12. The Bodyguards Who Auctioned Off an Empire
In the first century AD, Augustus did away with the increasingly dysfunctional and unworkable Roman Republic, and replaced it with the Roman Empire. To safeguard himself and his new state, Augustus created a special military unit to protect him, that came to be known as the Praetorian Guard. Over the next three centuries, its members would act as the emperor’s bodyguards, a secret police, and imperial enforcers and executioners. They would also increasingly come to act as kingmakers, making and unmaking emperors at whim.
Their most brazen act of kingmaking occurred in 192, after they assassinated the emperor Commodus. His successor, Pertinax, gave the Praetorians a bonus of 3000 denarii, each, but it did not stop them from murdering him three months later. The Praetorians then auctioned off the imperial throne to the highest bidder. That was just too much: the army of the Danube proclaimed Septimius Severus emperor. He marched on Rome, seized the city, and fired all the Praetorians, replacing them with men from his own legions.
