standing of the aristocratic mutual admiration society, and probably figured that as long as he had the people and the armies on his side, that he could pretty much do whatever he wanted with the old fuddy-duddies in the Senate. And in a way, he was right.


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[Assistant] People asked during the 100th episode thread when the old Roman Senate stopped convening. And the answer is that we don't exactly know. But in the West, it looked like it persisted at least into the 600s AD.


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[Assistant] However, for all practical purposes, they could have closed up shop right now.


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[Assistant] Despite a few brief flirtations with relevance during the chaos of the mid-third century, the reign of Commodus marked the end of the line for the aristocratic assembly.


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[Assistant] The Severans had no time for the Senate. The crisis period was a running battle between rival generals, and then when Diocletian reformed the governmental structure of the Empire to better reflect reality, the Senate was left out of the bargain completely.


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[Assistant] In this respect, communists did have a major hand in helping push the old Roman order off a cliff.


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[Assistant] Remember how worried Hadrian had been about having the blood of four senators on his hand?


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[Assistant] Or how proud Antoninus and Marcus had been that they had not executed any members of the Senate during their reign. That was all over.


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[Assistant] When 193 rolled around, the Senate was not just irrelevant. It had been transformed by execution, prescription, murder and exile into an entirely different assembly than the one Commodus had inherited in 180.


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[Assistant] The Senate Septimius Severus inherited was not just ignorable, it was, after being packed with low-life supporters of Commodus, probably worth ignoring.


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[Assistant] At the outset though, no one, probably not even Commodus himself, knew that that was the direction the young emperor was headed.


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[Assistant] For right now, anyway, communists didn't seem to have much interest in anything as boring or time consuming as an epic purge of the Senate.


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[Assistant] He instead retired to the palace to enjoy the benefits of being emperor and turned over actual administration of the empire to his imperial chamberlain and sometimes male lover, a freedman named Satyrus.


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[Assistant] The Senate was obviously scandalized that the Emperor was handing power over to some freedman lover, male lover no less, and Soteris was universally despised in the upper classes.


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[Assistant] This hatred was only heightened when Soteris realized that the treasury could not support the promises Commodus had made to the people, and he hit upon the old idea of property confiscation to help pay for it all.


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[Assistant] In fits and starts at first, but then more routinely, senators would be accused of treason on trumped up charges and wake up to find that their estates had been seized by the emperor.


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[Assistant] It was right around this time that all hope dissolved and the disdain fully took over and also the fear.


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[Assistant] But it wouldn't be the Senate who took the first shot at Commodus. Nor would that first shot be taken to strike a blow for liberty in the face of despotic tyranny.


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[Assistant] Commodus' sister Lucilla, by virtue of her long-dead marriage to Lucius Verus, still retained the title of Augusta, and since the death of Faustina in 175, had enjoyed the perks that came with being the preeminent woman of the Empire.


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[Assistant] But now that her younger brother wore the purple, his pretty little thing of a wife, Crispina, suddenly supplanted Lucilla.


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[Assistant] Petty as it sounds, the most commonly relayed version of the story is that the final break came when Lucilla was forced to give up the prize box at the theater in favor of Crispina.


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[Assistant] From that moment on, it seems that Lucilla opened up a conspiracy to kill her little brother.


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[Assistant] She took into confidence her lover Marcus Quadratus and a few other particularly dissatisfied senators, though, importantly, not her husband Claudius Pompeianus, who Lucilla seems to have had no like or love for whatsoever. And a plot was hatched.


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[Assistant] A young senator and nephew of Claudius Pompeianus named Pompeius Quintanus


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[Assistant] ...was enlisted to actually lay the killing stroke. And one night, as comedists returned home from the theater, Quintanas was hiding in the shadowy porticos of the Coliseum.


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[Assistant] He leapt out of his hiding place as the Imperial party passed, catching the Emperor and his bodyguards by surprise.


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[Assistant] But rather than just killing the Emperor, Quintana's added a little dramatic flourish, crying, see, this is what the Senate sends you.


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[Assistant] This unnecessary hesitation allowed the startled Praetorian's time to recover. Tackle Quintanus and wrestle him to the ground.


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[Assistant] Caught and tortured, the young assassin revealed the full details of the plot, and that the prime mover of the conspiracy had been none other than Lucilla.


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[Assistant] Quadratus and Quintanus were immediately executed, and Lucilla was exiled to the island of Capri.


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[Assistant] Once she had been out of sight and mind for a while, Commodus sent along the order to have her killed.


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[Assistant] But the attempt on Commodus' life had only been part of the plan.


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[Assistant] The other half of the plot actually succeeded, and with the help of the two Praetorian prefects, Satyrus turned up dead a few days later.


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[Assistant] Still reeling from his own brush with death, when Commodus learned that his favorite had been murdered, the Emperor went into a frenzy.


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[Assistant] Just as the reign of Commodus was a turning point in the history of Rome, the assassination attempt of 182 was the turning point within the turning point.


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[Assistant] With the unnecessary and only partially true words, this is what the Senate sends you, ringing in his ears. Commodus' attitude towards the Senate would take a homicidal turn for the worse.


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[Assistant] In the immediate aftermath of the botch plot, Claudius Pompeianus wisely retired from public life.


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[Assistant] Though he was not under suspicion, his wife and nephew had been prime movers in the attempt on the Emperor's life.


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[Assistant] It was time for his long and distinguished career to come to an end.


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[Assistant] Typically in this situation, politicians cite the desire to spend more time with their families as the reason they are retiring.


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[Assistant] But obviously, that would not have been the most prudent excuse given the circumstances.


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[Assistant] The rest of the fallout came when one of the Praetorian prefects, a ruthlessly ambitious equite named Togiteus Parenus, double crossed his Praetorian colleague and everyone else he knew who was involved in the plot.


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[Assistant] Keeping his own role hidden, the information Parenis provided led to the executions of his Praetorian colleague, two of the consuls for the year, the Secretary of Correspondence, and the Governor of Upper Germany, Salvius Julianus.


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[Assistant] Surviving with his head intact, but nonetheless removed from his post as the long-serving governor of Lower Germany was Julianis' cousin Didius Julianis, who, those of you who are reading ahead, know that we'll have cause to deal with a little bit down the road.


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[Assistant] Also caught up in the purge were the famous Quintilius brothers, who had been key lieutenants of Marcus during the Markomanic Wars, and who, as a reward, had shared a consulship together.


