As I said, I’m ranking all the Roman emperors (until 476 AD) – and between my Top 10 Best Roman Emperors and twenty special mentions, I’ve ranked the thirty emperors I consider as ‘good’ emperors, right up to the dividing line between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ emperors or what I’ve dubbed my Pertinax-Thrax line.
However, the good emperors don’t quite end there – it’s time to take pause and squeeze out a few honorable mentions for imperial claimants that don’t quite have the same authenticity or legitimacy as the emperors in my top ten or special mentions, but which I would still rank as ‘good’ (albeit in my x-tier or ‘wild’ tier).
Yes – we’re talking usurpers or at least those imperial claimants generally labelled as usurpers (with the notable exception of my first honorable mention). Not surprisingly, I have generally ranked usurpers dishonorable mention as ‘bad’ emperors – usurpers by definition tend to be ‘bad’ – but there were literally a couple of ‘good’ usurpers I have ranked as honorable mention. Yes – that’s a spoiler that I was only able to squeeze out three honorable mentions (my first honorable mention and two usurpers).
The term usurper itself is to some extent a question of degree in the Roman Empire, with the primary distinction being between successful usurpers and unsuccessful usurpers – the former upholding their claim as emperor, and the latter, well, not doing so, usually also ending with their defeat and death.
“A large number of emperors commonly considered as legitimate began their rule as usurpers, revolting against the previous legitimate emperor”.
Indeed, usurpation and civil war tended to be the order of the day for the Roman empire. While the imperial government itself was rarely called into question, “individual emperors often faced unending challenges in the form of usurpation and perpetual civil wars”.
“From the rise of Augustus, the first Roman emperor, in 27 BC to the sack of Rome in AD 455, there were over a hundred usurpations or attempted usurpations (an average of one usurpation or attempt about every four years). From the murder of Commodus in 192 until the fifth century, there was scarcely a single decade without succession conflicts and civil war”.
It didn’t help that “true legitimizing structures and theories were weak, or wholly absent, in the Roman Empire, and there were no true objective legal criteria for being acclaimed emperor beyond acceptance by the Roman army” – or even just part of the Roman army, the usual mechanism for usurpers being the legions they led.
As I said at the outset of ranking all the emperors, there is the issue of whom I rank as emperors – even with my ground rule of only ranking the emperors of the ‘classical empire’ prior to 476 AD – given the list of claimants to that title. As historian Adrian Goldsworthy points out, that’s a list which is likely never to be complete or exhaustive, given the paucity of the contemporary historical record and that we are still finding ‘imperial’ coins minted in the name of new or unknown claimants.
So I’ve gone by Wikipedia’s list of Roman emperors, although I reserved the right to consider the entries noted to be of more dubious legitimacy in further honorable or dishonorable mentions, hence these honorable mentions.
As noted previously, “the main factor that distinguishes usurpers from legitimate Roman emperors is their degree of success”. The Wikipedia list reflects this, operating on a collection of inclusion criteria – such as imperial claimants “whose power across the empire became, or from the beginning was, absolute and who ruled undisputed are treated as legitimate emperors”, “imperial claimants who were proclaimed emperors by another, legitimate, senior emperor, or who were recognized by a legitimate senior emperor”, and “imperial claimants who achieved the recognition of the Roman Senate” or “the possession and control of Rome itself”.
With the exception of my first honorable mention, these honorable mentions are for those entries in the Wikipedia list which are noted as being of “ambiguous legitimacy” or “varying ascribed status”. As the notes to the list clarify, “unless otherwise noted to be some other ambiguity, the emperors marked to be of ambiguous legitimacy are those who fulfill one or more of the inclusion criteria above, but who are not universally regarded by scholars to count as legitimate. In most cases, such figures are those who held power only briefly, and/or who in times of more than one emperor held one of the capitals but never achieved the full recognition of the other emperor(s)”. As for “the junior co-emperors marked as being of varying ascribed status, they are “figures, mostly children, who are usually not counted as ‘true’ emperors given their submissive status to the senior emperor but are still present in some lists of rulers”.