World History Discussion

[Kamera]

which of the Roman Emporers is or are your favorites ? i mean either in personlity , deeds etc .

Valentinian III, because he was so overwhelmingly incompetent and idiotic it's hilarious.

[ResidentSeagull]

Are any of his wise decisions a particular favorite of yours?

[Kamera]

Executing Aetius. Some 5D chess, that one.

[Ratman]

Well for me is he a quite mad Ruler which didnt saw major parts of his empire and he was an rather stern and over zealous in religious rites as i have a history magazine wreer a article about his reign is included were he was so radical that he even investigated many small christ sects whose name is just in his law documents mentioned aswell was he the one that closed the last publical pagan institutes and abot the last pagan festival .

i am curious what do you think of Augustus and Julian ?

And what do you think of the later Byzantinian Rulers as i find that Nikephorus II Phocas and Constantine Drageses are the mot baddass Rulers .

That's kind of the Byzantine Baggage for you, pretty much every longer-ruling emperor ends up dealing with dumb religious schisms over whether Virgin Mary drank whiskey or brandy.

Augustus was pretty great, there's way too much to say about him in the line of politics, but it doesn't get super personal, no thanks to the age. There is some manifest destiny to unpack here - I can definitely see why you wouldn't like massive expansion for the hell of it and kicking the germanic tribes about, but when you think of 'enlightened autocrat', that's generally the go-to example. In fact, you can draw parallels between him and our very own Saber in how he considered himself. He was kind of a massive tool, but that's kind of what was necessary for doing the job well.
He might have been the best emperor, he just doesn't happen to be my favourite because he does most of the stuff right, so I don't get an account of his wife embarassing him in front of the senate as he's about to flee the capital.

Julian is interesting. He left a lot behind for you to make an opinion, but it basically comes down to him being a huge greekaboo. From that angle he does pretty well pushing forward more democratic ideas as an emperor, and you can pretty much consider any unrest, including religious unrest, to result from that. He's not super important in the long run I feel, but provides a nice aside to look at things from a different angle. Most of the time in school, you end with Constantine establishing state Christianity and that's that.

Don't really know much of late byzantinium tbh since that's when I start mostly getting interested in my own country's history.

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Oh never mind, I do know Constantine XI. Never really looked into him much, though - that's when the Hussite Wars were going on. I guess that ties into one another, then.

[Deathhappens]

I was mostly referring to the French Revolution take, and I see your point that he wasn't incorrect about Austria-Hungary per se, but the implications of his statement raised some red flags for me.

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Also, I think nationalism was and is one of the most harmful legacies of the Romantic Era, among many others. It does no one good.

Nationalism is fine and even neccesary when channeled properly. Or perhaps it would be better to say "patriotism, not nationalism".

[Ideofago]

That distinction is fundamental here because we're inevitably approaching academic discussion, if we're not already in it. And if there's a reason academics end up being pedantic everywhere else, it's because here it's required.

[Kabalisto Koga]

That's kind of the Byzantine Baggage for you, pretty much every longer-ruling emperor ends up dealing with dumb religious schisms over whether Virgin Mary drank whiskey or brandy.

Augustus was pretty great, there's way too much to say about him in the line of politics, but it doesn't get super personal, no thanks to the age. There is some manifest destiny to unpack here - I can definitely see why you wouldn't like massive expansion for the hell of it and kicking the germanic tribes about, but when you think of 'enlightened autocrat', that's generally the go-to example. In fact, you can draw parallels between him and our very own Saber in how he considered himself. He was kind of a massive tool, but that's kind of what was necessary for doing the job well.
He might have been the best emperor, he just doesn't happen to be my favourite because he does most of the stuff right, so I don't get an account of his wife embarassing him in front of the senate as he's about to flee the capital.

Julian is interesting. He left a lot behind for you to make an opinion, but it basically comes down to him being a huge greekaboo. From that angle he does pretty well pushing forward more democratic ideas as an emperor, and you can pretty much consider any unrest, including religious unrest, to result from that. He's not super important in the long run I feel, but provides a nice aside to look at things from a different angle. Most of the time in school, you end with Constantine establishing state Christianity and that's that.

Don't really know much of late byzantinium tbh since that's when I start mostly getting interested in my own country's history.

