McHugh, John S. Rome's Enemies Within. Imperial Conspiracies and Assassinations in the Roman Empire During the First Century AD

The greatest danger to the Roman emperors was the threat of deadly conspiracies in the Senate, at the imperial court or even within their own families. All the emperors who ruled from Augustus to the end of the first century AD faced such attempts to overthrow or assassinate them. John McHugh uncovers these conspiracies, describes them and attempts to explain them. In many cases, the cause lay in the decline of influence, patronage and status granted by the emperors to the senatorial class, which led some to seek power for themselves or a more generous candidate. Attempted assassinations or coups led emperors to distrust the senate and rely more on freedmen, causing further resentment. Paranoid emperors often reacted to the slightest hint of treason, real or imagined, with punishments and executions, leading more and more people around them to resort to desperate measures out of self-preservation. In the midst of this vicious circle of poisonous mistrust, there were of course also ambitious family members who asserted their own claims to the purple (or those of their descendants) and the duplicitous Praetorian Guard. John McHugh brings to light a century of assassinations, conspiracies and betrayals, exploring the motives and aims of the conspirators and the bloody cost of success or failure.