An Australian study dismantles the idea that imperial succession was improvised and shows deliberate strategies to ensure family power for generations

Were Roman emperors simply improvisers who waited to see what would happen after their death? Or did they carefully plan for the future of their dynasties, thinking not only about their immediate successor but also about several generations to come? A new study published in the Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies answers: most emperors did think strategically about the long term.

Caillan Davenport, a researcher at the Australian National University, has analyzed succession plans from Augustus to Commodus (from 27 B.C. to A.D. 192) and concludes that, despite the absence of fixed inheritance laws, emperors deployed multiple strategies to keep the throne in their family.

The work introduces the concept of “dynastic scenario thinking”—taken from studies of early modern Europe—to explain how emperors anticipated threats and complications in the transmission of power.