The Reign of Emperor Pertinax

[OwenM]

Been feeling guilty I haven't contributed enough to this side of the site lately, so thought I'd bring up this old Roman POD - what happens if the Year of Five Emperors is averted and Pertinax is able to establish himself post-Commodus.
Either he brings some more loyal troops to him, or the Praetorian who killed him happens to miss the right moment.

I guess he would have spent more attention on institutionally rebuilding the Empire than Septimus Severus's "pay the soldiers and fuck the rest" attitude, so could result in more long-term stability. And his son is obviously obscure but doesn't seem like a Caracalla or a Geta.
But would this really be enough to do much to avert or reduce the Crisis of the Third Century?

 

[MachiavelliJr]

Been feeling guilty I haven't contributed enough to this side of the site lately, so thought I'd bring up this old Roman POD - what happens if the Year of Five Emperors is averted and Pertinax is able to establish himself post-Commodus.
Either he brings some more loyal troops to him, or the Praetorian who killed him happens to miss the right moment.

I guess he would have spent more attention on institutionally rebuilding the Empire than Septimus Severus's "pay the soldiers and fuck the rest" attitude, so could result in more long-term stability. And his son is obviously obscure but doesn't seem like a Caracalla or a Geta.
But would this really be enough to do much to avert or reduce the Crisis of the Third Century?

I don't know what he can really do to restore the links between the army and 'civil society' - by the late C2nd the army is largely recruited from, and stays on, the periphery, it moves around less, promotes a higher proportion of officers from within, and it's not surprising that those officers build up a local power-base and decide they'd be better at ruling the lot than whatever or whoever is at the centre... what can Pertinax do to fix how broken the fiscal-military state is and particularly the tendency of the Praetorians to palace coups? Move the officers around more? Build up "expeditionary" armies that are more focused on actual warfare than the Praetorians (but who could he possibly trust to command them?)

 

[LSCatilina]

I guess he would have spent more attention on institutionally rebuilding the Empire than Septimus Severus's "pay the soldiers and fuck the rest" attitude,

To be fair to Septimus Severus, that would be an awfully reductionist take on his political, military and institutional importance for the Roman Empire, the often quoted sentence being apocryphal at best, when his reign can be argued to have been the political apogee of the empire.

A lot of features we associate with the post-classical Roman Empire, although many could be understood as the result of a long evolution, can be either traced back either had cemented in his reign, namely : hereditary monarchy, final marginalization of senatorial elites to the benefit of the equestrian ones, stress on systematic judicialisation (remember that he had not a military but a legal formation), centrality of the imperial court over Roman networks, etc. Hardly a"fuck the rest" mentality.

In that, the importance of the military is clear (raising the wages for the first time since Augustus, giving them a better civilian status, using military structures to ensure civilian needs, etc.), but even more so because the traditional triple opposition between the Army, the Senate and the Emperor shifted to a dual relation in which the emperor was more and more identified afterwards as a military chief.

Another feature, which had clearly a negative and lasting influence over time would be the debasement of Roman coinage in order to face military and civilian expenses : although that wouldn't really be attributable solely to Septimus Severus as it was a steady course since Nero, his reign still saw an immediate drop in denarius actual value that himself or his successors didn't resolve, partly due to lack of any monetary theory at the time.
A different successor to the Antonine dynasty might have not underwent such practices (universally loathed in Antiquity because considered akin to counterfeiting) or at least not to the same extent. I do wonder if they'd have done a better job as Septimus did in re-establishing stability if so : the worst case scenario for the empire at this point would have been a longer, drawn-out, civil war.

Regardless of our perception of the individual, there's little way to refuse him being one of the most influential Roman emperors who brought as much stability could be hoped for in the eve of the Third Century Crisis. Blaming him for it would be comparable to blaming Richelieu or Louis XIV for the French Revolution. (And even that comparison fells short, as, overall, the reigns of some of his successors as Caracalla was actually stable enough).

what happens if the Year of Five Emperors is averted and Pertinax is able to establish himself post-Commodus.

The core of the problem resides in who was Petrinax and how he was proclaimed emperor.

Before Commodus, he was a distinguished civil servent in the city of Rome, but his military record was far from stellar as he barely avoided a mutiny and an assassination in Britain during his only real military command.
Having a priori no hand in the conspiration that killed the emperor, he was designated as his successor in order to legitimize the murder thanks to his good reputation and senatorial standing.

That...doesn't spell that a good of a political support, and rather vulnerability in face of the army and provincial networks : you mentioned the possibility of bringing in more loyal troops, but while loyalty to the imperial "legality" or the empire was real, loyalty to a person had to be earned trough a direct relation with troops (current or past), something Pertinax most definitely did not had.
The reality of it is that Pertinax was in a very vulnerable position at this pioint, not able to refuse the throne, not able to compromise with the praetorians, not able to go against the Roman supports...
It was all very well for Septimus Severus to come in as Pertinax' avenger without actually having to deal with the same issues.

While Severus was definitely not bound to succeed, Pescennius Niger had a fairly strong powerbase himself and so did Claudius Albinus, but Pertinax (or Didius Julianus, for that matter)... I must admit I don't really see *how*, at least bound realistically in the confines of the year 193. (I do think it could make an interesting AH, still).

