Who were the best and worst Roman emperors?

Not an Emperor, but I like his Swagger: Mark Antony :)

He wasn't very sophisticated, but he knew how to have a good time.
I'd rather have a beer with Marc Anthony, than hang out with that Stiff of Augustus. lol

That said:

If Augustus is to be considered Emperor, my favorite Emperor is Augustus.
He was boring, but he was smart.
His Leadership skills transcended his personality shortcomings.

imho

I would agree. I too have a soft spot for MA, but he was a man ruled by his passions; he was often described as a bull. He had no vision and could not have created a stable empire.

Augustus is great, as you say, because he was the boring, logical, "long-head" who could handle the Senate and play at being only the first citizen while pulling all the levers. MA proved his unfitness by his later love of oriental pomp. That being said, I still think Augustus needed Agrippa for all of those characteristics he lacked.
 
That's another gross over generalization. Augustus cared about the good of the empire. Marcus Aurelius cared about the good of the empire. There are numerous other examples.

Look, I don't want to be harsh in my responses to you, but you have to have some background in a subject, some actual knowledge of the facts, before you express such dogmatic opinions. It's a failing of your whole generation but it still doesn't make it any the less annoying.

There's a book by Nigel Waters called "The Roman Empire". I picked it up for eight dollars. It's a fair summary, great photographs and illustrations, and will give you a broad overview.

Or, if you don't want to read, there's a series of podcasts (available on Itunes) called "The History of Rome" by Mike Duncan, and they're pretty good. Listen while you're driving or laying outside in the sun.
-fvb


romans were invaders! No invader comes to improve the life's of conquered people, unless you believe Romans invaded for humanitarian reasons.! Romans ruthlessly exploited their subjects, forcefully recruited young men to fight for them many of them lost their life, exploited the mines and resources. So for the conquered people they were horrible, but they were good for Rome. I refuse to name them as good.
 
@Tutkun-Arnaut
More or less every Historical Era had its Superpowers.

The Leaders were all very ambitious people, just like today's Leaders.

We're just comparing Leadership abilities, accomplishments, personality traits, charisma, policies, ...

Nobody's saying that these Emperors should be canonized like Saints.
 
Does Justinian count as a Roman Emperor? Thing is, by asking " who was the best? " You need to have requirements. As people said above, every emperors did things considered by some as " bad ".
 
Does Justinian count as a Roman Emperor? Thing is, by asking " who was the best? " You need to have requirements. As people said above, every emperors did things considered by some as " bad ".

The last Roman Emperor was Constantine XI Palaiologos.
 
NERO: THE CELEBRITY EMPEROR


On June, 9th 68 AD, the most cruel of the Roman emperors died. Know your final moments:

Cruel, insane, depraved? It's too little. Nero was a monster. He went to bed with his mother and had her killed. He poisoned his half-brother, slashed his first wife, and kicked the second, pregnant, until she died. The Roman emperor also castrated a freedman, dressed him as a woman, and married him at a stupendous party. But the problem was that he loved to sing and perform in public, something unforgivable for anyone who had the title of princeps (First in the Senate).


In only 14 years of rule (between 54 and 68), Nero lost the support of the Senate, the magistrates, the third woman and even his preceptor, the philosopher Seneca. At the age of 30, faced with an imminent coup d'etat, he ended his life with a stab in the neck. Its the last words: Qualis artifex pereo! (Which artist dies with me!).

That is what Suetonius, Tacitus and Cassius Dio, the main sources on Nero, say. Detail: they all represented the interests of the Senate, resented by the concentration of power made by the emperor and his approximationto the plebs. And none of them was an eyewitness of the mentioned episodes.


He was capable of unimaginable cruelties and probably eliminated much of his family - which, incidentally, was a practice in the Julius-Claudian dynasty. But it was not the madman who painted us, but an emperor who dramatized his life to attract public attention. So much so that, after his suicide, there were rumors that he had not died - just like an Elvis Presley of ancient times.

The Emperor's Decline

In the year 67, Nero returned to Rome acclaimed by the crowd. He had spent a year and a half on "tour", not knowing the revolts that popped in their domains. "Nero's delay in facing the riots was seen by the Senate as a sign of weakness and loss of control," says archaeologist Darius Arya.

In 68, the Senate declared Nero "public enemy" and supported the coronation of the roman, Galba. From there, Suetonius and Cassius Dio give on the princeps’s biography an increasingly dramatic tone: isolated, Nero fled from Rome and ordered his men to dig a pit. Shouted: Qualis artifex pereo! - translated as "that artist dies with me!" - and committed suicide with a dagger.

"Modern readers often misinterpret this phrase of Nero." Artifex, in Dio's Greek, may mean 'artist' in the sense of interpreting. "But here the meaning is" craftsman, "says Princeton University professor Edward Champlin. He was coordinating the construction of his tomb - a simple pit with fragments of marble. And at that moment he pointed out the contrast between the great artist he had been and the wretched craftsman he had become. Nero did not say 'What artist dies with me!', But almost the opposite: 'What a craftsman I am in my agony!' "

He believed himself to be a follower of the glory of the Greeks and used Rome and his empire as a great stage for their exhibitions. Of course, he was, indeed, a tyrant-possibly the cruellest of his dynasty. But his need to interact with the people turned him into a rockstar tyrant, someone the people liked to hear, to know what he was doing.

