Pertinax, a short-lived Emperor of Rome

The reign of Pertinax as Roman Emperor was, at 86 days, one of the shortest of any Emperor. It took place during one of the Empire’s frequent periods of chaos and gave rise to one of the most extraordinary and shameful episodes in the history of Rome.

The rise of Pertinax

Helvius Pertinax was born on 1^st August 126 in Milan, of humble origins. He worked as a schoolmaster before joining the army and becoming a centurion. He distinguished himself in various theatres of war, including Britain and against the Parthians, before rising to the highest military and civil commands under Marcus Aurelius and Commodus, being consul on two occasions.

The reign of Commodus ended in violence with his murder at the hands of a group of conspirators who included his mistress. They succeeded in their prime aim of removing the Emperor, but took no steps to put anyone in his place. The murder took place on 31^st December 192, and on New Year’s Day they approached the nearest owner of a safe pair of hands they could find, namely Pertinax. He made the mistake of accepting the job.

Pertinax was 66 years old at the time, which made him a very old man by the standards of ancient Rome. It might have been that the conspirators chose someone who commanded respect but who could, in theory, be easily moulded to follow the wishes of the people who put him there. There is an interesting parallel here to the events of the year 41, when Caligula (to whom Commodus bore many similarities) was succeeded by his elderly uncle Claudius on the whim of Caligula’s murderers.

The wrong moves for a supposedly puppet emperor

However, Pertinax had no intention of being anyone’s puppet and set about his duties as Emperor in the manner of a new broom sweeping clean. Many people with an army background must have been disgusted at the way Commodus had conducted himself and allowed the Praetorian Guard to become sloppy and ill-disciplined. Pertinax sought to deal with the sloppiness he encountered from day one.

The Praetorian Guard was supposed to be the cream of the army whose reward was to form the Emperor’s personal guard; however, under Commodus this was far from the case. He had given himself up to a life of pleasure and extreme vanity, seeing himself as a latter-day Hercules who even performed in the amphitheatre as a gladiator, having made sure that his opponents only had wooden swords with which to defend themselves. His closest companions in the Praetorian Guard had been highly rewarded and been allowed to do whatever they wished.

Pertinax aimed to stop all that and immediately tried to impose harsh discipline on the army, and especially the Praetorian Guard. Not surprisingly, his efforts were greatly resented. He would in any case have been hard pressed to be popular, given that the murder of Commodus had been occasioned by a palace revolution in which the Guard had played no part. They had therefore been presented with a fait accompli. Anyone taking his place was always going to have an impossible job in being accepted, and for Pertinax to set about reforming the situation as he did was simply asking for trouble.

Trouble came on 28^th March 193 when 300 members of the Guard stormed the imperial palace and, when Pertinax tried to face them down, murdered him.

And the next?

Like the murderers of Commodus, the Guard had nobody in mind to take the place of Pertinax, but they knew that they wanted somebody to continue to pay them at the rate they had been used to, or preferably much more, so that they could return to the “good old days” of luxury and laziness. They therefore made it clear that the job of Emperor was open to the highest bidder and began a virtual auction of the Roman Empire.

The winner was an exceptionally wealthy Roman called Didius Julianus, who had absolutely no qualities that fitted him for the job. Fortunately he was soon overthrown by the next strong Emperor, namely Septimius Severus, who took over in June 193.

Clearly Pertinax should never have allowed himself to become Emperor, although for a military man of his distinction it would probably have been difficult to turn down the job of the most powerful man in the known world. However, he should have seen that he had no chance of succeeding under the circumstances and stepped aside in favour of someone else. It was his tragedy that he did not.

© John Welford