In the eyes of a lot of the ‘bad’ emperors, of course, the Senate were a bunch of irritating upstarts with no formal power but a whole lot of ego who needed to be both pandered to and controlled while it was he, the emperor, who represented, possessed and embodied Roman power and prestige. It is this clash of ideologies and perspectives which quite often led to the other type of uniquely Roman imperial murder: murdering an emperor.
