Thanks SL. Aurelian remains one of my favorite emperors (not a hard choice, IMHO).
It’s perhaps not surprising that often the greatest leaders have arisen at or very near the beginning of great states — for if they don’t, the state never becomes great. :’) Augustus was a delegator and blessed with a good friend in Agrippa, who was one of the more competent (probably not great) military minds of their times. And his stepsons Drusus and Tiberius were probably the best generals who were brothers the Empire ever produced, they established Roman dominion over the Rhine. Augustus completed the transition of the Roman political system into one with a permanent executive branch.
Tiberius in his turn had a series of advisers of varying quality, and managed to hang on through at least one assassination plot (Sejanus). Caligula by contrast never seemed to maintain any trustworthy staff, probably because he wasn’t worthy of trust himself. Claudius settled on two capable advisors and executive assistants, one of whom prevented a mutiny and kept the invasion force on track to Britain. Having two meant being able to ensure their loyalty to him and competition between them maximized their output. Nero was in the shadow of his own mother, both of them were loons, and after he had her killed (seems like it was aboard a vessel), and had his wife (Claudius’ daughter) killed, and the city burned down, he had burned off anyone and everyone who might have been loyal to him.
The months of anarchy that followed ended with the ascension (usurpation) of Vespasian, the first of a number of military leaders to seize power in Roman history, and the final establishment of the precedent of dynastic rule.
Another interesting what-if is what would have happened had Aurelian lived? Generally, and considering his remarkable feat of restoring the Roman Empire as it seemed ready to fall apart, it’s tempting to imagine what he could have done with a long reign.
Specifically, I wonder how his invasion of Persia would have turned out?
It’s a shame that the sources are so poor for that time period, and it’s a shame that someone as remarkable as Aurelian is known only to Roman history enthusiasts.
You can't really call, IMO, the ascension of Vespasian a usurpation. This implies he took the throne from a "legitimate" emperor. Which again implies there is some well-known or accepted premise by which legitimacy is determined. Vespasian was the last of the "Four Emperors," and none of the other three had any real legitimacy either.
The Empire's biggest structural problem, IMO, is that they never came up with any such principle. Emperors came to power by all kinds of methods: inheritance, real or puppet election by the Senate, coup, civil war, etc. None of these was generally recognized as more legitimate than the others.
This had (at least) two great structural defects.
No Emperor could ever be sure of his generals' loyalty. He had to always be concerned about any competent general using his popularity to overthrow him. After all, that's how he or perhaps his dad got the job.
So emperors were always (and very logically) concerned about competent generals. Who they often executed or did not fully support. See Justinian and Belisarius. Although it is likely Belisarius was always loyal.
Meanwhile, overly successful generals often had a choice only between revolt or execution by the paranoid emperor.
OTOH, the primogeniture inheritance of the later European crowns, while it led to its own absurdities, allowed competent generals to be trusted by their monarchs, since they couldn't ascend the throne in any case. With the pretty much unique exception of Cromwell, and even he didn't call himself King. Louis XIV never had to worry that Turenne would displace him as King.
So Rome had civil war, over and over, every decade or two, through most of its imperial history. Think of what they could have accomplished with that energy turned outward, rather than inward, by a coherent rule of succession.