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[Assistant] His paranoia now raging unchecked, Commodus fired the innocent and highly capable governor Septimius Severus and Pertinax for their failure to capture one of the conspirators who had gotten out of Rome alive. We'll have cause to deal with both of them down the road as well.


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[Assistant] The purge then extended to all of his father's old advisors, and then to every legionary commander across the whole empire.


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[Assistant] Commodus fired every single one of them and replaced them with his own men.


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[Assistant] Back in Rome, anyone who raised the ire of the emperor, man, woman, or child, was likely to wind up murdered and their estates confiscated.


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[Assistant] All in all, the failed assassination attempt led the Empire into the bloodiest round of purges since the end of Demission's reign.


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[Assistant] But really, not since the old old days of Tiberius and Sejanus, had the aristocracy lived with such a cloud of fear hanging over their heads.


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[Assistant] Playing the part of Sejanus to Commodus' Tiberius was the Arch Machiavellian Parenus, who had parlayed his insider information, information he had because he was, you know, totally in on the plot to kill Commodus, into the position of the Emperor's right-hand man.


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[Assistant] Commodus handed over the day-to-day operations of the empire to Perenus, and for the next three years, while the emperor himself engaged in every debauched activity you think of when you think of debauched Roman aristocrats, Tegidius Perenus was the man in charge.


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[Assistant] When communists did climb down into the real world of politics, it was mostly to humiliate some senator or rearrange the provincial postings to keep everyone on their toes.


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[Assistant] was the regular sale of office and the constant shuffling of office holders.


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[Assistant] Pyrennus and Commodus were, in a way, engaged in a friendly rivalry to see who could create the most political and bureaucratic chaos so that the dust would keep swirling and they, themselves, would remain safely cocooned in the center of the storm.


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[Assistant] Consul ships were bought and sold. Praetorian prefects were appointed and fired sometimes within the span of days.


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[Assistant] Governors were sent out to provinces and learned that they had been replaced when they arrived at their new posting.


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[Assistant] And, most important of all, membership in the Senate was open to anyone who Commodus favored. Or, perhaps more importantly, who the Emperor thought the old senators would hate.


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[Assistant] The Empire was lucky during this chaotic period for two reasons. First, the borders were relatively peaceful.


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[Assistant] The two groups who would have posed the biggest threat to the empire were the Parthians and the Germans, and they had both been recently humbled by massive defeat at the hands of the legions, and were not looking to make trouble again anytime soon.


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[Assistant] So even though Rome had become politically schizophrenic, no foreign enemy was ready to take advantage of the empire's madness. Second,


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[Assistant] Though he was personally ruthless, Parenis was no administrative slouch.


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[Assistant] He kept the grain flowing, the books balanced and the games running.


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[Assistant] In 183, a brief war in Dacia broke out that was put down by a combined effort of the final two of the five would-be emperors in the fast approaching year of the five emperors, Claudius Albinus and Paschinius Niger.


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[Assistant] The other three being the aforementioned Pertinax, Didius Julianus, and Septimius Severus.


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[Assistant] The next year, unrest in Britain led the commander there to press north and retake the Antonine Wall, which had been abandoned around the time of Marcus's ascension.


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[Assistant] The general in question though was a harsh disciplinarian who the regular troops hated.


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[Assistant] And following the campaign, they revolted against his leadership and proclaimed another commander emperor.


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[Assistant] This commander wisely refused the honor and got the troops back under control for the moment.


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[Assistant] But the next year, rebellion among the British legions flared up once again.


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[Assistant] This time, their ire was directed at Perennis himself, who they blamed for being late with equipment, stingy with pay, and saddling them with harsh masters who would not indulge the lax atmosphere they had come to expect.


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[Assistant] In a sign of things to come, that is, the failure of discipline that would soon become an epidemic in the legions.


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[Assistant] A deputation of 1500 armed soldiers marched out of Britain for Rome, where they planned to present their grievances to the emperor in person.


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[Assistant] Missing the greater point of the precedent he was endorsing, the communists allowed the rogue company to enter Italy and march on Rome armed to the teeth.


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[Assistant] Hearing the news that this force from Britain was on the way, the Imperial Chamberlain Cleander saw the perfect opportunity to make his own Machiavellian strike.


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[Assistant] With the help of some dissatisfied senators, Kleander set about trumping up charges against Parenas that seemed to show he was aiming to make either himself or his son emperor at some point in the not too distant future.


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[Assistant] When the soldiers from Britain arrived to present their case, Perenus was confident that he would be able to dispatch them with ease. But at the same moment, Cleander was presenting Commodus with the allegation that Perenus was planning on overthrowing him. Having hit the emperor's paranoid center right where it hurt,


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[Assistant] There, Commodus suddenly turned on the blindsided Pyrennus and ordered his former favorite and his entire family executed.


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[Assistant] Cleander then dutifully led the emperor through the list of senators who were involved in the trumped up plot. Conveniently, they were all personal enemies of Cleander.


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[Assistant] And the aristocracy was once again caught up in a bloody purge. Already the second of Commodus's short reign.


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[Assistant] Because while the old Praetorian Prefect had been a capable administrator,


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[Assistant] His replacement as Imperial favorite Cleander was nothing of the sort.


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[Assistant] The art of creating bureaucratic chaos for fun and profit will be perfected by Cleander, who will run the empire, if you could even call it that, for five years, while commonists drifted further off into his own private fantasy land.


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[Assistant] Cleander will finally be eaten by the monster he creates, and Commodus, now nearing his thirties, will be forced to step in and actually do some real governing.


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[Assistant] But by this time, he was convinced not only that he was the reincarnation of Hercules, but also that he was the greatest gladiator who ever lived, so it's not like he brought a lot of stability to the situation.


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[Assistant] Like Domitian before him, Commodus would eventually be done in by members of his own inner circle, who were worried that they were about to be caught up in yet another round of purges.


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[Assistant] His assassination on New Year's Eve 192 will spark the first great domestic crisis since the year of the four emperors. And 193 AD will go down in history with a nice little nod to inflation as the year of the five emperors.


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[Assistant] So last time, Maximus was totally framed by Joaquin Phoenix, and even though he was able to escape his own execution and make it back to his estates in Spain, the fugitive general was eventually captured by slave traders. But not before learning that Joaquin Phoenix had murdered his entire family.


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[Assistant] There was no Maximus. The non-existent Maximus did not kill communists in single combat, and that certainly did not lead to a great restoration of the Republic. Good movie, though.


