after the assassination of Commodus in 192 CE, the Augustan template collapsed. The number of emperors is one obvious sign of that. In the nearly 180 years between 14 and 192 CE – apart from the single brief interlude of civil war after the death of Nero, when there were three unsuccessful claimants to the throne – there were just fourteen emperors. In the hundred years between 193 and 293 CE there were more than seventy (the list is elastic depending on how many unmemorable co-emperors, usurpers or ‘pretenders’ you decide to include).