 
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Julian is worth mentioning, attended a lecture dedicated to his rule.
 
There is a lot of good in what Julian achieved, and in what he tried to achieve. I too believe he is one of the great emperors, but much of his acclaim today seems, to me, to relate to his anti-Christian beliefs (BTW, I'm an atheist so I'm not pushing an agenda); note the novel "Julian the Apostate."
 
-fvb

romans were invaders! No invader comes to improve the life's of conquered people, unless you believe Romans invaded for humanitarian reasons.! Romans ruthlessly exploited their subjects, forcefully recruited young men to fight for them many of them lost their life, exploited the mines and resources. So for the conquered people they were horrible, but they were good for Rome. I refuse to name them as good.


When people say Alexander the great was a bad man, a congueror,
I use to show them the bellow Video,
When people say Greeks were war-scums,
I use to show them the bellow video,
even I my shelf, living few km from Pydna, where was the last Makedonian stand, with a possible victory against Romans,
When paople speak about Romans, I use to see this video,

it is Monty Python
from the movie the life of Brian



So as I agree with you when Rome, or Makedonia conguer the world, intruders, murderers etc, they were conguerors,
I also agree, that moved ahead civiliztion, merchant, etc
 
THE BEST:

Emperor August

Where: Rome
WHEN 27 BC to 14 AD


The sovereign liked to give good examples of virtue. Once he stayed at the home of Vedius Pollio, a senior government official. During the welcome party, one of the host's slaves stumbled and broke a glass. Vedius was angry and ordered him to be thrown into a pool full of lampreys. The emperor intervened: he saved the slave, freed him and sent his soldiers to break all the crystal cups of the cruel host.

Emperor Trajan

Where: Rome
WHEN 98 to 117 AD


Trajan made the joy of the Roman people distributing wheat to more than 200 thousand people, from the aristocracy to the plebs. Even though a lot of people were left out, Trajano started raffling a vacancy in the list of beneficiaries every time a citizen died. But the gift was not pure generosity of the emperor. The breads, financed by the Roman wars, were part of the bread and circus politics, which tried to distract the masses with food and fun.

THE WORST:

Emperor Caligula

SEASON - 37 to 41 AD


It was probably just a rumor, but for all intents and purposes the story was that Caligula had named his horse Incitatus as a consul, a senior public officer whose main function was to command armies.


OTHER MADNESS - Caligula was famous for his cruelty and the promiscuitie. He would have determined that criminals were served alive as meal for wild animals and was accused of having sex with his three sisters.

Emperor Nero

SEASON - 54 to 68 AD


MAJOR ABSURD - Nero would never be accused of nepotism, that is, of benefiting relatives. He was blamed for the death of his own mother, his first wife, and having a half-brother poisoned.


OTHER MADNESSES - It was probably not Nero who set off a devastating fire in Rome. But this does not cleanse his "curriculum" from other bizarre facts, such as the supposed macabre habit of sending Christians to ferocious and starving dogs, who would tear them apart alive.
 
No wonder the internet is such a cesspit.

In some places it is indeed a lot of money.
 
I finished reading Aetius: Attila's Nemesis, by Ian Hughes. This prompted me to add Valentinian III to the list of worst emperors.

Valentinian III (r. as Western emperor 425-455): Emperor at the age of 6, Valentinian III was a weak emperor, dominated most of his life by his mother Galla Placidia and later by his best general Flavius Aetius. From the 430's until hid death in 453, Aetius managed to crush 11 rebellions, including those of the Burgundians, Bacaudae (peasant insurgents) and Visigoths in Gaul, to seal a peace treaty with the Vandals after their capture of Carthage, and defeat the Hunnic invasion of Gaul in the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains. Aetius's skills as a military commander and his ability to negotiate with barbarians saved the Western Roman Empire from implosion several times and kept in check the various Germanic kingdoms settled within the empire's borders (Franks, Burgundians, Visigoths, Suebi and Vandals). In 453, Valentinian was convinced by the jealous Roman senator Petronius Maximus and the chamberlain Heraclius to assassinate Aetius. Valentinian killed Aetius himself during a private meeting with him. This event caused Germanic tribes to relinquish their peace treaties with Rome and precipitated the collapse of the empire. The Vandals sacked Rome 9 months after Aetius's assassination. In the 23 years that followed Aetius's death, a succession of weak and short-lived emperors had to witness to disintegration of the empire until a Germanic leader, Odoacer, deposed the last Western Roman emperor in 476.
 
Claudio, I read the book and saw the series
 
I see that many people fav. emperor is Octavian Augustus. I have to agree, he is one of my favorite also. Mostly because he avenged Caesar death and got rid of all betrayers!

With this chance i will present one of Augustus coins that i have since i love ancient coins..

lnyb7pz.jpg



Augustus AR Denarius. Lugdunum mint, 2 BC - AD 12. CAESAR AVGVSTVS DIVI F PATER PATRIAE, laureate head right / [AUGUSTI F]COS DESIG PRINC IVVENT, Gaius and Lucius Caesars standing facing, two shields and two spears between them; above simpulum and lituus; CL CAESARES in exergue. RIC 207; RSC 43. 18,5 mm, 3,7 g.


I think portrait is really nice and it has this almost golden tone even tho its silver.. Very beautiful if you ask me : )
 
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