I think that he was more of a figurehead than anything, though obviously not a very successful one.I think that he was more of a figurehead than anything, though obviously not a very successful one.To establish who was "the worst" there must be a definition of "the bad" and then see who committed more of those bad behaviors than any other. The explanation for his rise is simple after that. He truly had a vision of restoring roman greatness as a unified empire and although part of this led him to convert back to the traditional pagan religion he never persecuted Christians or other religions trending in those day. I don't want to push this too far, but knowing what we do about the private lives of some of the more skilled and talented statesmen of history, I would not be too censorious on them for their earthly peccadilloes, if they did not impinge on their ability to otherwise well guide the ship of state. K-Rod57 I'm just a sucker with no self esteem. My guess to the answer of the OP's choice of Elagabalus is that his behavior has seemed outré both to us and contemporary Romans and to those of today's more conventional religious scruples, perhaps, immoral, and by today's legal standards quite possibly criminal, and that may make him a bad emperor but comparing his behavior to that of "how many had to die to make Caesar great" emperors, I hardly think the worst. He even had vestal virgins executed or buried alive on charges of immorality and impregnated his own niece.
When there wasn't a blood relative in line, Romans pursued the formality of adoption to maintain a longstanding preference for family ties.Many of these emperors had extremely small circles of advisers who often did the grunt work of running the vast empire. It ended with the fall of Constantinople in 1453. ""One of the emperors most beloved and admired is Marcus Aurelius," says Ando. Sign up for the However, Commodus was said to be lazy, leading a life of idle debauchery. Gaius (Caligula) (ruled AD 37–41) Gaius (‘Caligula, or ‘little bootee’ – a childhood nickname given … Some believe that Domitian may have had a hand in his brother's death. What's more, emperors themselves had good incentives to argue that individual nutty emperors of the past were Rome's biggest problem — rather than the imperial system.Even so, the tenure of the craziest emperors illuminates the big flaws in the Roman system — not least the fact that it relied on a succession system that rarely rewarded the best leaders. Senatorial historians including Pliny the Younger described him as cruel and paranoid. His story was even made into a bad movie in 1979.
No doubt some of these emperors engaged in behaviors we might think are pathologically evil. He then beat another rival for the throne, Albinus, a few years later.During his reign, he persecuted anyone whose religion differed from the traditional Roman one, in particularly Christians and Jews. His reign was marked by chaos and carnage, and his mismanagement of Rome’s finances led to increased taxation and the seizing of many national treasures.Caligula was of Germanic extraction and was named Gaius Caesar, after Julius Caesar. The younger brother of Titus and the son of Vespasian, Domitian stood as the last member of the Flavian dynasty in line for the throne and inherited it after his brother suffered a fatal illness while traveling.
The weird fixations of Caligula and Nero made them household names.But these stories have always raised a difficult question: If these emperors were really so deranged, how did they become leaders of one of the greatest empires the world has ever known?Both cautioned that the most outrageous stories about Rome's emperors should be taken with a grain of salt.
However, the leader wasn't completely irrational in his savagery — some of his brutality helped him to consolidate power.Ando also notes that Caracalla, while brutal, wasn't necessarily insane (by a Roman emperor's standard) — one judicial proceeding we have, for example, shows that Caracalla had sane and cogent observations. In January 41 CE, the officers of the Praetorian Guard, led by Cassius Chaerea, killed Caligula, his wife, and his daughter. While his reign was mostly peaceful and stable at first, Domitian was also known for being fearful and paranoid. Some of the most famous Roman emperors were perverted, ... America’s uniquely bad Covid-19 epidemic, explained in 18 maps and charts The US’s coronavirus epidemic is among the worst. It remains a cult classic among sadists and those with poor taste in film. Augustus was not the kind of person I would like living next door to me, and he could be as ruthless as any human can be, but by his actions, Rome was far better off in 14 AD than it was in 31 BC, and mostly by his efforts. He also killed many of his relatives, leading to social instability in Rome.
He was one of the most disreputable Roman emperors, plotting his own mother’s murder, setting Rome on fire in order to rebuild the city, and killing both his first and second wives. One among many on the list of famous trans people through history, assuming one believes the stories about him.I know transgender people who consider him a tragic figure on a personal level -- born far too soon, and all that. The Roman Empire was vast at its peak and its influence is still felt today in our forms of military, government, and society in general.
He surrendered control of the palace to his freedmen and praetorian prefects, who then, in turn, sold imperial favors.