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Oh never mind, I do know Constantine XI. Never really looked into him much, though - that's when the Hussite Wars were going on. I guess that ties into one another, then.

interesting points about Augustus he is for me one that demonstrate how a ideal monarch should be as he had asquirtre the power did he acted carefull and thoughtfull out of lasting view as the Augustinian pece that withhin a kingdom or empire more then one generation never experienced war is a feat thats not eaily reached he is for me a visionary figure . Also have i read that in private was he a modest and loyal friend as towards his friends MAeeceanus and Agrippa weree he always Gaius and that the two held through friendship together also have you read about his Daughter Julia and what trouble she made i think thats eroge novel material as she were quite freedom and pleasure loving but with good nd kind heart so that she well liked (i mean in the general sense not in only that one sense) without any maliciousness , also was she quite versed in poetry and literature like her father which tried to writh some works like a tragedy about Ajax but he said that his Ajax went down int he water .

its intersting that he daughter Agrippina the Elder had inherited Julias freedom urge which took in her morethe sense of power search which in her grandchild accumulated even stronger in Neros Mother .

About Julian i find him fascinating and i think that many parts of his deeds are out of religious sense as he was quite religious and he actively tried to support the pagan front and the organisation of the Hellenic Staet cult of the pre chrristian time before Constantine where he tried to etablish a pagan state church and that he let himself initiate in atleast 3 to 4 mysticism cults aswell didd he even wrothe a tratise called "against the Galilean" where he argumnted and refuted the claims of the christian lores which according to another non christian scholar contained the strongest arguments for the rightfullness of the polytheistic World view ,really there are several ancient scholars that itelectual fought against christian claims . but in my view were he to modest and he had to live more like an pompous atique ruler to attract more approvement.

and as you mentiond the end with Constantine s religious etablishments actually tried the non christians still to defennd themselves and reclaim power but aside an movement in western rome that had some power where it a rather unsuccesfull endeavor and that the fight officially ended with Justinian.

look here if you intersted in the arguments of the Alltar of Victoria which demonstrate that situation of the religious battle withhin Rome empire quite well.

i still find it intersting that in Europe not all people were ready and willing to convert or rather better said were loyal and steadfast to their old Religion and Gods like the Gothic Ruler Athanaric as example . or that of all Ethnies in europe the Slavs holded alongside the Sami the most steadfast against christianization until the 18 century !

but still seems to livved in europe many Crypto pagans like Pletho may have been one of them look in his wikipedia article he was an really interesting person that lived immediatly before the time of the fall of constantinople .

about byzantium

look here \/




its a map of Constantinople of 1422 and the only surviving one nefore te Muslimic conquer .

[RoydGolden]

Augustus loses some points to me for basically turning Rome from republic into absolute monarchy. Pax Romana is impressive yes but his immediate successor was Tiberius so it didn't take long for things to start falling apart.

[Five_X]

That's a fairly common judgment in American scholarship. Republican Rome was a problematic governmental structure because it was essentially a city-state oligarchy which had no real concept of how to govern an empire. Its previous methods of controlling foreign territories as extended colonies or semi-autonomous subalterns was bound to run into problems unless it was severely reformed. Expansion into the immensely wealthy near East made this obvious: how would the intentionally limited senatorial structure of a single city-state reconcile having as one of its provinces the whole of Egypt? Gaul alone was a headache, and it didn't have nearly as much infrastructural development as the ancient east. At the same time, land hunger among Roman veterans and Italian tenant farmers was skyrocketing and couldn't be ignored much longer, and well before Augustus' time you already had a vicious cycle of powerful elites commanding personal armies through donations and promises of land, then using the power gained by those armies to annihilate political enemies and richly reward political allies - a similar self-replicating crisis as the one that would wrack Rome in the 3rd century.

Augustus was so impressive because he managed to end a century-long period of civil war, quelling the internecine infighting of ambitious elites while also restoring normative peace to a thoroughly brutalised society. The price of this was that he was a deep conservative, winning favour by claiming a return to old Roman mores. For a long time after his death, simply the invocation of his legacy was enough to legitimise the rule of his successors, and for two centuries outbreaks of political violence never spiralled out of control like they had in the first century AD.