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[Assistant] And funny enough, the bit about Commodus fighting as a gladiator was no joke. And if anything, the movie actually downplayed the Emperor's obsession.


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[Assistant] Following the purges that surrounded the fall of Pyrenees, the Imperial Chamberlain Cleander rose to power, and along with a circle of corrupt and decadent allies, Cleander ran the Empire for his own benefit from 185 to 190 AD.


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[Assistant] During those years, commonists withdrew even further from the real world, and when not drinking or dabbling in his harem or sitting in the baths,


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[Assistant] He spent the majority of his free time training to be a gladiator.


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[Assistant] The Emperor's obsession with gladiatorial combat dated back to his childhood and was the centerpiece of that reputation I talked about earlier, the one Marcus hoped communists would eventually outgrow.


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[Assistant] But rather than outgrow it, comodus, let it grow with him.


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[Assistant] Disinterested in the real work of soldiering, Commodus was fascinated with the staged fights of the arena, and from very early on, aspired to join the pantheon of gladiatorial gods.


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[Assistant] Now an Emperor, and with no one to stop him, he let this ambition off its leash.


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[Assistant] Now, in the Roman social hierarchy, an emperor was at the very tippy top of the pyramid, and a gladiator was in the sub-sub basement, down with the prostitutes and the actors. A free citizen fighting in the arena was unseemly. An equite fighting was scandalous.


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[Assistant] A senator fighting was a barely conceivable horror. An emperor fighting as a gladiator


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[Assistant] Well, that would be the equivalent of the president turning up one morning in a crack den. The communists cared not a whit about the social taboos though.


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[Assistant] He wanted to stand over ten thousand dead opponents and bask in the adoration of the crowd. Nothing else mattered.


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[Assistant] At first, he confined himself to private contests, but as he grew more confident in his abilities, the Emperor started naming himself the headline attraction for the all too frequent games thrown during his reign.


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[Assistant] Now, Cominus was no slouch here. He was young and athletic and seems to have taken his training seriously.


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[Assistant] He was an excellent shot and handy with every kind of weapon imaginable.


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[Assistant] But there's no getting around the fact that he never did fight a fair fight.


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[Assistant] Obviously, you can't have the Emperor going out there and getting killed by some random slave. So, Commodus typically fought pre-wounded opponents, or, more commonly, opponents who had been given a lead sword to match up against the Emperor's sharpened steel.


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[Assistant] These widely known secrets of the Emperor's success made all his boasting about what a great warrior he was ring a bit hollow.


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[Assistant] Adding a malevolent edge to his somewhat ridiculous displays of alleged gladiatorial prowess was the fact that Commodus took particular delight in killing anything that seemed freakish.


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[Assistant] He would bring in midgets so he could pretend to be a mighty giant. He would bring in amputees and watch them hobble around feebly as he toyed with them.


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[Assistant] And at times, he would put his surgical skills to the test and slowly dismember victims while avoiding major arteries.


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[Assistant] His most famous routine, though, was to hunt. And in addition to the old, reoccurring line about having slain a hundred lions in a single day.


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[Assistant] He was fond of bringing in exotic oddities, ostriches, giraffes, elephants and the like, and felling them with a few well-placed arrows.


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[Assistant] For a long time, the masses got a kick out of the ludicrous novelty of watching the Emperor do horrible things to handicapped opponents, but the novelty eventually wore off.


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[Assistant] For members of the Senate, meanwhile, at least the non-Communist appointed members of the Senate anyway, there never was any novelty to begin with.


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[Assistant] The whole spectacle was an affront to the dignity of the emperor, the senators themselves, and the empire at large.


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[Assistant] Commodus suspected that if given a chance, his friends and colleagues in the Senate would find other places to be on game day, so he made attendance at his performances mandatory.


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[Assistant] That is, one of the quickest ways to find yourself on the Emperor's hit list was to call in sick to the Coliseum.


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[Assistant] And when you found yourself on the Emperor's hit list, it wasn't like he just didn't invite you to dinner or something.


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[Assistant] Now, that meant that charges of treason, property confiscation, and execution were right around the corner.


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[Assistant] So the senators win and watch the Emperor Club cripples to death. Really.


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[Assistant] The whole thing was just cruel, pathetic, and sad.


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[Assistant] Meanwhile, the Empire continued to plunge unchecked towards a system-wide failure.


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[Assistant] The legions upon whom Commodus was in part resting the legitimacy of his reign were beginning to slip away from him.


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[Assistant] At first, their ire was directed at the emperor's favorites, like Perennis. But as their dissatisfaction mounted, commonists began to become an object of their anger as well.


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[Assistant] Commodists had dispatched pertinacs to Britain, which had been a recent hotbed of insubordination, with instructions to get the situation there back in hand.


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[Assistant] Pertinax was an old soldier who had earned his name and reputation putting out Rome's fires across the empire. And when he got to Britain, it did not take long for him to be embraced by the heretofore rebellious troops.


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[Assistant] But at this point in the history of the empire, being embraced by the troops was a dangerous proposition.


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[Assistant] So when the British legions got together and decided to hail Pertinax their new emperor, Pertinax outright refused.


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[Assistant] Deeply unsettled by the position he found himself in, he wrote to Commodus requesting immediate reassignment.


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[Assistant] Now, you would think the fact that the British legions kept trying to declare new emperors would have led to some sort of imperial action.


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[Assistant] But apparently, Commodus, and at this point Cleander, vastly underestimated the severity of the situation. Soon enough though, they would no longer be able to ignore it.


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[Assistant] In 186, a charismatic army deserter in Gaul named Maternus began to round up a motley crew of followers consisting of fellow deserters, ex-soldiers, and brigands.


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[Assistant] At first, they were concerned mostly with raiding the countryside for their own enrichment.


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[Assistant] But eventually, after more and more men flocked to his banner,


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[Assistant] Maternis began to think of himself as the second coming of Spartacus.


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[Assistant] His force grew to the point that raids on towns turned into sieges of small cities.


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[Assistant] He led his men back and forth across the Pyrenees causing havoc in the under garrison portions of Spain and Gaul.


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[Assistant] Before finally, the powers that be realized that there was a renegade army running loose within the empire.


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[Assistant] Maternis regrouped with a core of supporters and headed south into Italy.


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[Assistant] The plan now was to infiltrate Rome during an upcoming festival, get close to the Emperor, and assassinate him. The plot was not as outlandish as it sounds.


