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Historical person

Tigidius Perennis

Tigidius Perennis was praetorian prefect under the emperor Commodus and became one of the most powerful administrators in the Roman Empire. Ancient accounts claim that he concentrated authority, promoted his sons and plotted to replace Commodus. In 185 a delegation of soldiers from Britain denounced him, and the emperor ordered the execution of Perennis and his family.

In novels set during Commodus’s reign, Perennis often appears as the austere military strongman who temporarily governs while the emperor withdraws into pleasure and spectacle. The surviving narrative comes from hostile elite sources, so fiction can treat the alleged conspiracy either as genuine ambition or as the accusation used by rivals to destroy an overmighty prefect.

Series

Series featuring Tigidius Perennis (1 series)

Praetorian in Order

by Simon Turney 8 books 4.5

The Praetorian series centres on Gnaeus Marcius Rustius Rufinus, a legionary drawn into the Praetorian Guard and the lethal politics of Commodus’s court. Investigations, covert missions and frontier commands expose him to conspiracies involving imperial relatives, prefects, freedmen, senators and rival claimants to the throne. As Commodus’s reign…

All books in this series