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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Bart9349, post: 1317472, member: 5682&quot;]Reasons Marcus Aurelius wasn&#039;t a great emperor:</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>1. He broke the string of the five previous competent emperors (the Antonine or Adoptive Emperors) whose succession was based on competence instead of inheritance. Instead, he chose his natural son, the incompetent and psychotic Commodus.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>2. He needlessly persecuted Christians and other minorities to maintain the Pax Deorum (or peace of the gods).</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>3. He foolishly allowed his feckless and corrupt co-emperor Lucius Verus to waste valuable resources during his incompetent invasion of Parthia for Verus&#039;s pursuit for personal glory. Verus later brought back the plague (known as the Antonine plague) from his Eastern campaign, killing millions of Romans and possibly Aurelius himself.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>4. He instigated fruitless and wasteful wars of aggression against the Germanic tribes, rather than making peace (which Commodus later did).</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>5. He trusted his duplicitous, manipulative, and possibly unfaithful wife, Faustina the Younger.</p><p><br /></p><p>6. He allowed uncertainty and instability to fester in the Empire. This forced the effective and previously loyal general Avidius Cassius to mistakenly rebel when Cassius thought Aurelius was dead. Cassius later died in his unwise rebellion. Cassius would have been a competent and worthy successor to Aurelius. He lacked only one qualification (in Aurelius’ eyes, at least): He wasn’t his natural son.</p><p><br /></p><p>The stoic Marcus Aurelius was a very thoughtful “philosopher king.” He was also very indecisive and weak. His lack of leadership and poor choice of heir (Commodus) helped to precipitate the crisis of the third-century Empire. :veryangry:</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>guy[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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