Usurpation, Legitimacy, and the Roman Empire

This chapter examines Roman imperial power, from its inception under Augustus until the crisis of the third century. The chapter examines the contradictions of the imperial office—where the emperor was at once Republican magistrate subject to the laws and absolute monarch—and how these contradictions helped to destabilize the imperial succession, first in a series of isolated crises (69 and 193 AD), but then ultimately in virtually endemic usurpation and civil war. Finally, it explores the historiographical challenge with which the study of usurpation and civil war presents us. Civil wars are known to us through our texts, and our texts were always written in conformity with the propaganda of the victor, since criticism of living emperors was a virtual impossibility. Awareness of the problem this poses then informs the following chapter.

Ancient history · Battle · Criticism · Emperor · Empire · Historiography · Impossibility · Legitimacy · Political science · Politics · Power (physics) · Spanish Civil War · Subject (documents) · Classical Antiquity Studies · Classical Studies and Legal History · Classics · History · Law