Pertinax

Pertinax is one of the Roman Emperors used to demonstrate how hatred and contempt, rather than moral failure alone, can bring down a ruler. He is described as gentle, just, temperate, and hostile to cruelty, yet his effort to reverse the permissive military culture established under Commodus provoked the soldiers whose support his newly acquired power required. His fate becomes a political case study in the limits of virtue without secure authority.

Identity and Historical Placement

Pertinax appears in the sequence of Roman Emperors who ruled from Marcus Aurelius to Maximinus: Marcus Aurelius, Commodus, Pertinax, Didius Julianus, Septimius Severus, Caracalla, Macrinus, Elagabalus, Alexander Severus, and Maximinus Thrax. The discussion treats this succession as a comparative test of princely conduct rather than as a simple chronicle of imperial lives. Each reign exposes a different relationship between inherited authority, military power, popular opinion, and political survival.

Unlike the rulers of many other principalities, Roman Emperors had to manage not only the ambition of nobles and the disobedience of the people but also the cruelty and rapacity of their soldiers. The people generally preferred peace and sober government, while the soldiers favored a warlike ruler, even one harsh, arrogant, or greedy, if his behavior against the people secured them double pay and license for their own appetites. Pertinax entered precisely this conflict, and his short reign shows how dangerous it was for a new Emperor to depend on troops accustomed to a very different form of rule.

Temperament and Political Situation

Pertinax is grouped with Marcus Aurelius and Alexander Severus as a ruler of a temperate disposition, a lover of justice, an enemy of cruelty, and a gentle and kindly man. Yet Marcus Aurelius alone among the three is said to have lived and died with the highest honor. The difference did not lie simply in personal virtue. Marcus inherited the Empire rather than receiving it through the favor of the soldiers or the people, and his authority allowed him to restrain both factions without becoming hated or despised.

Pertinax lacked that inherited security. He was a new Prince, and therefore needed extraordinary support, but the military establishment had become accustomed to the licentious life permitted under Commodus. The political problem was not merely that Pertinax wished to govern well; it was that governing well required him to impose a stricter discipline on the very soldiers whose cooperation was indispensable to his rule. His reform therefore converted a moral virtue into a political liability.

Conflict with the Soldiers and Downfall

Pertinax was chosen Emperor against the will of the soldiery. Once in power, he sought to bring them back under stricter discipline after the indulgence of the preceding reign. The soldiers could not tolerate the change. Their hostility was intensified by contempt: Pertinax was considered advanced in age, and this perception weakened the authority that his office was supposed to command.

His downfall followed at the outset of his reign. The soldiers hated him because he challenged their established privileges and despised him because they regarded him as weak or unsuitable to command. The combined effect destroyed him before he could consolidate power. The account therefore presents his fall as a political failure of support rather than a judgment that his principles were intrinsically wrong.

Pertinax's example also sharpens the distinction between good and safe actions. A prince may incur hatred through good conduct as well as through bad conduct. If the people, the soldiers, or the nobles on whom he relies are corrupt, he must adapt himself to their character or risk losing the authority that would enable him to reform them. In such circumstances, virtuous behavior may prejudice the ruler precisely because it refuses to satisfy the faction carrying his power.

Comparison with Marcus Aurelius and Other Emperors

The later comparison makes Pertinax's case part of a larger rule about political imitation. Pertinax and Alexander Severus, as new Princes, could not safely imitate Marcus Aurelius, who was hereditary. Marcus possessed the established legitimacy and authority needed to combine restraint with effective command; Pertinax did not. The same reasoning applies in the opposite direction to Caracalla, Commodus, and Maximinus Thrax, who disastrously imitated Septimius Severus without possessing the qualities that had enabled Severus to succeed.

The useful lesson is not to copy a predecessor's whole character but to select conduct suited to the ruler's political position. A new prince must borrow from a strong founder the measures needed to establish his government, then from a stable and honorable ruler the qualities that can preserve and dignify it once secure. Pertinax represents the danger of adopting the second task before the first has been accomplished.

Narrative and Political Significance

Pertinax's role is deliberately brief but structurally important. His reign tests the claim that a prince must sometimes learn how not to be good, because every form of conduct has consequences within a divided power structure. His justice and restraint do not protect him when the soldiers are the stronger faction and have been trained to expect indulgence. The account thus separates private goodness from political effectiveness without denying the value of goodness itself.

His fate also prepares the book's broader contrast between appearance, authority, and survival. A ruler may be gentle yet contemptible to those who command the weapons of the state; he may be severe yet secure if he knows how to maintain authority over them. Pertinax's failure demonstrates that hatred and contempt are not interchangeable weaknesses: hatred can arise from necessary discipline, while contempt can make that hatred fatal. Together they show why the foundations of rule must be laid before a prince attempts to make his government virtuous, peaceful, or glorious.