Ahve, and welcome to Emperor of Rome, a Roman history podcast from Latrobe University.

I'm your host Matt Smith and with me today is

Associate Professor Kaylin Davenport, head of the Center for Classical Studies at

the Australian National University. This is episode C.C.X.X.I. Probus had a fairly long

rain for this time in the history of the Empire. Keeping the barbarians in check is one thing, seeing off usurpers

is another, but just don't ask too much of the military. They don't like getting their hands

dirty. Here's Caitlin Davenport.

When Tacitus died or was murdered in 276, his Pretorian Prefect Anius Florianus was proclaimed emperor in his place. However at the same time one of the generals in the east

Marcus Aurelius Probus was acclaimed by his troops. Very quickly things fell apart. Florianus had the

endorsement of the Senate but he was murdered after 88 days by his own army, probably because they thought that Probus would be a better

candidate to be emperor.

Clifford Ando makes this rather nice remark in his book Imperial Rome that his sole actions in his days as emperor

were to march west, then east and then die. So certainly, you know, as far as em Empress of the third century go Florian was particularly

short-lived 88 days and yet minted coins yeah yeah you get moving on that like day one, day one.

That's right. You need to be on the coinage so that people know.

Exactly. And also because the mints aren't just in Rome at this period, like there's mints

throughout the provinces as well. so you can get things out much

faster there certainly aren't a lot of coins of him but there are also inscriptions

from the west as well that shows that people got on things pretty quickly

and thought he would be the person to stay.

But also like Empress are kind of replaceable in art as well

so they probably didn't have to change his image that much all the emperors of this

...