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[Assistant] The festival involves citizens of every class putting on costumes and partying in the streets.


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[Assistant] Maternist managed to secure some Praetorian guard uniforms, and figured that with everyone, including the guard, getting good and drunk in an atmosphere of shifting identities, that he might just be able to bluff his way into the Imperial entourage.


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[Assistant] But before the conspiracy got off the ground, Maternis was betrayed by one of his followers over some personal slight, and the assassins were all rounded up and executed.


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[Assistant] The already paranoid commonist was driven further round the bend by the revelation that his life had been saved not by the fact that his bodyguards were so super great at their jobs, but because the conspiracy had been betrayed by a disgruntled ex-member.


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[Assistant] ...was a note passed along by Pertinax that one of Commodus' brothers-in-law and a few other senators were gathering support for their own assassination attempt.


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[Assistant] It seems that Pertinax thought the chances of the conspirators dim, and so decided to make double sure that he wasn't implicated in the plot, and alerted the Emperor after he himself was invited to join.


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[Assistant] From this point on, Commodus was rendered practically inert. He never left the safe confines of the palace.


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[Assistant] Or, if he wasn't in Rome, the safety of his country of villas.


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[Assistant] The only public appearances he made for the rest of his reign were when he performed as a gladiator.


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[Assistant] Seemingly the only time that he actually felt safe and comfortable.


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[Assistant] But though Commodus was a publicly invisible emperor, he was still a force to be reckoned with in private. And not in a good way at all.


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[Assistant] With Parenos as his colleague, Commodus had taken a shine to debasing the Senate, making erratic bureaucratic appointments, and doing whatever he could to personally humiliate individual members of the aristocracy. But now, with Cleander as his partner in crime, everything was ratcheted up a couple of notches.


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[Assistant] Kleander made a fortune selling offices, membership in the Senate, and plum overseas appointments.


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[Assistant] While Commodus encouraged his freedmen to harass senators, confiscate their property, and when the mood struck him, murder them.


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[Assistant] Further compounding the mockery they were making of the government was the fact that the two men actually spent very little time thinking about the government.


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[Assistant] And chose instead to focus on exploring the vast and wide depths of sexual depravity.


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[Assistant] I won't go into the details because hey, this is a family podcast, but suffice it to say that there was some pretty brutal stuff going on at the palace and not at all behind closed doors.


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[Assistant] In mid-187, Kleander took the lead in a new round of purges. This one aimed at anyone connected to the conspiracy Pertinax had decided to expose.


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[Assistant] Luckily for Kleander, the families involved were also personal enemies, who represented the last real organized threat to his power. So, off with all their heads.


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[Assistant] This latest round of political murders is further notable for sweeping up the Empress Crispina along with everyone else.


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[Assistant] It doesn't look like she was in any way involved in the plot, but rather that she simply fell victim to the whims of a probably sociopathic emperor who had grown tired of his wife.


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[Assistant] Bad enough that she was exiled and then killed, but her crime, the one so heinous that she was exiled and killed for it,


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[Assistant] Was simply being caught up engaging in an extramarital affair.


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[Assistant] You know, the kind her husband had engaged in every single day of their marriage. Stay classy, commonus.


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[Assistant] In 188, Cleander further solidified his grip on power by creating a new office that superseded the two Praetorian prefects, effectively putting him in charge of the Emperor's secret police.


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[Assistant] Up to this point, Cleander had controlled the guard much as Perennis had, by constantly hiring and firing the prefects so none of them could create enduring loyalty within the ranks.


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[Assistant] But having finally set the record by allowing one poor appointee to remain in office a mere six hours.


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[Assistant] Cleander finally decided that this was maybe getting a little ridiculous. That there needed to be some kind of institutional stability. What if the guard actually needed to do something?


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[Assistant] So he invented a new office, assumed it, and then ran the Praetorians himself.


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[Assistant] At this point, it seemed like things would go on like this forever.


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[Assistant] Cleander had a stranglehold on Rome, the enemies of the new imperial order were all dead or exiled, and commonists cared only about chariot racing, sitting in the baths, and gladiatorial combat.


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[Assistant] The Empire was slowly being driven into the ground, but anyone in a position to actually do anything about it were the ones already behind the wheel and doing said driving.


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[Assistant] But as so often happens in these sorts of bloodily tyrannical quasi police states, one minute you're up, and the next minute you're being airbrushed out of that photo of you and Stalin enjoying a nice glass of vodka together.


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[Assistant] For Cleander, the end came in 190, a year in which he and Commodus conspired to appoint 25 different men consul.


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[Assistant] A record that would stand unchallenged for the rest of the life of the empire.


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[Assistant] Remember when console ships were a sacred office that marked the prestigious climax of a long and distinguished career? Yeah, no one else does either.


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[Assistant] Included in that infamously long roll call of consoles for $190 though.


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[Assistant] was a man who was about to reach the new climax point for the Roman politician, Septimius Severus.


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[Assistant] In one of those classic, it's the economy stupid moments, Cleander's fall from power was precipitated by a grain shortage in Rome.


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[Assistant] Without a major crisis getting in his way, Cleander was able to more or less come and go as he pleased.


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[Assistant] But as soon as the grain stopped flowing and someone needed to be scapegoated, well, that someone was naturally the man who had just spent five years lording over everyone how much power he had.


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[Assistant] The few active enemies of the Imperial Chamberlain left alive seized the opportunity the food shortages presented and organized a very public display against the Emperor's favorite at the one place the Emperor was bound to hear about it, in the Circus Maximus.


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[Assistant] In April of 190 AD at a set of chariot races, a group of children were given anti-cleander banners and were snuck down onto the field where they began shouting anti-cleander chants.


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[Assistant] The hope was that if children were used, that the Praetorians wouldn't be able to just march out and club them all to death, and the trick seems to have worked.


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[Assistant] The crowd eventually joined in the chanting, and before too long they had worked themselves into a frenzy and marched out of the circus maximus towards the villa Kleander was staying at.


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[Assistant] Cleander ordered the Praetorian Guard to move in and beat the mob into submission.


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[Assistant] But when he called for backup from the urban cohorts, who were at this point led by newly appointed urban prefect Pertinax, Pertinax not only ignored the call,


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[Assistant] But he ordered his own troops into the crowd to help them drive off the Praetorians


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[Assistant] Cleander fled to the Imperial Villa Commodus was relaxing at, but as with Parenis, the Emperor was more than willing to throw his favorite under the bus, if that seemed like the safest course of action for Commodus.


