Domitian has apparently been unable to gain support among the aristocracy, despite attempts to appease hostile factions with consular appointments.
His autocratic style of government has accentuated the Senate's loss of power, while his policy of treating patricians and even family members as equals to all Romans has earned him their contempt.
Domitian’s excesses of the past several years have inspired conspiracies of the sort Domitian had feared in the first place.
He manages to survive them all until September 18, 96, when the autocratic emperor is assassinated under instructions from court officials in the pay of his wife, the Empress Domitilla, in part because of his liaison with his niece, Titus’ daughter Flavia Julia.
After Domitian's assassination, the senators of Rome rush to the Senate house, where they immediately pass a motion condemning his memory to oblivion.
Under the rulers of the successor Nervan-Antonian dynasty, senatorial authors will publish histories that elaborate on the view of Domitian as a tyrant.
The Fasti Ostienses, the Ostian Calendar, records that the same day the Senate proclaimed Marcus Cocceius Nerva emperor.
Despite his political experience, this is a remarkable choice.
Nerva is old and childless, and has spent much of his career out of the public light, prompting both ancient and modern authors to speculate on his involvement in Domitian's assassination.
According to Cassius Dio, the conspirators approached Nerva as a potential successor prior to the assassination, suggesting that he was at least aware of the plot.
He does not appear in Suetonius' version of the events, but this may be understandable, since his works were published under Nerva's direct descendants Trajan and Hadrian.
To suggest the dynasty owed its accession to murder would have been less than sensitive.
On the other hand, Nerva lacks widespread support in the Empire, and as a known Flavian loyalist, his track record would not have recommended him to the conspirators.
The precise facts have been obscured by history, but modern historians believe Nerva was proclaimed Emperor solely on the initiative of the Senate, within hours after the news of the assassination broke.
The decision may have been hasty so as to avoid civil war, but neither appears to have been involved in the conspiracy.
After the election of Nerva by the senate, the new emperor chooses as his co-consul for 97 the elderly Lucius Verginius Rufus, who is enticed out of retirement.
Rufus, after declining his troops’ acclamation of him as emperor after his defeat of Vindex at the beginning of the revolt known as Year of the Four Emperors, has lived calmly for thirty years at his estate at Alsium, on the coast of Etruria, where he studies, composes poems, and has a literary salon.
However, when Rufus is to hold a speech, he drops a book he is carrying, and while bending down to pick it up, slips and breaks his hip.
He dies not long afterward and is given a state funeral.
At the public burial with which he is honored, the historian Tacitus (now consul) delivers the funeral oration.
Pliny the Younger, his neighbor and ward, has recorded the lines which Verginius had ordered to be engraved upon his tomb: Hic situs est Rufus, pulso qui Vindice quondam Imperium asseruit non sibi sed patriae ("Here lies Rufus, who after defeating Vindex, did not take power, but gave it to the fatherland").
As modern medicine has discovered recently, falls by the elderly involving a broken hip are more likely preceded, rather than followed, by the fracture.
