One reads with something like amazement that the successful conspirators, instead of gladly announcing that they had rid Rome of such a brute and tyrant, deliberated anxiously how they should proceed. So blind was the attachment of the troops to their paymaster, and of the common citizens to any generous provider of games, that they concealed the deed. Commodus had himself fought 735 times in the public amphitheatre, and on those performances alone had spent 200,000,000 drachmas. The temper of the demoralized people and soldiers was uncertain, and they decided to put the Empire at once in the hands of a strong soldier.
In the romantic story of the accession of the various Empresses of Rome there are few cases so dramatic as that which introduces the next Empress in the series. There was living in Rome at the time an experienced commander, in his sixtieth year, of the name of Pertinax. His father had kept a kind of tavern in a village of Liguria. The son had obtained some education, and rapidly climbed the ladder of promotion. He had married Flavia Titiana, the accomplished daughter of a very wealthy and distinguished Senator. Himself enamoured of Cornificia, the sister of Marcus Aurelius, he had overlooked the vivacity of his wife, and she had at one time attracted comment by her open regard for a musician. At the time of the murder of Commodus, Pertinax was Prefect of Rome. He retired to bed on that last night of the year 192 with no suspicion of the great events that were happening in the Domus Vectiliana, to which, it seems, Commodus had gone.
In the middle of the night he was awakened with the message that the captain of the Prætorian Guards wished to see him. He calmly said that he had for some time expected to be executed by Commodus, and he continued to lie, in quiet dignity, when Lætus entered to tell him that they offered him the Empire. He begged Lætus to abandon his unseemly joke, and carry out his orders. He was at last convinced that Commodus was dead, and, through the darkness of the stormy winter night, they made their way to the camp. They announced to the guards that Commodus had died of apoplexy, and that Pertinax was submitted to be chosen by them as Emperor. The soldiers listened with no enthusiasm. Under the license of the reign of Commodus they had been permitted to take the most extraordinary liberties, and they dreaded the accession of a commander. The news had, however, spread by this time through the city. People crowded into the torch-lit streets, and poured out toward the camp, hailing the name of Pertinax and execrating that of Commodus. A promise of 3,000 denarii to each man overcame the last opposition of the Guards, and they coldly consented to the choice. In the Senate, too, there was hesitation. “We see behind you,” said the consul Falco, “the ministers of Commodus’s crimes, Lætus and Marcia.” Pertinax himself, indeed, was still very reluctant; but the Senate urged the Imperial power upon him, and the new year dawned at Rome upon a people angrily scattering the statues and memorials of Commodus, and expressing a wild rejoicing over the advent of its new ruler.
Titiana never bore the title of Augusta, and we may dismiss very briefly her few months of residence in the palace. The Senate offered the title of Augusta to Titiana, and that of Cæsar to their son, but Pertinax refused both. “Let the boy earn it,” he said of his son; and Dio says that he kept the title from his wife, either because of the insecurity of his position, or “because he would not let his lascivious consort stain the name of Augusta.” Titiana was evidently not the kind of woman to co-operate with Pertinax in his reforms, and she probably shared the disdain with which her friends regarded his ways. Although he at once began to undo the evil wrought by Commodus—to banish the informers, regulate the taxes, and purify the administration of justice—he alienated the Romans by passing to an extreme of sobriety. The palace he purified in very summary fashion. He had the whole apparatus of Commodus’s luxury sold by auction, and Rome looked on with delight as the three hundred pretty boys and three hundred choice concubines, the gold and silver plate, the precious vases and silks and chariots and wonderful machines of the Sybarite were exposed to their view. But Pertinax carried his economy too far. Patricians told with contempt that he would put half a lettuce on the Imperial board, and would make a hare last three days; the people missed the unceasing stimulation of the amphitheatre; the soldiers chafed at the discipline he sought to enforce. Within three months of his remarkable accession to power Pertinax was assassinated by the Guards, and Titiana fell back into the obscurity from which she had momentarily emerged.
Another Empress of a day, and one that came to the throne under no less romantic circumstances, claims our attention for a moment before we pass on to a more imposing figure.
It was on the 28th of March, 193, that the soldiers brutally assassinated Pertinax. On the rumour of trouble Pertinax had sent his father-in-law, Sulpicianus, to secure tranquillity in the camp. As he lingered there the soldiers returned with the dripping head of the Emperor, and he recognized that the throne was vacant. With a callousness that is almost incredible, but is fully attested, he at once made an offer of money to the soldiers for the Imperial power. It occurred to some of the soldiers that a higher bid might be secured, and they announced from the rampart of their camp, in which they had enclosed themselves, that the throne was, virtually, on sale. In particular, they sent word to one of the wealthiest citizens, Didius Julianus, and invited him to make an offer. Whether or no it be true that he yielded to the vanity of his wife and daughter—he does not seem to have needed pressure—Julianus went to the camp, and made a higher offer than that of Sulpicianus.
It was the early evening, and a crowd had gathered to witness the appalling spectacle of the sale of the Empire. Julianus pointed out that his rival was the father-in-law of the man they had killed, and might be expected to have some design of revenge. The soldiers admitted Julianus by a ladder, and the two Senators made bids against each other, the soldiers on the wall announcing their offers. At length Julianus made an offer equal to more than £200 to each soldier, and he was greeted as Emperor. Under the close guard of the soldiers he was conducted, amid an angry people, to the Senate, and forced upon the Senators. They then concluded their bargain by conducting him to the palace, and the vain old man had time to reflect on the extraordinary situation he had suddenly reached. His wife, Manlia Scantilla, and daughter, Didia Clara, joined him “in fear and concern” (the “Historia Augusta” says), and he finished the day with a prolonged entertainment.
His wife and daughter were decorated with the title of Augusta on the morrow, but they soon found that Julianus had squandered his comfortable wealth on a dangerous bauble. Not only did the Roman people jeer at him whenever he appeared, but the news soon came that the distant legions were aflame with anger, and were about to march on Rome to wrest the Empire from him. Presently he heard that the commander of the troops in Pannonia had begun his march at the head of a formidable army. Julianus first had him declared a public enemy, and sent men to assassinate him; then he offered to share the Empire with him. Severus and his hardened troops passed relentlessly over the Alps, and proceeded along the plains of Italy. Julianus stung the demoralized soldiers who had sold him the Empire into some pretence of resistance, threw up earthworks in the suburbs, endeavoured to train his elephants for the fight, and, as a last resort, fortified the palace. But his effeminate troops quailed before the seasoned legions from Germany, and, when Severus reached Rome, Julianus found himself deserted. The Senate decreed his death, and he was beheaded in the palace which he had enjoyed, at the price of his fortune and his life, for sixty-six days. And the two broken-hearted Augustæ laid down their dignity, and bore the body of Didius Julianus to the tomb of his ancestors.
Marcia, too, had ended her semi-imperial career with a violent death. After the assassination of Commodus she had married the chamberlain Eclectus, with whom she had long been intimate. Eclectus became the chamberlain of Pertinax, and perished, not ignobly, with his master. Marcia did not long survive her husband, however. Julianus had promised the soldiers that he would avenge the murder of Commodus, and he sought the remaining members of the conspiracy, Lætus, Narcissus, and Marcia, and put them to death.