 

[heraclius]

Clodius Albinus had stronger personal links to the elite than Septimius Severus, also being from a North African resident family of Italian origins and equestrian not senatorial descent/ rank but having served in more senior and crucial posts under Commodus than him. Had he either been in a more militarily crucial governorship than Britain and/ or nearer to Rome in 193, eg in Severus' place on the central Danube, he would have been in a better position to take control of Rome then by removing the discredited and disgracefully 'bought the Empire' candidate Julianus - or he could have won the battle with Severus outside Lyons in 197 and replaced him then. (The Severan army's charge at the battle blundered into a row of concealed pits and Severus was thrown off his horse, so they could easily have lost and Severus might have been speared as he lay on the ground and his army fled.) Had that occurred, Albinus had plenty of partisans in the Senate - or so Severus alleged after the campaign as he purged them, though this could have been exaggerated to excuse mass-executions and confiscating their wealth to re-stock the treasury.

Albinus would have been more likely to rule in the mould of Marcus Aurelius and Antoninus Pius, conciliating the Senate and selecting more senatorial as opposed to equestrian ministers and killing less opponents - or at least to have maintained the facade of 'Antonine' conciliation and respect for the traditional way of doing things and acting as a 'First Citizen', however much he really relied on new men and his own supporters who would have been more from his own, non-senatorial group of friends (and , like Severus' men, his own army colleagues and African fellow-provincials?). Both his reign and that of a surviving Pertinax would have had a different tone and would have had more of a sense of continuity of personnel with Marcus' reign , and as such would have had a better 'press' from the upper class 'literati' who provided most literary commentators / historians - Severus was to some degree targeted as being both a non-Italian and an organiser of purges that mostly hit the upper classes, and also for his seeming lack of care about behaving like a military despot not a respectable Augustan civilian.

The stories about him entering the Senate in armour not a toga and on his deathbed telling his sons only to care about keeping the army happy and keeping the peace between themselves may or may not be true, but they do at least give 'essential truths' about his priorities and blunt lack of care for the proprieties. This arguably increased the sense of a new and - to civilian traditionalists - unwelcome 'age of iron' ie deterioration from the previous 'golden'/'silver' age into an era of rule by force. Installing a new ruler from the provinces by armed rebellion had occurred in 68-9 - first by Galba from Spein, then by Vitellius from the Rhine, then by Vespasian from Judaea - but the winners had then sought to operate in the traditional manner and use propaganda etc to assure the elite that they were good Augustan traditionalists and respected the Senate; Severus apparently either did not care or gave up caring after he discovered the extent of support for Albinus behind his back in Italy in 194-7. Severus was arguably more honest, whether or not he was consciously shifting from relying on a small band of elite senators close to the Imperial House to his own personal friends (eg his Praefect and close friend from Tripolitania/ Libya, his fellow-townsman Plautianus, who then exploited his power and ended up murdered) plus the equestrian order - especially experienced military men.

Possibly the latter had more 'hands on' experience of real life and how things operated in the provinces and on the frontier than 'privileged' and 'amateur' senators, and so were more able and competent to govern in a crisis (shades of current problems with 'Tory toffs' in the UK elite??), and Severus was as such more 'meritocratic' . One biography even suggests that Commodus, partly out of fear of his murderous relatives led by his sister and cousins trying to remove him in the 180s, had this idea too and so was not just a megalomaniac and a would-be gladiator - though he was undoubtably eccentric and erratic. So possibly a shift from the small group of experienced senators who Marcus relied on to 'new men' - and more of a sense of monarchy and autocracy in the Emperor's manner of governing - would have been less likely, or have only developed later, if Albinus or Pertinax had been a long-lasting ruler in Severus' place, or if Commodus had been replaced by his brother in law Pompeianus (in his 60s like Pertinax) in 193 , when in OTL he rejected the offer of the throne after C was killed, or C had been replaced by a cousin in one of the 180s coups. Possibly Severus was even an improvement on the regime under Marcus as he brought in tough, practical, and meritocratic 'new men', more suited to an era of crisis and shortages of manpower and taxes after the 160s pandemic (more modern analogies??), and if Severus had had a more stable and less bloodthirsty son to succeed him - Caracalla is less psychotic or Geta wins the power struggle in 211-12, or even S executes Caracalla for his rumoured disloyalty in 210? - the Empire would have been stable for more decades. As it was, only the elite (and the massacred populace of Alexandria) did actually suffer under Caracalla who had considerable ability - cf the limits of the effects of hyped-up tyranny and purges under both Caligula and Domitian, whose rule outside Rome was normal and did not affect many people's lives. The 193 crisis may have seemed less of a 'game changer', more just a repeat of AD 69, had Severus been succeeded by a stable rule under his son and then either a grandson or else his wife Julia Domna 's - Syrian - kin, eg an adult and better prepared Alexander Severus c. 240??

Pertinax however had 2 problems - he was 66 in 193 and had a son with no known capability or experience, who could have been overthrown by another provincial general once he was on the throne, and P's reputed temper and brusqueness may make a coup by either resentful soldiers (the Guard had been poorly disciplined under Commodus and so resented his strict treatment of them, which probably aided whoever started the March 193 mutiny - probably Praefect Laetus) or worried ministers/ officers likelier. P had already faced one mutiny as a governor. Did he have a 'Captain Bligh' -like habit of abusing his subordinates and enforcing rules to the letter, or at least a total lack of tact, which would have made him a liability long-term?