Information about Five Good Emperors

The Five Good Emperors is a term used by the 18th century historian, Edward Gibbon, in The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. The term was first used by Niccolò Machiavelli in Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio, Discourses on the First Ten Books of Titus Livy (Book I, Chapter 10). According to Gibbon, they were five consecutive emperors of the Roman Empire who ruled from 96 to 180: Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius. Gibbon believed that this was a time when "the Roman Empire was governed by absolute power, under the guidance of wisdom and virtue." (I, 78) Gibbon believed these benevolent dictators and their moderate policies were unusual and contrast their more tyrannical and oppressive successors (their predecessors are not covered by Gibbon). The five emperors are sometimes called the Nervan-Antonian Dynasty, which is actually a conflation of the Nervo-Trajanic and Antonine dynasties, the latter including Commodus.

Among the Roman emperors, the period of the five good emperors was particularly notable for the peaceful method of succession. Each emperor chose his successor by adopting a hand-picked, competent heir, which established a bond legally as strong as that of kinship and thus technically respected the customary — not constitutional — dynastic principle, thus preventing the political turmoil associated with the succession both before and after this period. ^[1] The naming by Marcus Aurelius of his son Commodus as heir proved to be an unfortunate choice, and is considered by some historians (notably Gibbon) to mark the start of the Empire's decline ^[2].

Historical evaluation

From Edward Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'':

If a man were called to fix the period in the history of the world during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous, he would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus. The vast extent of the Roman Empire was governed by absolute power, under the guidance of virtue and wisdom. The armies were restrained by the firm but gentle hand of four successive emperors, whose characters and authority commanded respect. The forms of the civil administration were carefully preserved by Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian and the Antonines, who delighted in the image of liberty, and were pleased with considering themselves as the accountable ministers of the laws. Such princes deserved the honour of restoring the republic had the Romans of their days been capable of enjoying a rational freedom.

However, more recent historians, while agreeing with many of the details of this analysis, would not entirely agree with Gibbon's praise of this period. There were more people under the rule of these emperors than the few affluent individuals whose lives are mentioned or recorded in the historical record. A large fraction of the rest were farmers or their dependents, who lived their lives always at the whim of avaricious government officials, or unrestrained bandits, no less during the reign of these "Good Emperors" than before or after. The extent to which these people suffered or were happy continues to be a subject of historical debate. At any rate, not only people under Roman rule were romanized, many 'barbarian' (e.g. Germanic) tribes either volunteered to become Romans (e.g. as foederati) or, after conquering part of the crumbling empire, promptly became Romanized, proving the attraction of the Roman way of life by contemporary standards.

Timeline

References

Roman Emperors by Epoch
see also: List of Roman Emperors · Concise list of Roman Emperors · Roman Empire

Principate	Crisis of the 3rd century	Dominate	Division	Successors
Julio-Claudian dynasty Four Emperors (68–69) Flavian dynasty Nervan-Antonian dynasty Five Emperors (192–193) Severan dynasty	Barracks Emperors Illyrian Emperors Thirty Tyrants Gallic Emperors Britannic Emperors	Tetrarchies Constantinian dynasty Valentinian dynasty Theodosian dynasty	Western Roman Emperors Eastern Roman Emperors	Ostrogothic Kingdom of Italy Holy Roman Emperors Byzantine Emperors