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Explanation: The bust depicted is of the Roman Emperor Caracalla, who was… not a nice fellow. He sacked Roman cities for daring to offend him, assassinated his brother, and rapidly devalued Roman currency.
Rome during it’s fall was eerily similar to the modern US.
For one, a lot of people were brain damaged by lead.
https://today.duke.edu/2022/03/lead-exposure-last-century-shrunk-iq-scores-half-americans
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/6395049/#:~:text=Intake of lead by the,decline of the Roman Empire.
Intake of lead by the aristocracy may have been as much as 1 mg/day. The resultant mental incompetence and especially the rapidly declining birth rate among the ruling class are now believed to have been major factors in the decline of the Roman Empire.
If you’ve all seen Gladiator, Emperor Commodus is so toned down in that movie. In real life he was far more insane and sadistic. Picture Joaquin Phoenix with a beard, dressed in a loincloth, with a lion Pelt over his head, running around the arena executing and fighting prisoners and bathing in their blood while calling himself Hercules.
I’ve bitched about this before, but I always take over-the-top accounts of the deposed Emperors with a grain of salt. Really, I don’t believe ancient sources in general when they have the motivation and ability to lie. Some of the most interesting stuff comes casually in between their actual points.
It’s fair to say he had an unhealthy obsession with his hobby of being a gladiator, and that he underperformed the less nepobaby few emperors that came before him, though.
Did any of the Emperors that served a full term get a bad rap?
Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius (to some degree), Nero, Domitian, and Hadrian all had varying levels of bad reputation. Of those, Tiberius, Claudius, and Hadrian are the least negative - with Tiberius and Claudius both being condemned as paranoiacs, but praised for their good administration. Caligula is, of course, infamous. Nero is regarded as pathetic, shameful, vain, and thin-skinned. That he constructed a colossus of himself gives some evidence to that. Domitian was a morose paranoiac who apparently enjoyed needling Senators by flaunting his ‘absolute’ power, and declaring himself “God and Master” on coinage. Hadrian, despite being remembered in the modern day as one of the Five Good Emperors, was regarded as supremely competent, but also infamously short-tempered and prone to abuse his power.
Okay, so Nero, Domitian and Caligula were all deposed. That leaves leaves the three mentioned as not unambiguously bad. Claudius was possibly murdered, but it doesn’t sound like it was political, and it sounds like it may also have been suicide. Was this meant to be a complete list? Elgabalus, just off the top of my head, should be on there.
My le epic armchair historiography makes me think Hadrian was a complete monster, based on that. Like, probably a murderbot comparable to Stalin or Henry VIII.
Claudius was possibly murdered, but it doesn’t sound like it was political, and it sounds like it may also have been suicide.
It was political, if one buys the assassination theory (as I do). It was over succession to the position of Emperor. Claudius’s successor also spent a good deal of time defaming his name and mocking him.
Was this meant to be a complete list? Elgabalus, just off the top of my head, should be on there.
Elagabalus was after Commodus, I presumed you were looking for ones pre-Commodus. If you’re looking at ones after Commodus, Septimius Severus has a reputation as a cruel tyrant, but also as an incredibly intelligent and well-read man, and a very competent soldier.
My le epic armchair historiography makes me think Hadrian was a complete monster, based on that. Like, probably a murderbot comparable to Stalin or Henry VIII.
He’s a complex figure. He’s capable of great wrath, but also reflection. The man had SERIOUS impulse control problems, I think. He once stabbed a slave in the eye with a stylus - but at the same time, though slaves had no right against such violence, and Hadrian was the most powerful man in the Empire anyway, he still publicly brought the man out to apologize and offer him anything he wanted as restitution.
The slave said he wanted his goddamn eye back, which is a pretty baller thing to say to the most powerful man in the world at the time.
Hadrian would later implement some limited slave rights against being killed by their masters.
As far as the Third Jewish-Roman War is concerned, I honestly don’t think any Roman Emperor would have handled it significantly differently.
Ah. Just Hadrian, Tiberius and Septimius Severus then.
Third Jewish-Roman War
Something something apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system, and public health … what have the Romans ever done for us?
They really did rebel a whole lot in Iudaea.
It’s ‘funny’ - the province was relatively quiet, despite the extreme religious/cultural differences, for some 70 years, and then a little butchery of Hellenized Jews by Jewish radicals and the place becomes a hotbed of rebellion.
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