Roman Emperors

Ref Wikipedia: The Roman emperors were the rulers of the Roman Empire dating from the granting of the title of Augustus to Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus by the Roman Senate in 27 BC. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Roman_emperors.

The fall of the Western Roman Empire, and so the end of a separate list of emperors below, is dated either from the de facto date of 476 when Romulus Augustulus was deposed by the Germanic Herulians led by Odoacer or the de jure date of 480, on the death of Julius Nepos, when Eastern Emperor Zeno ended recognition of a separate Western court.

The line of emperors continued until the death of Constantine XI Palaiologos during the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, when the remaining territories were captured by the Ottoman Empire under Mehmed II.[4]

Counting all individuals to have possessed the full imperial title, including those who did not technically rule in their own right (e.g. co-emperors or minors during regencies), this list contains 194 emperors and 6 ruling empresses, for a total of 200 monarchs.

Data Inspection

Looking at the data there is a notes variable with some information largely about the reliability of the dates. 3 records according to the notes were born BC and have “BCE” formatted birth dates:

notes n
birth is BCE. Assign negative for correct ISO 8601 dates. 2
birth is BCE. Assign negative for correct ISO 8601 dates. Possibly assassinated by praetorian guard 1
birth, reign.start are BCE. Assign negative for correct ISO 8601 dates. Cause may have been Natural 1

To make this easier to work with I am going to ignore rows with BCE dates so that will make the emperors on this list all born in AD. This drops the df down to 64 observations from 68.

Questions

Looking at the list of AD emperors, it would be interesting to know the following:

  • The ages of each emperor when their reign started and when it ended
  • The longest and shortest reigns
  • The cause of death and in the event of an assassination, who killed them
  • How they came to power
  • Are the guys that seized power are they more likely to have been assassinated or executed???

Most emperors it seems start their reign between the age of 26-50.

Emperors who ended their reign by committing suicide die youngest

The lowest median age of an emporers reign by cause of death is suicide. Interestingly there is a big difference in the spread of reign end deaths for assasinations vs executions. The median is similar for both but it looks like emperors came a cropper by execution more often than not within the 40-50 age group.

Emperors that were assasinated or executed had the shortest median reigns

Cause n Med Reign Length Med Reign Start Age Med Reign End Age
Natural Causes 21 10 43 57
Assassination 19 4 35 46
Execution 8 2 44 46
Suicide 5 14 36 37
Died in Battle 4 4 32 41
Captivity 1 7 58 65

Ignoring the chap who died in captivity which we can treat as an outlier, the longest reigning emperors typically died of natural causes which makes a lot of sense. Natural causes and Assassination are the most common causes of death with the assassination median age for suicide being the lowest at 37.

The emperors executed or assassinated have the lowest median reign length suggesting that their goose was cooked pretty much when they started the job!

5 of the top 10 emperors in terms of reign length started around the age of 40

Well over half the emperors appointed by the Praetorian Guard or the army were executed or assasinated

The Praetorian Guard (Latin: cohortes praetorianae) was an elite unit of the Imperial Roman army whose members served as personal bodyguards to the Roman emperors. During the era of the Roman Republic, the Praetorians served as a small escort force for high-ranking officials such as senators or provincial governors like procurators, and also serving as bodyguards for high ranking officers within the Roman legions. Ref Wikipedia

Path to Power % Executed
Appointment by Praetorian Guard 66.7%
Appointment by Army 57.1%
Birthright 46.9%
Appointment by Senate 42.9%
Seized Power 33.3%
Appointment by Emperor 25.0%

Fairplay to the Praetorian Guard….if they appointed you, if you ended up getting killed they would end up taking it on the chin…and if emperor appointed, the next guy would off you as well

Killed by…
rise Court Officials Other Emperor Own Army Praetorian Guard Senate Usurper
Appointment by Army 0.0% 50.0% 25.0% 25.0% 0.0% 0.0%
Appointment by Emperor 0.0% 100.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0%
Appointment by Praetorian Guard 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 100.0% 0.0% 0.0%
Appointment by Senate 0.0% 33.3% 0.0% 66.7% 0.0% 0.0%
Birthright 6.7% 40.0% 26.7% 13.3% 6.7% 6.7%
Purchase 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 100.0% 0.0%
Seized Power 0.0% 100.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0%

Although generally the Praetorian Guard and other emperors were responsible for a lot of the executions, it seems that if you were appointed by them you’d typically be killed by them / the incoming emperor as well. Not a great advert for job or more importantly life security if they fancied you as a candidate.

I would assume that if you were given power by birthright and ended up dead by execution that another emperor would be responsible and that seems to be the case.