Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Worst Roman Emperors (Encore)

Starting point is 00:00:00 The following is an encore presentation of Everything Everywhere Daily. Depending on how you define it, there were somewhere between 70 to 100 Roman emperors between the ascension of Augustus to the fall of the Western Empire in 476, a period of about 500 years. Some of them managed to be just incompetent rulers who ruled for extended periods of peace and prosperity. Others were not. Learn more about the worst Roman emperors, who ran the gamut from insane to incompetent on

Starting point is 00:00:32 this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. When Augustus became the first Roman emperor, there was no formal position with that

Starting point is 00:01:17 title. As he served for over 40 years, he was known as the Prynkeps, which just means the first citizen. The position of emperor was a series of personal powers and titles that Augustus was granted when he then passed them along to his successors. After a while, all these powers basically gave the emperor total unchecked control over the empire. Some emperors used this power wisely. Augustus, despite being the wealthiest man in the world at the time, and I mean he literally personally owned Egypt, always made sure to appear to live. modestly. Some emperors were pragmatic about not over-extending the empire by setting its borders and issuing further conquest. They didn't debase their currency, and they were responsible for the

Starting point is 00:01:58 200-year Pax Romana. However, in the words of Lord Acton, power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. A Roman emperor had absolute power, and not surprisingly, many Roman emperors were absolutely corrupt. The emperor was not an elected position. The position was usually inherited, or taken by physical force. As a result, some of the people who became emperors were totally unfit for the job. In fact, I would go so far as to say they were totally unfit for any job. So what I'll be doing is providing a list of the emperors who are generally considered to be the worst of the lot. There's obviously a subjective element to this, and someone else could bring up some emperors not on the list who were pretty bad,

Starting point is 00:02:40 and they wouldn't necessarily be wrong. However, if you look at any list of the worst emperors, it's almost always the same usual suspects. So, without any further ado, here are the worst Roman emperors in chronological order. And the first on my list is the second emperor, Tiberius. Augustus wanted to give the empire to one of his male heirs. He went through a series of male relatives who all died. He finally had to settle on his stepson and the son of his wife, Livia, Tiberius. Tiberius didn't particularly want the job. He was actually a really good general, but he felt slighted by Augustus and accepted it reluctantly. In the first years of his reign, it actually went pretty well. However, after the death of his son and his nephew, 12 years into his rule, he retired to his palace on the island of Capri. His palace was basically a pleasure palace, where he indulged in every sort of activity that horrified upright Romans, and also can't be mentioned on a family-friendly podcast. While Tiberius was in Capri, his right-hand man, Sejanus, basically ran a reign of terror in Rome in the name of Tiberius.

Starting point is 00:03:45 Sejanus was eventually stopped, which I detailed in a previous episode, but it didn't change the fact that Tiberius was very unpopular. He died at the age of 77 after ruling for 22 years. The fact that he came to power late in life, ruled so long, and died naturally, maybe, at an advanced age is something that we aren't going to see again on this list. His debauchery was raised to the next level by his successor, his nephew Caligula. Caligula came to power at the age of 25, 30 years younger than Tiberius was. He had little experience ruling, nor did he have any political or military background. Also, there were rumors that Caligula had Tiberius suffocated with a pillow so he could become emperor. Tiberius actually bequeathed power to Caligula and his grandson, Gamalus, who was only 17 or 18 when Tiberius died.

Starting point is 00:04:35 Caligula quickly killed Gamalus to get him out of the way. Caligula was initially well-liked simply because he wasn't Tiberius. but he quickly showed his own breed of insanity. He would abuse and flex his power in ways that horrified Romans. He would sleep with the wives of senators, and then openly flaunt it in front of them. He created statues of himself, which he put in Roman temples, and encouraged people to worship him. Supposedly, he once had the entire section of an audience at games he was attending thrown to wild animals because he was bored.

Starting point is 00:05:04 He was accused of incest with all three of his sisters. He tried to attack Britain and failed, so instead he collected siege. shells and brought them back as a treasure for his triumph in Rome. And he famously tried to get his famous horse-appointed consul. He created two enormous pleasure boats on Lake Nirmie at tremendous cost to the treasury. And he also built a pontoon bridge across the Gulf of Baye near Naples, just despite a soothsayer who said he'd be just as likely to be emperor as to ride a horse across the Gulf of Baye. After five years of emperor, he was murdered by his own guards. Spoiler alert, this is not the last time an emperor mentioned on this episode will be murdered.

Starting point is 00:05:44 Caligula was replaced by his uncle Claudius, who surprised everyone by being a great emperor. However, when he died, he was replaced by his stepson, Nero. Odds are, you've heard of Nero. Nero, like so many of the emperors on this list, came to power at a very young age. He was 16 when he ascended to power. It was mostly due to the workings of his mother behind the scenes who married Caligula, and who, according to some, poisoned him. The list of things which Nero is accused of includes killing his mother,

Starting point is 00:06:12 killing his brother, and killing his pregnant wife by kicking her to death. He thought himself to be a great singer and actor and would often perform and force senators to attend. If they fell asleep or failed to applaud enthusiastically enough, they could be executed. Also, in Roman society, actors were considered near the bottom of society. He competed at the Olympic Games in Greece and made everyone else lose to him in every event. When Rome burned, he used the new religious sect known as the Christians as scapegoats, ushering in the first Christian persecution in Rome. He would find novel ways of killing them, including using them as human torches to light his garden.

