ABSTRACT
The Julio-Claudian dynasty, founded by Caesar and Augustus, collapsed with the military rebellion against and subsequent suicide of Nero in Ad 68. Tacitus (Hist. 1.8) recognised the significance of this: ‘The secret of empire was out – that an emperor could be made elsewhere than at Rome’. In other words, just as in the late Republic, it was the pressure that could be exerted by the Roman army and its commanders that controlled events rather than political and dynastic arrangements conducted in Rome.
