Nerva
Nerva was almost 66 years old when the Roman Senate proclaimed him emperor on the 18th of September 96. He had spent a lifetime in imperial service and almost no time in the public eye. He was old, childless, and weak in health. To his contemporaries, he looked like an unlikely man to rule the empire. Yet the Senate chose him within hours of learning that Domitian had been assassinated in his own palace.
This was something Rome had never quite done before. The Senate itself selected a new emperor, rather than rubber-stamping a choice made by a dead ruler's will, an army, or the Praetorian Guard. Why would a body of senators reach for a man like Nerva? And how did a reign of barely fifteen months come to be remembered as the start of something the Romans would look back on as a golden stretch of good government?
The answers run through a conspiracy under Nero, a midnight palace murder, a hostage crisis at the imperial residence, and a single adoption that would shape Rome for decades. Born Marcus Cocceius Nerva, he would die of natural causes a year and a few months after taking power. What he did in between, and what was done to him, is the subject of what follows.
Marcus Cocceius Nerva was born in the village of Narni, about 50 kilometers north of Rome. His father, also named Marcus Cocceius Nerva, had been a suffect consul under Caligula, who reigned from 37 to 41. His mother was Sergia Plautilla, daughter of the senator Gaius Octavius Laenas. The exact year of his birth is uncertain. He was born on the 8th of November, but ancient sources give the year as either 30 or 35.
Cassius Dio described Nerva as an Italiot, a Greek colonist living in Italy, without naming his province. Aurelius Victor instead reported that he came from Crete. Whatever his precise origins, the Cocceii were not patrician Julio-Claudians. Like Vespasian, founder of the Flavian dynasty, Nerva belonged to a newer Italian nobility and was plebeian by rank.
The family still ranked among the most esteemed political houses of the late Republic and early Empire, taking consulships in each generation. Nerva's direct ancestors on his father's side, all named Marcus Cocceius Nerva, had moved in imperial circles since the time of Augustus. His great-grandfather was consul in 36 BC and Governor of Asia in the same year. His grandfather, a personal friend of Tiberius, joined the emperor during his seclusion on Capri from the year 23 and died in 33.
The Cocceii were tied to the Julio-Claudians by marriage. Sergia Plautilla's brother Octavius Laenas married Rubellia Bassa, a great-granddaughter of Tiberius. Nerva himself had at least one attested sister, Cocceia, who married Lucius Salvius Otho Titianus. That man was the brother of the emperor Otho, a connection that would later sit awkwardly beside Nerva's loyalty to the Flavians.
Nerva was praetor-elect in the year 65 and seems never to have pursued the usual administrative or military career. He moved through imperial circles as a diplomat and strategist instead. As an advisor to Nero, he helped detect and expose the Pisonian conspiracy of 65. His precise role in the investigation is unknown, but his reward matched that of Nero's guard prefect Tigellinus. He received triumphal honors, normally reserved for military victories, and the right to place his statues throughout the palace.
The poet Martial recorded that Nero prized Nerva's literary talent, hailing him as the "Tibullus of our time". Another figure in Nero's entourage was Vespasian, an old general who had won triumphs in the 40s. Vespasian appears to have befriended Nerva, and may have asked him to watch over his youngest son Domitian when he left for the Jewish war in 67.
Nero's suicide on the 9th of June 68 ended the Julio-Claudian line and opened the chaotic Year of the Four Emperors. Galba, Otho, and Vitellius rose and fell in turn, until Vespasian's accession on the 21st of December 69. Where Nerva stood during 69 is almost unknown. Despite the fact that Otho was his brother-in-law, he seems to have been one of the earliest and strongest backers of the Flavians.
For services that went unrecorded, Vespasian rewarded Nerva with a consulship early in his reign, in 71. This was a striking honor. It came early under the new regime and it was an ordinary consulship, more prestigious than a suffect one. That made Nerva one of the few non-Flavians honored this way. He then vanishes from the record again, presumably advising quietly under Vespasian and his sons Titus and Domitian.
On the 1st of January 89, Lucius Antonius Saturninus, governor of Germania Superior, revolted at Mainz with two legions and help from the Chatti. The governor of Germania Inferior, Lappius Maximus, moved against him at once, aided by the procurator of Rhaetia, Titus Flavius Norbanus. Within twenty-four days the rebellion was crushed and its leaders savagely punished. Domitian opened the following year by sharing the consulship with Nerva, which suggests Nerva had again helped uncover a conspiracy.
On the 18th of September 96, Domitian was assassinated in a palace conspiracy organized by court officials. The Fasti Ostienses, the Ostian Calendar, records that the Senate proclaimed Nerva emperor that same day. According to Cassius Dio, the conspirators had approached Nerva as a possible successor before the murder, which means he was at least aware of the plot. Suetonius does not mention him at all, perhaps out of tact, since his works appeared under Nerva's descendants Trajan and Hadrian.
Modern historians believe the Senate proclaimed Nerva on its own initiative, within hours of the news. He was a safe choice precisely because he was old and childless. He had close Flavian ties and the respect of much of the Senate. Nerva had seen the anarchy that followed Nero's death and knew that hesitation could spark civil war.
The Senate then passed damnatio memoriae on Domitian. His statues were melted, his arches torn down, and his name erased from public records. Existing portraits, such as those on the Cancelleria Reliefs, were simply recarved into the likeness of Nerva. His vast Palatine palace, the Flavian Palace, was renamed the "House of the People", while Nerva took up residence in Vespasian's former villa in the Gardens of Sallust.