Starting point is 00:06:48 He cleared out an enormous part of Rome after the fire to build what was probably the biggest palace in the ancient world. He emptied the Roman treasury to build it. He scandalized the Roman elite by marrying another man, who was a freed slave, with him dressing as the bride, and then later marrying a eunuch. Eventually, the Senate and the elite turned on him, but he killed himself before they could kill him. The death of Nero ushered in the year of the four emperors, which I addressed in a previous episode. I will make note of the Emperor Vatilius, who was emperor for about nine months. If the other emperors were guilty of greed, lust, and wrath, Vatilius was guilty of gluttony.

Starting point is 00:07:26 He spent most of his short time in power attending multiple feasts every day. At one, there were supposedly 2,000 fish and 7,000 birds served. He was eventually dragged through the streets of Rome and murdered by a mob of Romans. The next bad emperor was Domitian. Domitian was the son of Vespasian and the younger brother of Titus, both of whom were emperors before him. Domitian served for a lengthy 15 years. His reign started out fine, but eventually he became consumed with paranoia. He saw conspiracies everywhere, which, oddly enough, encourages actual conspiracies.

Starting point is 00:08:00 He executed 15 former consuls. He executed wealthy people to take their property. He had one of the Vestal Virgins buried alive. He persecuted philosophers, Christians, and Jews to promote Roman paganism. He killed family members. In addition to killing his cousin, he supposedly impregnated his niece, forced her to have an abortion where she died, and then deified her after she was dead. He had people close to him in the imperial court executed, and that was what eventually did him in.

Starting point is 00:08:27 His own family was so scared of him that he was assassinated in a plot that may have involved his wife. Domitian's death began a period known. as the five good emperors, Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, and Marcus Aurelius. Each emperor adopted the man who was to succeed him, and the system worked pretty well, until Marcus Aurelius tapped his actual son, Cometus to become emperor. If you've ever seen the movie Gladiator, that was Cometus. The British historian Edward Gibbon marked the start of the fall of the Roman Empire with Cometus. Comedus came to power at the age of 19, which, as we know by now, is never a good sign.

Starting point is 00:09:04 Whereas Nero likened himself to be an actor, commonist saw himself as a gladiator. He would literally fight in the Coliseum as a gladiator. Supposedly, he once killed a hundred lions in the Coliseum in a single day. He saw himself as the reincarnation of Hercules, and actually renamed himself that, and declared himself a living god. He actually didn't take much interest in the affairs of running the empire,

Starting point is 00:09:27 so he left it to his freedmen, who sold favors and ushered in an era of extreme corruption. According to the Roman historian Cassius Dio, Cometus turned Rome, quote, from a kingdom of gold into one of iron and rust. His mistress tried to poison him, but when that failed, he was strangled by his wrestling partner. This led to the year of the five emperors,

Starting point is 00:09:46 which ushered in a new period of instability. Septimius Severus eventually brought stability to the empire, but his son was the next contender for the prize of the worst emperor, Caracalla. Caracola was appointed a full emperor alongside his father at the age of ten. His brother Gata was also appointed co-emperor when their father died in the year 211. Caracalla hated his brother and had Gata murdered by his Praetorian guards, and he literally died in his mother's arms. He ordered the destruction of all images and the name of his brother from throughout the empire.

Starting point is 00:10:19 After that, he killed anyone who supported or was friends with Gata. He left Rome soon after to tour the provinces. When he heard that he had been mocked over the murder of Gata in the city of Alexandria, he had the city leaders decapitated and massacred about 20,000 Alexandrians. Caracalla was eventually murdered in southern Turkey while urinating on the side of the road by a Roman centurion who was upset about not getting a promotion. It would only take one year for the next entrant in the worst emperor contest to come forward, and this was a really strong contender, Elagabalus.

Starting point is 00:10:51 Elagabalus was, surprise, only 14 when he came to power. He got the throne via political maneuverings by his mother. His name comes from the fact that he was a follower of the Syrian sun god, Ella Gable. In fact, he tried to get Elagabal to become the primary god in the Roman pantheon. Messing with religion like this drove the Romans crazy. He married one of the Vestal virgins, which was a massive affront to Roman sensibility. He had a total of five wives in his very short life. Rumors held that he practiced human sacrifice to his son god.

Starting point is 00:11:22 He once held a banquet where he dumped so many flower petals on his guests that some of them suffocated and died. He would supposedly go out at night and prostitute himself in taverns and in brothels. Eventually, the Praetorian Guard had enough of it and killed him and his mother. Their bodies were dragged through the streets of Rome and thrown into the tiber. There were many emperors who would also qualify as bad, but most of them were just incompetent or ineffectual. Some emperors like Diocletian were arguably very successful emperors who implemented policies that made the empire actually much worse. However, if there is anything that we can learn from the worst Roman emperors, it is this. It is probably a bad idea to grant a teenager absolute control over one of the most powerful empires on Earth.

Starting point is 00:12:07 The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Benji Long and Cameron Kiever. I want to give a big shout out to everyone who supports the show over on Patreon, including the show's producers. Your support helps me put out a show every single day. And also, Patreon is currently the only place where Everything Everywhere or daily merchandise is available to the top tier of supporters. If you'd like to talk to other listeners of the show and members of the Completionist Club, you can join the Everything Everywhere Daily Facebook group or Discord server.

Starting point is 00:12:41 Links to everything are in the show notes.

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Worst Roman Emperors (Encore)

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