To contrast Augustus - and to shameless promote my own controversial theses about the end of the Roman Republic! - Julius Caesar fell too far outside Roman mores to ever end the civil wars. I maintain that what really killed him wasn't any declaration at home, his dictatorship, or even conspiracies that he was going to become King of Rome. Instead, I think it was the fact that he had a son with Cleopatra. By having a foreign(!) royal (!!) heir, he was setting himself up to have a lasting dynastic influence outside of Rome. If allowed to continue, this naturally would establish a dangerous precedent in which Roman senators could circumvent the neatly structured cursus honorum and wield foreign influence to gain power in the republic. That Caesar brought Cleopatra and Caesarion to live in Rome only seemed to make his apparent ambitions even more obvious to his senatorial opposition.

That's just my own opinion as a free-wheeling academic, though. I haven't published anything on Rome at all and don't plan to.

[Ideofago]

Five, I appreciate very much how you can turn the discussion from singular figures to a macro level of analysis so seamlessly.

[Leftovers]

okay so now what i wanted to discuss which of the Roman Emporers is or are your favorites ?

gabby-tan bc i love doujins

[Five_X]

Five, I appreciate very much how you can turn the discussion from singular figures to a macro level of analysis so seamlessly.

Thank you, I'm glad to know that I seem to have learned some skills through my education after all!

[RoydGolden]

That's a fairly common judgment in American scholarship. Republican Rome was a problematic governmental structure because it was essentially a city-state oligarchy which had no real concept of how to govern an empire. Its previous methods of controlling foreign territories as extended colonies or semi-autonomous subalterns was bound to run into problems unless it was severely reformed. Expansion into the immensely wealthy near East made this obvious: how would the intentionally limited senatorial structure of a single city-state reconcile having as one of its provinces the whole of Egypt? Gaul alone was a headache, and it didn't have nearly as much infrastructural development as the ancient east. At the same time, land hunger among Roman veterans and Italian tenant farmers was skyrocketing and couldn't be ignored much longer, and well before Augustus' time you already had a vicious cycle of powerful elites commanding personal armies through donations and promises of land, then using the power gained by those armies to annihilate political enemies and richly reward political allies - a similar self-replicating crisis as the one that would wrack Rome in the 3rd century.

Augustus was so impressive because he managed to end a century-long period of civil war, quelling the internecine infighting of ambitious elites while also restoring normative peace to a thoroughly brutalised society. The price of this was that he was a deep conservative, winning favour by claiming a return to old Roman mores. For a long time after his death, simply the invocation of his legacy was enough to legitimise the rule of his successors, and for two centuries outbreaks of political violence never spiralled out of control like they had in the first century AD.

To contrast Augustus - and to shameless promote my own controversial theses about the end of the Roman Republic! - Julius Caesar fell too far outside Roman mores to ever end the civil wars. I maintain that what really killed him wasn't any declaration at home, his dictatorship, or even conspiracies that he was going to become King of Rome. Instead, I think it was the fact that he had a son with Cleopatra. By having a foreign(!) royal (!!) heir, he was setting himself up to have a lasting dynastic influence outside of Rome. If allowed to continue, this naturally would establish a dangerous precedent in which Roman senators could circumvent the neatly structured cursus honorum and wield foreign influence to gain power in the republic. That Caesar brought Cleopatra and Caesarion to live in Rome only seemed to make his apparent ambitions even more obvious to his senatorial opposition.

That's just my own opinion as a free-wheeling academic, though. I haven't published anything on Rome at all and don't plan to.

Yeah, I was kind of expecting someone to pop in and provide context there. Not sure if there was a way to thread the needle but I can at least sympathize with Augustus for having a difficult situation.

[Kabalisto Koga]

Augustus loses some points to me for basically turning Rome from republic into absolute monarchy. Pax Romana is impressive yes but his immediate successor was Tiberius so it didn't take long for things to start falling apart.

about his succesor were actually his Wife Livia the Augusta the culprit as not Tiberius but Gaius Caesar and Lucius Caesar were the intended candidates for his succession andboth did showed great potencial and suitability but Livia wanted to promote her own Son and indirctly direct her own power as i am shure with their mystterious illness werer presumably a cover up story and she had her hands in the play as her own Son had as you know as you made one servant version from him not eager to rule .

Also find i that hadnt Lvia succeded in to push Tiberius onto the throne i would asume that he would have b aside of his militaric general office be a natural philosophic scholar which would have out of his curiousity immersed himseslf in various fields of knowledge and may potencial became a ancient polymath scholar and sired with hiss intended wifea sideline of the Julii .

and Gaius Caesar would have then be the second Emporers where he would made good work and after him Lucius or Germanicus as the House of Augustus have thn some strong and stabile Succesors and heirs would the instability after Neros reign never occur and Rome would have lead into another direction with a much stronger monarchic family and later perhaps some rivalising families and persons .

