The Roman Imperial Succession

An investigation of how a man could become a Roman emperor, and the failure to create an enduring, consistent system for selecting the next emperor.

John D. Grainger analyses the Roman imperial succession, demonstrating that the empire organized by Augustus was fundamentally flawed in the method it used to find emperors. Augustus's system was a mixture of heredity, senatorial, and military influences, and these were generally antagonistic. Consequently, the Empire went through a series of ...