Nerva publicly swore that no senator would be put to death while he held office. He ended treason trials, freed those imprisoned on such charges, and granted amnesty to many exiles. Property confiscated by Domitian was returned to its families. He tried to bring the Senate into his government, with limited success, and his friendly stance toward the pro-Domitianic faction earned him hostility that may have fed at least one plot against his life.
A congiarium of 75 denarii per head went to the citizens, while the Praetorian Guard may have received a donativum of as much as 5000 denarii per soldier. To the poorest, Nerva granted land allotments worth up to 60 million sesterces. He exempted parents and children from a 5% inheritance tax. He lent money to Italian landowners on the condition they pay 5% interest to their municipality to support needy children, the alimenta schemes later expanded by Trajan, Antoninus Pius, and Marcus Aurelius.
Nerva abolished abuses of the Fiscus Iudaicus, the extra tax paid by Jews across the empire. Some of his coins bear the legend FISCI IUDAICI CALUMNIA SUBLATA, marking the end of malicious prosecution over the Jewish tax. Other coins added new games in the Circus in honor of Neptune, or proclaimed ideals such as equity, justice, and liberty, in pointed contrast to Domitian.
The spending strained Rome's economy and forced a special commission to slash expenditures. Superfluous sacrifices, games, and horse races were cut, while ships, estates, and even furniture from Domitian's possessions were auctioned. His silver and gold statues raised large sums, and Nerva forbade similar images of himself. With little time, his public works were few. He repaired the road system and expanded the aqueducts under the former consul Sextus Julius Frontinus, who later published De aquaeductu on Rome's water supply. His one new landmark was a granary, the Horrea Nervae, alongside the Forum of Nerva begun by Domitian.
Support for Domitian stayed strong in the army, which had demanded his deification right after the murder. To appease the Praetorian Guard, Nerva dismissed their prefect Titus Petronius Secundus, one of the chief conspirators, and replaced him with a former commander, Casperius Aelianus. The Praetorians found this insufficient. They demanded the execution of Domitian's assassins, and Nerva refused.
Early in 97, a conspiracy led by the senator Crassus Frugi Licinianus failed, yet Nerva again refused to execute the plotters, to the Senate's dismay. The consul Fronto famously remarked that Domitian's tyranny was preferable to Nerva's anarchy. His benign nature had curdled into a reluctance to assert authority, even as informers and personal enemies settled scores in the chaos he had allowed.
In October 97, Casperius Aelianus led the Praetorian Guard in a siege of the Imperial Palace and took Nerva hostage. He was forced to hand over those responsible for Domitian's death, and even to give a speech thanking the rebellious soldiers. Titus Petronius Secundus and Parthenius, Domitian's former chamberlain, were hunted down and killed. Nerva himself was unharmed, but his authority was damaged beyond repair.
The pressure exposed a deeper problem. Nerva had no natural children and only distant, unsuitable relatives. By 97 he was reportedly considering Marcus Cornelius Nigrinus Curiatius Maternus, the powerful governor of Syria, as his heir. That choice was quietly opposed by backers of a more popular commander on the German frontier, a general named Trajan.
Trajan was the only candidate with the military experience, consular ancestry, and connections Nerva now desperately needed. After the hostage crisis, Nerva realized his position was untenable without an heir approved by both army and people. He announced the adoption of Trajan as his successor and, with that act, all but abdicated. Trajan was given the title of Caesar and shared the consulship with Nerva in 98.
Cassius Dio praised the decision in lofty terms, writing that Nerva "did not esteem family relationship above the safety of the State", and chose Trajan despite his being "a Spaniard instead of an Italian or Italot", because "he believed in looking at a man's ability rather than at his nationality". Scholars reject the claim that Trajan was non-Italic. His roots went back to Umbria, the same region where Nerva was born. Dio's noble framing also obscures the truth that Nerva had little real choice in the matter.
Edward Gibbon later asserted that Nerva founded a tradition of succession by adoption among the Five Good Emperors. That claim has found little support among some modern historians. Trajan, for his part, dispatched the commanders who had ordered the siege of Nerva's home, and according to Cassius Dio dismissed Casperius Aelianus upon his accession.
On the 1st of January 98, at the start of his fourth consulship, Nerva suffered a stroke during a private audience. A fever followed, and he died at his villa in the Gardens of Sallust on the 27th of January. The Senate deified him, and his ashes were laid in the Mausoleum of Augustus. He was the last Roman emperor interred there. Trajan succeeded him without incident, greeted by the populace with enthusiasm.
Pliny the Younger recorded that Trajan dedicated a temple in Nerva's honor, yet no trace of it has been found. No commemorative coin series for the Deified Nerva appeared until ten years after his death. Much of his life stays obscure for lack of sources. The fullest surviving account is by the 3rd-century historian Cassius Dio, whose Roman History was composed more than a hundred years after Nerva died. The Histories of Tacitus, a contemporary, would have told more, but only its first five books survive.
In his life of Agricola, Tacitus called Nerva's reign "the dawn of a most happy age, when Nerva Caesar blended things once irreconcilable, sovereignty and freedom". Gibbon ranked him as the first of the Five Good Emperors, who from 96 to 180 ruled "by absolute power, under the guidance of wisdom and virtue". Even Gibbon judged that the degenerate Romans required a more vigorous character. The historian Murison went further, calling Nerva "the ultimate committee man" and a textbook case of the Peter Principle.
His place is summed up as a necessary stop-gap before the Trajanic-Antonine dynasties. Even his one finished public work, the Forum of Nerva, came to be called the Forum Transitorium, the transitional forum. Today an equestrian statue of Nerva stands at the entrance to Southgate Street in Gloucester, England, a city founded in his honor. Another stands at his alleged birthplace, on Cocceio Nerva street in Narni.