"Career Span of Roman Emperors " Topic

Having just picked up a copy of Chris Scarre's Chronicle of The Roman Emperors I was mulling over the duration of each Emperor in office and did some quick math.

It appears that including joint rulers from Augustus to Romulus Augustulas the average lasted 8.2 years.

If you exclude those who lasted a year or less (25 of them) it goes up to 11.7 years.

Finally, if you made it into double figures then on average you would last 18.7 years.

Still a pretty high risk job!

I often pondered this.

Since 'declaring yourself emperor' was often a decision made for you, by disgruntled soldiers, there is a 4th category – the ones who never got to be Emperor at all.

Many 'Usurpers' are known only though the find of coins with their names on – one IIRC as a result of the find of one coin.

High Risk indeed. Heil Me!

Pat

My understanding, in the early days, a man was made emperor to handle a certain issue or problem and then stepped down when the problem was solved. Permenant emperors didn't come along until Julius came along.

And it was a high risk position, i think i remember that only about 2 died a natural death.

Raynman, that's Dictator you are thinking of – a constitutional Position.

The 'all Roman Emperors get murdered' is a slightly overdone Trope. Given that they were primarily military leaders, you expect a lot of Violent Deaths – but let's take the 12 """"Emperors""""" everyone can name – Julius to Domitian. Much of the stories of murder seem nonsensical – the idea that after 50 years of happy marriage Livia would poison Augustus is simply silly. Similarly, Tiberius was allegedly hurried along. Vespasian and Titus clearly died perfectly natural deaths…. half of the 'Murders' Suetonius tells of are just gossip.

And wile you could hold onto the gig, you were living like a bandido!

Pat

You also have to take into account many of the emperors were older men when elevated to that position.

And life span wasn't really as long back then. Although if you made it past a certain age it wasn't that much shorter.

Still if you had kidney problems there was no dialysis, if you had heart disease there were no statin drugs and if you received a nasty cut there were no antibiotics.

'..received a nasty cut' – were you thinking there of Julius Caesar?

A deep cut would be a problem,superficial not so much.Peoples immune systems were much heartier because there were no antibiotics.Also,they did know of some antiseptics, such as silver.

'..received a nasty cut' – were you thinking there of Julius Caesar?

And Nero merely started a nice bonfire. :)

Claudius II Gothicus died of plague. Nothing trivial.