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[Assistant] So rather than face the wrath of the mob himself, Cleander was handed over to the crowd, who promptly killed him and dragged his body through the streets.


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[Assistant] The fall of Cleander was accompanied by yet another round of purges, and anyone with a close connection to the dead Chamberlain found themselves added to the Emperor's prescription list rather than being asked to help draw them up.


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[Assistant] These are the times when you start to understand the appeal of a philosophy like Epicureanism, with its emphasis on leaving politics to those cruel enough and dumb enough to get caught up in it.


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[Assistant] During the reign of Commodus, you were either up and orchestrating the murder of your enemies, or you were down and being murdered by your enemies.


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[Assistant] Those leaders who survived to see the other side were either like Pertinax and willing to follow the winds wherever they blew, personal honor be damned, or like Septimius Severus.


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[Assistant] Who kept his head down but in witnessing the petty bloody back and forth in Rome, developed an entirely cynical philosophy of government.


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[Assistant] But before we get to the founding of the new Severin dynasty, we still have to cover the last ignoble phase of the Nervin Antonine dynasty.


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[Assistant] The unbroken line of high quality emperors that stretched back nearly a century and produced some of the most recognizable names in Roman imperial history, Trajan, Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius, was about to be broken.


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[Assistant] Just as Nero had wrecked the Julio-Claudians and Domitian had wrecked the Flavians, Commodus was about to wreck the Antonines.


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[Assistant] In defense of the first two, the legitimacy of the Julio Claudians was already a shaky proposition by the time Nero arrived.


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[Assistant] And admission was toppled not for being a terrible emperor, but for being an unusually arrogant one.


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[Assistant] Commodus, on the other hand, took an entirely healthy dynasty, spun a hard right, and just drove it into a brick wall.


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[Assistant] He was arrogant like Demission, but instead of offsetting this by establishing an effective autocracy,


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[Assistant] He oversaw sloppy, corrupt, and decadent administration that bankrupted the empire, left its infrastructure to rot, and purged out most of its talented leaders.


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[Assistant] Commonus saved the best for last though, and during his last two years in office, he really kicked the crazy up a notch. Basically, if Commonus had had his way,


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[Assistant] This podcast would not be called the history of Rome, it would be called the history of Commodiana.


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[Assistant] And I wouldn't be talking about how the Romans kicked off this or that campaign season in the month of April.


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[Assistant] But instead, talking about how the Commodians kicked off this or that new campaign season in the month of Commodus.


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[Assistant] And also, did you know that Commodus was the reincarnation of Hercules? Not just that he liked to associate himself with Hercules, mind you, but that he was literally the reincarnation of Hercules? Yes, good times were ahead.


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[Assistant] The crazy really got rowing right after Cleander and his allies were liquidated.


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[Assistant] Rather than elevate some new favorite to power, the now 29 year old commonist decided that it was time to rule in his own right.


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[Assistant] But unlike in his past dealings with Satyrus, Parenus, and Cleander, Commodus did not delegate his imperial responsibilities. But then again, neither did he really embrace them either.


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[Assistant] Instead, the governance of the empire was just sort of set adrift.


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[Assistant] Commodus spent nearly every day fighting as a gladiator, or enjoying the races, and his only real concern was making sure that he had enough money to pay for it all.


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[Assistant] Usually by confiscating property or levying new taxes. But of course, he never did have enough money to pay for it all.


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[Assistant] And he would leave the imperial treasury deep, deep in the red.


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[Assistant] By 191, Commodus was beginning to lose touch even with the masses, who had always supported an emperor as obsessed with the games as they were.


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[Assistant] They began to look sideways at his obsession with Hercules and took as mighty impious the claim that he was actually the reincarnation of the old Greek hero.


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[Assistant] When Commodus began erecting statues across the city, featuring himself dressed as Hercules, and began carrying around a great big club, which he called the Club of Hercules,


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[Assistant] The people joined in the aristocracy's concern over the sanity of their emperor.


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[Assistant] Delusions of lineage aside, Commodus' association with Hercules did introduce a new theme to the political order that in time would become a staple of imperial propaganda. As we all know, Hercules was the son of Jupiter.


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[Assistant] This meant that if Commodus was literally an incarnation of Hercules, that his true father was not Marcus Aurelius, but Jupiter himself.


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[Assistant] Commodus further implied that this meant that he did not rule by virtue of the Senate's consent, or the will of the masses, or because he had the backing of the legions.


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[Assistant] But because it was the will of his father, Jupiter, greatest and best.


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[Assistant] Commodus was, in other words, a divine monarch. And he himself was a living god.


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[Assistant] It would take a little while for this new conception of where imperial sovereignty lay to catch on.


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[Assistant] But Diocletian would eventually make the business about being a divine monarch a cornerstone of his empire-wide reforms.


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[Assistant] Now of course, unlike Commodus, Diocletian probably did not actually believe that he was divine, and that he was simply grasping for anything that would help restore the dignity of the imperial throne, so he could reassert some control over the legions. But still, that was where political theory was headed, and Commodus, at least in this one respect, was an innovator ahead of his time.


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[Assistant] But if he was a divinely appointed ruler, then it did not take long for Jupiter to realize his mistake.


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[Assistant] In 191, a fire broke out in Rome that raged for days, and among other things, burned the Temple of the Vestas to the ground.


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[Assistant] Kama seemed unconcerned about the damage, but rather seemed thrilled with the prospect of getting to refound Rome in his own image.


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[Assistant] He further decreed that the legions would now be called the Commodian.


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[Assistant] And the Senate would be called Commodus' Fortunate Senate. A sort of darkly comic rebranding.


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[Assistant] He then changed the names of the months so that each lined up with one of his twelve corresponding names.


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[Assistant] All this began to worry even his inner circle, who tried to dissuade the emperor from indulging himself too much in these fantasies.


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[Assistant] Or fear that he would alienate the whole population with his strange declarations.


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[Assistant] But all that they got in response was a suspicious snarl.


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[Assistant] Leaving them all with the justified true belief that they were about to be purged for having the temerity to question the Son of God.


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[Assistant] In late 192, Eclectus, Marsha, and Letus got together and agreed that the Emperor had to be done away with or they would all lose their heads. Either at the hands of the Emperor,


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[Assistant] or at the hands of the mob who seem to be prepping for a mass uprising.


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[Assistant] But having seen multiple attempts on the Emperor's life fail, they laid their plans carefully.


