Comment by aleyan | Hacker News Reader

Comment by aleyan | Hacker News Reader

With only one foreign conflict[0] at Rome's behest, Neros reign was remarkably peaceful too.

The other day I was casually reading the wikipedia article for Commodus[1] the baddy Emperor from the movie Gladiator and noted how peaceful his rule was. His only wars were when he was co-emperor with his father Marcus Aurelius, and ended when Commodus became solo ruler. By contrast, Marcus Aurelius[2] entire reign was at war and and he is marked by history as the last of the Five Good Emperors.

Wonder how much we think of Roman Emperors comes from the writing and propaganda of their contemporary elites. Rome had an economy based on the back of slaves [3] captured in war after all, so it would not surprise me that elites would praise hawkish Emperors and deride the doves.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nero#Military_conflicts

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodus#Solo_reign_(180%E2%80...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Aurelius#War_with_Parth...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_ancient_Rome#Trade_...

> Wonder how much we think of Roman Emperors comes from the writing and propaganda of their contemporary elites.

Almost all of it. Most of the time, all we have to go off are the Roman historians, which are notoriously extremely biased. You learn pretty quickly in any Classical Studies program to unlearn a lot of the preconceptions about Rome and its history that are embedded in modern culture.

I don’t know about under the Emperors, but during the Republic the Senate was actually the house that tried to prevent war and the plebs tended to be hawkish. Wars tend to be sought after by up-and-comers.

Would Marcus have gotten better results from bribing the invaders, like Commodus did? Scholar Pierre Hadot apparently endorses Marcus and descendants risking their life for 400 years at Roman frontiers.

The five good emperors were not sons of their emperor. Marcus offered Caesar title to Pomeianus, a great general who didnt have nepotism to back his rise, married Marcus's daughter Lucilla and provided the inspiration to Maximus in Gladiator. He refused it the three times it was offered. We could have had six good emperors.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiberius_Claudius_Pompeianus

Aurelius' positive aura and reputation for being a "good" emperor may stem from his good relation with the Senate, as the senatorial historians would have been the main determinants of what image of him gets passed down to us (albeit indirectly). The same thing would go about other emperors.

Also, w.r.t. wars and other state matters, a ruler generally will not operate in vacuum, and had to account for the provincial gouvernements' needs and demands, the Senate, etc, ... and of course, the need to defend against aggression.

His Meditations undoubtedly also play a part in how he is perceived today, do you not think so?

Yes, I think so. But I'm talking about how his actions and decisions as Emperor have echoed through history, as opposed to how others (f.e. Nero's) are remembered.

I think the fact that his writings were passed on also helps, don't know how good a person he was in actuality, but I was left with a very positive impression of him after reading meditations.

On the telephone game of history, I enjoyed a line in 1984 (ch.7):

> "There was also something called the jus primae noctis, which would probably not be mentioned in a textbook for children. It was the law by which every capitalist had the right to sleep with any woman working in one of his factories."

It's not true (as we well know, being our own primary sources[1], but upon reflection, even without the explicit right, it's not exactly difficult to find some capitalists[2] who behaved as if they had had the implicit right, so neither is it strictly false.

[1] and having heard the slander instead applied to feudalism

[2] Pedantically, the ones who have been in the news are the capitalists' agents, the high class house servants we call CEO instead of majordomo. Actual capitalists sleeping with factory women (pace Zweig's account of the pre-1914 World of Yesterday) is generally found more in genre literature than in journalistic pages.

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