After his death, as the story goes, the prætorians put up the empire to the highest bidder. This is most likely a gross exaggeration. It was a generally received custom for every new ruler to give the prætorians a _donativum_; and as Sulpician and Didius Julianus were trying at the same time to get the sovereignty, it is quite natural that the largeness of the donation turned the scales. Sulpician who was in the camp, promised twenty thousand sesterces for every prætorian; but Julianus, who was at the gates of the city, offered twenty-five thousand. The prætorians opened the gates to the latter, and acknowledged him as emperor. Julianus here appears still more contemptible than he really was, as he had quite as good prospects of ascending the throne as any one else, and he was really innocent of the death of Commodus. He had not been a bad governor of a province, and there is on the whole, not much against his personal character: he was a very rich, but at the same time, a very vain man, and he had, as a governor, distinguished himself in his campaign against Dalmatia. It was not with his own treasures, that he bought the empire; but with those of the state: yet the fierce ill-will which he thus aroused against himself, was owing to his having so openly applied to the prætorians, thereby letting them know the secret of their power, and the fact that they were masters of the government. As Dio here is mutilated, and Herodian was a foreigner, and a frivolous writer; most of the circumstances are to be gleaned from the _Scriptores Historiæ Augustæ_, who, however, are wretched beyond all conception. They contain, notwithstanding, many a detail which even Gibbon has overlooked.