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[Assistant] Being so close to the Emperor, they knew they would have the means, motive, and opportunity to do the job.


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[Assistant] But what they didn't yet have was someone willing to replace commonus on the throne.


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[Assistant] Killing the emperor was one thing. Ensuring that the assassination would not cause a civil war was quite another.


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[Assistant] So they had to find someone who would be palatable to all three interested parties in the outcome. The Senate, the Army, and the masses. In the end, they figured there was only one man for the job, and that was Pertnax.


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[Assistant] I'm not entirely sure why they thought PertinX would do anything but just rat them out.


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[Assistant] But the conspirators approached the old general, and this time, he concurred that Commodus' time was up.


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[Assistant] Pertinax agreed to wait in the wings and take no direct part in the killing, but when the deed was done, he pledged that when asked, he would reluctantly agree to don the purple.


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[Assistant] Even with their plans carefully laid, things got off to a bad start. On New Year's Eve, 192, Marsha attempted to poison her lover, but Commodus caught wise to the poison and forced himself to vomit it all back up.


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[Assistant] Not sure who was behind the attempt, the commonist retired to his private bath so he could be alone with his paranoia.


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[Assistant] Quickly switching to plan B, the conspirator sent Commodus' wrestling partner Narcissus into the bath with instructions to strangle the Emperor.


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[Assistant] Just as with the assassination of Demission, Communists did not go quietly.


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[Assistant] But eventually, Narcissus got the upper hand, and Commodus lay dead on the floor.


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[Assistant] Next week, the Empire will wake up with a massive hangover and try to take stock of the damage that had been done over the previous decade by Commodus and his friends.


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[Assistant] But before they could even find the aspirin, the people of Rome will be forced to endure a political situation spinning violently out of control. Pertinax will not last a hundred days in power.


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[Assistant] The reign of his successor Didius Julianus will be even shorter.


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[Assistant] Then three men, representing different regions of the empire, will all vie for the throne on the battlefield.


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[Assistant] Rather than emerging into the safety of a comodus free world, the empire will instead find itself sucked into something far more treacherous. A year with five emperors.


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[Assistant] After numerous failed attempts, foiled plots, and exposed conspiracies, someone finally managed to kill Commodus.


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[Assistant] That someone was a young athlete named Narcissus who had been promised a huge reward by the emperor's inner circle if he successfully strangled Commodus to death.


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[Assistant] With the deed done and finally done right, phase two of the plan was then initiated.


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[Assistant] One of the key conspirators, Praetorian Prefect Quintus Letus, went and retrieved Publius Helvius Pertinax, who had been pacing around his house all night, waiting for either the good news that the Emperor was dead, or the bad news that the plot had failed, and it was time to get caught up in the never-ending cycle of purges.


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[Assistant] When the knock on the door finally came, it was Letus announcing that the Emperor was in fact dead, and phase two was at hand.


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[Assistant] Phase two was hustling partnacks to the praetorian camp, where Lydas had arranged for the old senator to be immediately proclaimed emperor.


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[Assistant] The troops were told that Commodus had died of an embolism, that Pertinax was already the consensus choice to succeed him, and that it was up to the rank-and-file Praetorians to make it official.


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[Assistant] They were uneasy about all of this, and were probably one of the few groups in the Empire ready to shed tears for Communists. But leaders promised them the world if they backed Pertinax. And so they did.


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[Assistant] The point of all this was to present the Senate with a fait accompli.


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[Assistant] So that when the senators awakened on New Year's Day and found the old emperor dead, a new one would already be in place.


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[Assistant] All night, the conspirators fretted over how the Senate would react, but they were worried over nothing.


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[Assistant] Most of the Senate, after finally being convinced that this wasn't one of the hilarious Emperor's practical jokes,


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[Assistant] We're thrilled at the news that Matt as a Hatter Commodus was dead, and that Pertnax, wise, capable, and experienced Pertnax, was the man the Praetorians were demanding they accept as the new Emperor.


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[Assistant] The choice of Pertinax was ratified immediately, and in almost the same breath, the memory of Commodus was officially damned.


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[Assistant] All his crazy pronouncements about renaming Rome and the months and the legions. Those were all nullified and across the city, his statues were toppled.


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[Assistant] So a few episodes ago, I just sort of slipped Parton Axe into the narrative and have referred to him off and on ever since.


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[Assistant] But other than the fact that he was an able military officer and that he did his damnedest not to get involved in plots against communists, I haven't really told you that much about him.


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[Assistant] By far the most interesting thing to note is that, unique among emperors, at least up until this point, he was the son of a mere freedman.


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[Assistant] Born in 126, he had planned on becoming a grammar instructor, but in his late teens, he decided to have some strings pulled for him so he could be commissioned as an officer in the legions instead.


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[Assistant] Once in uniform, he immediately proved that he was a hardworking soldier and a natural leader of men. Whatever his lowly background said about him.


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[Assistant] He came to the attention of Claudius Pompeianus, who was himself of lowly origin, though not as lowly as being the son of a freedman, and he became attached to the older man's staff.


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[Assistant] As Pompeianus' star rose during the reign of Marcus Aurelius, Pertinax rose along with it.


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[Assistant] Eventually, his undeniable talent won out, and Marcus decided to enroll the young man as a senator so he could grant Pertnax a full command.


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[Assistant] In 175, he was granted a Suffett Consulship as a reward for his excellent service. A consulship he would coincidentally share with Didius Julianus, who we will get to in a second.


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[Assistant] His rise was not without setbacks though, and for his entire career, he would have to deal with aristocratic bigotry against this son of a slave who had had the temerity to order around his social betters.


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[Assistant] During the reign of Marcus, he was briefly blacklisted following the machinations of some officials close to Faustina, who hated Pertinax for, among other things, his close relationship with Papeianus, who she detested.


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[Assistant] During the early years of Commodus' reign, pertinent acts essentially retired from public life, rather than attempt to get into a political flame war with Parenis.


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[Assistant] But once Peranis was out of the picture, Pertinax found himself back in favor and back in demand.


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[Assistant] In all, during his long career, he served with distinction in the Parthian War and the Marcomannic Wars, and at one time or another, governed the provinces of Upper Moesia, Lower Moesia, Dacia, Syria, Britain, and Africa.


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[Assistant] Far from being honorary postings, these were among the most critical territories the Empire had to offer.


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[Assistant] Throughout his career, there was only one real lingering flaw in his character, at least according to the troops who served under him.


