Introduction

In the fall of 96 ce, the recently crowned emperor Nerva assigned a senator from southern Spain, Marcus Ulpius Traianus, to govern Upper Germany (Eck 1985: 456). A Roman did not set out on such a mission without having made the customary sacrificial offering to Rome’s chief god, Jupiter Optimus Maximus. On the day appointed for Trajan to make that sacrifice, a crowd had gathered about the entrance to Jupiter’s shrine, and Trajan barely forced his way through the crush. Then, as the temple doors finally opened, displaying the deity’s statue within, the milling throng spontaneously roared, as if with one voice: Imperator! Only later would it be revealed that their acclamation was not, as they supposed, directed at the god Jupiter, but instead at the soon-to-be emperor, Trajan.

Another senator, Pliny the Younger, records this omen (Pan. 5.3-4). He also reminds us that Trajan had all along been selected by Jupiter to rule (Pan. 8). And a lucky thing it was, that the gods were willing to pick emperors; for the Romans themselves had never created a properly defined, official mechanism by which to accomplish this seemingly crucial governmental act.

A recent book has broadly characterized the period of the first emperor’s reign as one of experimentation (Galinsky 1996; cf. also Wallace-Hadrill 1993: viii; Rowe, this volume). The experimental centerpiece was the creation of an imperial regime. However, since the very existence of monarchy could not be admitted it was impossible to construct anything that we would consider a proper constitution for the new imperial order. But aside from that, the Romans, a people fanatically loyal to tradition, traditionally had no written constitution. They were, from their very beginnings, accustomed to a government whose form evolved continually, and gradually, sometimes in written form, sometimes not (Lintott 1999: 1-2). Thus, insofar as constitutional matters generally are concerned, especially with regard to the transmission of imperial power, we are justified in perceiving the first three centuries ce as an epoch of continual experiment, or gradual development.

If we are to understand Rome as a superpower, which it surely was during the period here in question, we must admit that this particular superpower had at best a rudimentary system - and a rudimentary system in a state of constant flux - for picking the man about whom literally everything seemed to revolve. Moreover, the period treated in the present chapter is especially significant in this regard, since it may be that the second century witnessed an attempt to regularize, indeed, to create, what might be perceived as a nearly constitutional arrangement for imperial successions. But regardless of this, all the principal mechanisms that might come into play when the Romans made monarchs were already well formed when the last of the Flavian monarchs perished. Byway of introduction to these mechanisms, let us briefly return to that moment.

It was mid-September 96 when the emperor Domitian succumbed to a conspiracy. Although the act itself was perpetrated by disaffected palace servants, the praetorian prefects (the commanders of the emperor’s military bodyguard at Rome) may also have been involved; in any case, they approved the deed, once it was done. The empress, Domitia Longina, was likewise said to have been complicit (Suet. Dom. 14.1; Dio 67.15.2-4). And while it could not (and still cannot) be proved that any specific senator was privy to the plot, the reaction of the Senate, as a whole, was swift and unequivocal: its members raced to the Senate House, abused the now-dead prince in the most bitter terms, then pulled down and broke whatever images of him they straightaway could lay hold of. Having accomplished so much, they ordered Domitian’s name erased from every inscription containing it, and proclaimed that all memory of him should be eradicated (Suet. Dom. 23; cf. also Pliny Pan. 52.4-5). Then, in the late afternoon of that same day, they proclaimed Marcus Cocceius Nerva, a distinguished senator, as their new emperor (Smallwood 1966: no. 15). Domitian’s biographer puts the day’s events in a nutshell: the plebs at Rome were indifferent, the soldiers were terribly upset, the senators were happy (Suet. Dom. 23.1).

Almost exactly a year later, Nerva found himself cornered by the praetorian guard. The guardsmen ordered him to surrender the murderers of Domitian, whom they immediately and viciously killed; Nerva was subsequently compelled to thank the guard for having destroyed such miscreants (Dio 68.3.3-4). Now, it is possible that this rebellion of the soldiers at Rome caused Nerva to seek a powerful ally in the military commander nearest the capital, namely, the very governor of Upper Germany, whom he had appointed a year before. It is equally conceivable, however, that that commander, in consort with other leaders of other provincial armies, had arranged for things to fall out as they did (Berriman and Todd 2001: 324-9, and especially Eck 2002; cf. also Fedeli 1989: 447-50). Be that as it may, in late October of 97 Nerva announced the adoption of Trajan, as both his son and successor. He did so standing beneath the very statue of Jupiter that just a year earlier had inspired a group of commoners unwittingly to acclaim Trajan Imperator. In these two transfers of power, we can observe those elements of Roman society which had played, and which would continue to play, a significant role in such matters: the members of the imperial household, the soldiers, the Senate, the populace at Rome.

In section 1 of this chapter, we shall examine the first two contingents (i. e., the imperial household and the soldiers) at some length as being the two groups most able, hence most likely, actually to make an emperor. On the other hand, both the people at Rome and the members of the Senate maintained firm opinions regarding the man who ruled; and their opinions, though much less likely to effect the actual crowning of a monarch, nonetheless mattered. Their tastes will therefore be considered in discussing the way in which emperors were expected to rule (below, section 2). But both in the first section and in that which follows, we shall keep an eye focused on the lack of system pervading this whole business, and thus on the continual jostling for say-so in the making of Roman emperors (for a brief, though excellent, and roughly parallel treatment of these matters, see Baharal 1996: 9-19).