In that whole 503-year period of Roman imperial rule in the West, forty-nine percent of emperors were murdered. And another nine percent took their own lives after being overthrown in order to avoid being murdered, which brings us to a massive fifty-eight percent of emperors having violent and unhappy ends. Nine percent died in unknown circumstances so that number might be even higher. Just 24.6 percent of all the Roman emperors managed to die in their beds.3 Those stats are genuinely staggering to look at, but it’s important to remember that the second half of the Roman Empire, from 283 CE
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