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[Assistant] Unlike many other commanders, particularly those who served at Commodus's pleasure, Pertinax was not indulgent of his troops.


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[Assistant] He demanded strict discipline in the camps and had no time for whiners or complainers. They were soldiers and they ought to act like it. There was nothing more to say on the subject.


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[Assistant] Unfortunately, this reputation would come back to haunt him once he was emperor.


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[Assistant] Strict discipline was not, for example, what the Praetorian Guard had in mind when they went and did the old man a pretty huge favor by making him emperor of the whole empire.


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[Assistant] While the Senate needed no prodding to be ecstatic about the elevation of pertinacs, the pretorians had to be bought off.


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[Assistant] In securing their support, Pertton Acts had been forced to promise a huge donative to every man in the guard.


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[Assistant] Now, more than ever, the men of the Imperial Bodyguard didn't care who was in power, as long as they got paid.


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[Assistant] In a few short months, the crass financial underpinnings of their morality would be displayed in a way never before imaginable.


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[Assistant] But for now, they accepted the promise of money from Pertinax and so they supported Pertinax.


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[Assistant] Out in the provinces, word spread of Commodus' demise, and though there was no political unrest following the death of the erratic and dangerous emperor.


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[Assistant] The fact of his murder, and the fact that a man who had no connection whatsoever to the now dead Antonine dynasty,


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[Assistant] ...had to have sparked the imaginations of more than a few powerful governors.


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[Assistant] Shortly, we will deal with three such powerful governors, who between them, commanded a majority of the empire's legions.


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[Assistant] They all knew and appreciated the service and stature of Pertinax, and so there was no immediate uprising.


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[Assistant] The new emperor was awfully long in the tooth, and when he went to meet his maker, who exactly would succeed him, was the question on all their minds.


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[Assistant] You see, when Pertinax promised a huge bonus to the Praetorians in exchange for their support, he had done so at the behest of Letus, who told him it was the only way.


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[Assistant] Once the crisis of succession was in the rearview mirror a bit though, Pertnax reevaluated the wisdom of paying the Praetorians such an ungodly sum of money.


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[Assistant] He came through with half the amount, but declined to pay the rest, arguing that what he had already given them was more than most soldiers make in a lifetime.


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[Assistant] Besides, the imperial treasury is empty, so there's really nothing left to pay you with.


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[Assistant] But the Praetorians couldn't have cared less about where the money came from or what the average soldier made in a lifetime. They just wanted what was theirs.


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[Assistant] Pertinex considered the matter closed, though, and shifted his focus to seeing what could be done to get the Empire back on track after so many years of mismanagement. The Praetorians, however, did not consider the matter closed.


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[Assistant] They were the only reason this stuffy old man was on the throne in the first place, and now he was stiffing them when the bill came due? Who did he think he was? They made him, and they could break him.


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[Assistant] In March, Pertinax visited the port of Ostia to inspect incoming grain shipments, and while there, he was given evidence proving that one of the year's consuls, a senator named Quintus Falco, had gone in with a few key members of the Guard on a plot to kill Pertinax.


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[Assistant] The guard promised to make Falco Emperor if he promised to pay up promptly and in full.


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[Assistant] Unwilling to be held hostage by a bunch of greedy bodyguards who did not know their true place in the world.


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[Assistant] Burton X continued to refuse them the second half of the donative, but now did so knowing full well that he was putting himself in a very dangerous position.


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[Assistant] But whether out of principle, obstinacy or something else, he refused to back down on the issue.


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[Assistant] He went so far as to avoid passing out Imperial titles to his wife and children, perhaps suspecting that if and when a final showdown came, that they would be safer on the sidelines than carrying around dangerous titles like Augusta and Caesar.


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[Assistant] There was a hope prevailing in Rome early in 193 that maybe the reign of Commodus had just been a hiccup.


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[Assistant] And that with Pertinax now in power, that things could go back to normal.


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[Assistant] Commodus aside, no one living had any memory of a bad emperor.


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[Assistant] Even the oldest of the old men had been born during the reign of Trajan.


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[Assistant] Pertinax himself, a venerable elder statesman, had been born during the reign of Hadrian.


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[Assistant] The point is that for most Romans, the default setting was good emperors reigning for a long time over a relatively quiet and stable empire.


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[Assistant] So the reasoning went that since Pertinax was obviously not a crazy person,


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[Assistant] But maybe the detour through Commodus would prove to be just that. A detour.


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[Assistant] Pertnax would reign for a bit, then hand power to some worthy successor, and then he would pass power to some other worthy successor. And just like that, the memory of Comodus, already damned, would be truly forgotten. But it was not to be.


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[Assistant] Commodus was not a detour. He was the new way forward.


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[Assistant] The Romans would never again return to the road they had traveled for the last century, the one paved in wisdom, luck, and competence. No, they were on a different road now.


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[Assistant] And in late March 193, the people of Rome discovered how far they had already strayed from that good solid road they had enjoyed for so many years.


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[Assistant] The Praetorians had been indulged for too long to simply take Pertinax's stiffing lying down.


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[Assistant] Well, it wasn't just the case of the missing Donative. It was also the fact that Pertinax was trying to impose a level of discipline on the urban troops that they were totally unaccustomed to. What were they? Provincial infantry?


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[Assistant] They had never been hip to pertinax to begin with, but Letus had been persuasive on the night of Commodus' death, which they had always suspected had been murder, not an embolism. And so they had gone along with their prefect.


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[Assistant] But if the past few months had proved anything, it was that this relationship just wasn't going to work. It was time for the Praetoriums to break up with Pertinax.


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[Assistant] On March 28, a collection of about 300 soldiers and officers of the Guard stormed the palace to confront the Emperor.


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[Assistant] None of the soldiers or officials surrounding Pertinax had any desire to get in the middle of what was about to go down.


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[Assistant] So this armed company of Praetorians was allowed to pass unchallenged. Well, not totally unchallenged.


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[Assistant] Pertnax heard the commotion and Dispatch lead us to go talk his men down.


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[Assistant] But when Letus, not exactly the most scrupulous guy in the world, confronted the incoming troops, he decided that joining them would be safer than trying to stop them.


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[Assistant] So he promptly about faced and led his men straight to the Emperor.


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[Assistant] Pertinax face down the 300 Praetorians. Well, 301 I guess at this point.


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[Assistant] And attempted to explain his position and reasonably defuse the situation.


