The fields were empty, and the roads creaked with dust.
Beneath a burning summer sun, from the hazy peak of Vesuvius to the distant shimmer of the bay,
all was stillness, as though the world were waiting for the emperor to die.
At the epicenter of the quiet, in a villa ringed by olive groves and pickets of guards,
Augustus lay. For days, his mind wandered and his strength ebbed.
Then he murmured a few words, kissed his wife, and – if we can believe his biographer – received the
quiet passing for which he had always hoped. More than fourteen centuries later, when the
Roman Empire had been reduced to little more than the half-ruined city of Constantinople,
Constantine XI, the last Roman emperor, met a less peaceful end. As the Turks poured
through a breach in his capital’s ancient walls, Constantine cast his crown aside, drew his sword,
and plunged into the fighting. He was killed in the fray, and his body was never identified.
Between Augustus and Constantine XI, there were more than 150 Roman emperors. Just over half died
of more or less natural causes. Relatively few, however, were granted a peaceful end.
Leisure pursuits, for example, could turn deadly. Theodosius II died after falling from his horse
in the course of a placid ride. Basil I managed to get his belt caught in
the antlers of a stag he had just shot, and was dragged to his death when the panicked
animal revived and bolted into the woods. Performing one’s imperial duties could be
equally hazardous: Valentinian I became so enraged by the insolence
of some barbarian envoys that he suffered a cerebral hemorrhage. Even taking a nap might
be perilous, as Jovian discovered when he was suffocated by smoky braziers in his campaign tent.
Emperors were subject to a dismaying array of fatal illnesses. Antoninus Pius, who perished
after dining on alpine cheese, may have fallen victim to food poisoning. Claudius Gothicus
was carried off by a mysterious pestilence. The terrible advent of bubonic plague nearly killed
Justinian; and although John VI survived the Black Death, the epidemic took one of his sons.
About 40% of Roman emperors were assassinated or executed. Although at least one emperor was
killed by the husband of a woman he had seduced, violent ends tended to be politically motivated.
Notorious cases include Caligula – set upon by a party of praetorians in a passageway beneath
the Palatine – and Caracalla, stabbed in the back as he relieved himself by the roadside.
Assassins discovered the aptly-named Michael the Drunkard lying unconscious after a drinking bout,
and saw fit to hack his hands off before dispatching him.
This was merciful in comparison with the fate of Andronicus I, who – after trying to
escape with his wife and one of his mistresses – was literally torn to pieces by a mob.
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The Byzantines made a habit of blinding or mutilating deposed emperors.
Though not necessarily fatal – Justinian II, for example, had his nose cut off, but returned to
power a few years later with a golden proboscis and a thirst for vengeance – this could be an
effective death sentence. After her son plotted against her, Empress Irene had his eyes put out
so savagely that he died soon after. At least two other emperors met similar fates.
Although swords and daggers were the usual instruments of imperial demise, at least one
emperor – Claudius – was poisoned, reportedly by a dish of mushrooms. Poison, however,
was not always effective: Commodus succumbed unconscionably slowly to a dose given in his wine,
and it was found necessary to strangle him. Subtlety, in any case, was not always desirable.
The people of Rome stoned an emperor who tried to flee in advance of a barbarian invasion, and the
Crusaders hurled an emperor who had outlived his usefulness from the top of a tall column.
A remarkable number of imperial personages met their ends in baths. Constantine’s wife Fausta
was suffocated in a sealed bathhouse, Constans II was beaten to death with a bucket in a sauna,
and Romanus III was drowned on his wife’s orders as he lay soaking in a tub.
There were quiet assassinations: Numerian seems to have been suffocated so covertly that nobody
noticed until his closed litter began to reek of decay. The emperor Heraclius, by contrast, is said
to have personally executed his predecessor Phocas on the deck of his flagship. Rather less publicly,
John Tzimiskes crept into his predecessor’s bedroom and murdered him as he slept.
The teenaged Gordian III may have been the first emperor to die in battle,
though a disgruntled officer might have struck the fatal blow. No such ambiguity surrounds Decius,
who was cut down with his son and army in a Balkan swamp. Maxentius drowned in the Tiber during a
retreat, Julian was felled by a Persian spear, and Valens burned in a hut on the field of Adrianople.
After an equally disastrous defeat half a millennium later, the skull of Nicephorus I became
the favorite drinking cup of the Bulgar Khan. Nero ended his own life in a villa just
outside Rome, famously lamenting “what an artist dies in me!”
His successor Otho stabbed himself in the heart, rather than continue a civil war.
The third case of imperial suicide is suspicious, since the emperor – Valentinian II, found hanged
in his chamber – was involved in a furious dispute with a general who had both motive
and opportunity to murder him. A few other imperial deaths
are equally mysterious. Carus was apparently struck by lightning outside the Persian capital.
And according to different authors, Valerian – the only emperor to perish in captivity – was
either flayed alive by the Persians, choked on molten gold, or died of natural causes.
To review: slightly over half of the Roman emperors from Augustus to Constantine XI
died of natural causes. Roughly 40% were assassinated, executed, or otherwise murdered. A
half-dozen died in battle. At least two committed suicide. One was apparently struck by lightning.
A few Roman emperors died in childhood, but a surprising number – including John VI, who lived
to be 91 – reached a ripe old age. Although imperial life expectancy varied considerably
from period to period, with a noticeable trough in the assassination-prone third century, the average
across the whole millennium and a half of imperial history was about 51 years.
The “average” emperor reigned just under 11 years. Leaving aside emperors who retired, combining that
figure with our estimate for life expectancy gives an average age of about 40 at accession.
Most emperors, in other words, came to power after they had already passed the gauntlet
of childhood diseases that killed nearly half of all Romans before adolescence.
Remarkably, an average life expectancy in the early fifties
is about what we would expect for any group of Roman men who had survived adolescence. Emperors,
in other words, were much more likely to be assassinated that the average Roman;
but the average Roman wasn’t likely to be much longer-lived.
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