So would i see in a Augustus a really capable person that succed in many difficult mattersbut had a tensed and difficult familiy situation that you must understand he was a great family man which loved his Family be it his sister or his child or grandchildrenn i bet he thought that his family to handle weree more difficult then Rome itself .

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gabby-tan bc i love doujins

Nani who that ? if i may ask , have you a example of his works ?

Thank you, I'm glad to know that I seem to have learned some skills through my education after all!

I must admit fairly well done situations analyzing . respecting nodding

[Nanashi(kari)]

Augustus gains some points to me for basically turning Rome from republic into monarchy.

[Leftovers]

Nani who that ? if i may ask , have you a example of his works ?

[5.6.2] So that he might seem to be doing something manly, he made love to one of the Vestal Virgins of Rome [Julia Aquilia Severa], priestesses who are bound by sacred vows to be chaste and remain virgin to the end of their lives; taking the maiden away from Vesta and the holy virgins' quarters, he made her his wife. He sent a letter to the Senate asking to be forgiven his impious and adolescent transgression, telling them that he was afflicted with a masculine failing - an overwhelming passion for the maiden. He also informed them that the marriage of a priest and a priestess was both proper and sanctioned. [July 221] But a short time later he divorced this girl and took yet a third wife [Annia Aurelia Faustina], a girl who belonged to the family of Commodus.

[5.6.3] Not content with making a mockery of human marriage, he even sought a wife for the god whose priest he was. He brought into his own bedroom the statue of Pallas which the Romans worship hidden and unseen. Even though this statue had not been moved from the time when it was first brought from Troy, except when the temple of Vesta was destroyed by fire, Heliogabalus moved it now and brought it into the palace to be married to his god.

[Nanashi(kari)]

But speaking of Rome and monarchy it really bugs me how pretty much every pre-byzantine roman dynasty was rather short-lived (in my head the average life-span of a dynasty is 150~250 years) and how often the sucession ended up steering towards more distant relatives or adopted ones, iirc the first roman dynasty to have a third-generation direct descendant of a emperor become a emperor himself was the heraclian dynasty.

[Kabalisto Koga]

But speaking of rome and monarchy it really bugs me how pretty much every pre-byzantine roman dynasty was rather short-lived (in my head the average life-span of a dynasty is 150~250 years) and how often the sucession ended up steering towards more distant relatives or adopted ones, iirc the first roman dynasty to have a second-generation direct descendant of a emperor become a emperor himself was the heraclian dynasty.

Well there werer many difficult times in the Empire and Septimus had his Sons after him namely Geta and Caracalla . als had actually Maurikhios intended to install his Sons in a on the Tetrachy remembering ositioning in that on Rules over an part to stabilize it but Phocas the usurper killed all of them . and caused a instability which lastingly weakened the entire Byzantine Empire so that the Rabs had easy play similar like in Sasanian Persia Bahram Chopin.

[Nanashi(kari)]

But speaking of Rome and monarchy it really bugs me how pretty much every pre-byzantine roman dynasty was rather short-lived (in my head the average life-span of a dynasty is 150~250 years) and how often the sucession ended up steering towards more distant relatives or adopted ones, iirc the first roman dynasty to have a second-generation direct descendant of a emperor become a emperor himself was the heraclian dynasty.

Wait a minute, I forgot that the Constantinian dynasty lasted three direct generations. Must be because Constantius Chlorus is kinda forgettable.
Ahem, in this case Heraclian dynasty was still the first to have a third-generation direct descendant of a emperor become a emperor himself so my point still stands. I hope nobody will mind me editing my post to

hide my blunder

reflect this

.

[RoydGolden]

Wait a minute, I forgot that the Constantinian dynasty lasted three direct generations. Must be because Constantius Chlorus is kinda forgettable.
Ahem, in this case Heraclian dynasty was still the first to have a third-generation direct descendant of a emperor become a emperor himself so my point still stands. I hope nobody will mind me editing my post to

hide my blunder

reflect this

.

Wasn't it known that the better Roman Emperors were adopted while the biological heirs tended to be pretty shabby? For instance Marcus Aurelius (adopted) is generally considered one of the best emperors while his direct son Commodus was a total nutcase who'd rather shoot the heads off ostriches in the colosseum than run a country.