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[Assistant] Whether or not his words were starting to dissuade a majority of the men became irrelevant when one of the soldiers, who was obviously not being dissuaded, stepped forward and slashed pert max with his sword, killing the emperor instantly.


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[Assistant] This rash act of violence left Letus and the Praetorians in a dilly of a pickle.


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[Assistant] As I'm sure Lydas calmly explained without raising his voice or cussing anyone out, you don't just kill an emperor.


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[Assistant] At least, you don't kill an emperor without having a replacement ready to step in. Because as it stands right now, there is no emperor.


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[Assistant] And no generally agreed upon mechanism for selecting a new one.


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[Assistant] Hell, every man in the empire will have his own pet candidate and be more than willing to fight to the death to win this highly valuable and suddenly available prize.


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[Assistant] This, he explained, is why you don't just kill an emperor.


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[Assistant] Keeping his wits about him though, Letus thought fast, and determined that at the end of the day, the Praetorians still really held all the cards here.


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[Assistant] We'll just pick whoever we want, bully the Senate into ratifying the choice, and have everything wrapped up before the provincial governors even hear that Pertinax is dead. But, who did the Praetorians want?


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[Assistant] At that moment, what they wanted was someone who would pay up when he was supposed to pay up.


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[Assistant] That was their whole beef with pertinacs and the reason why they were standing over his bloody body trying to figure out who to replace him with. So, Letus hit upon a great idea.


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[Assistant] A really, really great idea that was just really, really great. They would auction off the job to the highest bidder.


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[Assistant] What followed obviously became one of the most notorious incidents in Roman imperial history.


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[Assistant] No self-respecting senator was going to get into a bidding war to win the honor of becoming the Praetorian's puppet.


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[Assistant] Which meant that only senators of a more morally ambiguous nature were going to enter into the auction.


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[Assistant] But then again, if only morally ambiguous men entered in the bidding, then maybe it was the duty of a self-respecting senator to step in and outbid the bad seeds. It was quite a conundrum.


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[Assistant] In the end, events move so quickly that the bidding came down to two men who were neither inflexibly virtuous nor necessarily terrible men.


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[Assistant] They just acted on their instincts, their vanity, and the belief that someone was going to get the job, so it might as well be them.


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[Assistant] The first was Pertinax's father-in-law, a man named Titus Flavius Silpicianus.


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[Assistant] Silpikianus had been appointed city prefect upon his son-in-law's ascension, and when the company of Praetorians had invaded the palace, Pertinax had dispatched Silpikianus down to the Praetorian camp to hopefully quell any further unrest.


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[Assistant] So he found himself physically present when the murderous company returned base with his son-in-law's head on a spike, and was the first to hear their plan to auction off the imperial throne.


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[Assistant] So, picky honest, probably first out of a desire to simply restore order as quickly as possible, put in a bid.


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[Assistant] But the Brattorians decided it was too low, and shouted from the ramparts that anyone who could do better ought to come down straight away and do better.


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[Assistant] The second man involved in this infamous auction, and the one who would eventually win the dubious prize, was Marcus Didius Julianus.


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[Assistant] He was enjoying a lavish dinner with his family when the news came that the Imperial throne was up for grabs.


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[Assistant] According to most sources, Julianis was pushed into making a bid by his wife and daughter, who were themselves hungrier for power than Julianis himself was. But sometimes, I can't help but take these portrayals of shrewish Roman women with a grain of salt.


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[Assistant] If Julianas needed to be pushed into it, I doubt he needed to be pushed very hard.


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[Assistant] But whether he jumped at the chance or had to be pushed or pulled or nudged or whatever.


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[Assistant] Juliana's restroom is a banquet table down at the Praetorian camp.


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[Assistant] He was barred from actually passing through the gates by suspicious guards, but undeterred, he shouted his offer over the walls.


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[Assistant] The men on the ramparts dutifully relayed Julianas' bid to their comrades in the center of camp. And so Piccianus upped his bid accordingly.


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[Assistant] The men raced back to the wall, where they told Julianis what the new price was, and Julianis upped his own bid accordingly. Now this is what the Bretonians had in mind.


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[Assistant] Finally, So Pichionis offered 20,000 Cisterces ahead for the privilege of becoming emperor.


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[Assistant] An absurd sum that equaled something like eight times the annual salary of the average Praetorian.


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[Assistant] But Julianis, caught up in the moment and determined not to lose, promised 25,000 sistercies ahead.


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[Assistant] At this last offer, the Praetorians were satisfied and maybe worried that continuing the auction would lead both men to walk away from the table.


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[Assistant] Declared Julianas the winner, ushered him into camp, and acclaimed him Emperor.


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[Assistant] Proving that he was not totally morally bankrupt. Which, he really wasn't.


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[Assistant] Julianus stipulated that his promised donative was contingent upon no harm coming to Silpicianus.


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[Assistant] The Praetorians agreed and let the losing bidder go, though he had to see himself out as the soldiers were all temporarily blinded by the massive dollar signs in their eyes. They were all about to be rich men. They should really do this more often.


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[Assistant] The Praetorians then marched out into the streets to rouse the Senate and demand that they assemble at once to make their choice official.


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[Assistant] They came down to the forum, and after listening to Julianas make a speech about how all of this wasn't nearly as dishonorable as it appeared, and reminding them that they all knew him and knew him well,


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[Assistant] Marcus Didius Julianus had been around a long time, was well known, and not for infamous reasons.


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[Assistant] He'd been born in the 130s. The exact date is under dispute.


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[Assistant] To an Italian father and a Roman African mother, both of whom came from distinguished senatorial families.


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[Assistant] By a stroke of luck, he wound up being raised in the home of Domitia Lucilla, the mother of Marcus Aurelius.


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[Assistant] He didn't have much contact with Marcus, who was at least 15 years his senior.


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[Assistant] But when Marcus became emperor, it did not hurt Julianis's career one bit that he was a favorite of the emperor's mother.


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[Assistant] He climbed up the cursus honorum in brisk fashion, and when the Marko Manic Wars broke out, he found himself the governor of Upper Germany.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Which, while not exactly the front lines, was still a key theater of the war.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Julianus and his fellows along the Rhine were tasked with fending off attacks on the Lymese Germanicus and preventing the Germans from even thinking about expanding the conflict.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Julianas was completely successful in his mission, and deftly deflected numerous attempts at invasion from local tribes allied with the Markhamani.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As a reward for his good work, as I mentioned before, he was given a console ship in 175 along with Pertinax.