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On 27 January 98 AD, Nerva died and Trajan became Roman emperor. For centuries after, the Senate greeted every new emperor with the same ritual wish: may you be better than Trajan. He was not without flaws, but the bar he set outlasted the empire itself.
On 24 January AD 41, the Praetorian Guard assassinated Caligula and proclaimed Claudius emperor. Rome expected a joke. It got thirteen years of competent government instead.
On 17 January 395, Theodosius I died in Milan - the last man ever to govern a united Roman Empire. He left it to two sons, aged seventeen and ten. They never put it back together.