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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;GinoLR, post: 8045676, member: 128351&quot;]I do not understand what &quot;good emperors&quot; means. Good for who, good at what? If one had to select 5 US &quot;good presidents&quot;, I am sure it would arouse much debate and controversy, at least for the later ones. </p><p>The Julio-Claudian emperors from Tiberius to Nero are traditionally seen as bad emperors, some even as tyrants. Tiberius: a sociopath; Caligula: a mental patient; Claudius: an alcoholic cuckold; Nero: a mad serial killer. Their successors are not much better: Otho was a debauched decadent, Vitellius a big fat glutton, Vespasian an old miser, Domitian a cruel tyrant. Only Titus and maybe also Galba are considered good, probably because their reign was short. </p><p>The Roman emperor controlled everything, being in the same time the executive, legislative and judicial power. Like Louis XIV of France he could have said &quot;l&#039;État, c&#039;est moi&quot;. How could we explain that a state run by such a gang of freaks w/o any moderating counter power achieved so much and built such a peaceful and prosperous empire extending from Britain to Syria?</p><p>These Julio Claudian emperors suffer from the bad reputation people like Tacitus or Suetonius gave them. Tacitus and Suetonius lived and published their work under Trajan, who claimed to be the &quot;optimus princeps&quot;, &quot;the best emperor&quot;. If Trajan was the best, propaganda had to forge a bad image of all his predecessors so Trajan should be seen as obviously the best one, the only one actually worthy of the Empire. But what about Augustus? Criticizing Augustus who created the imperial regime would have been criticizing the imperial regime itself, so Tacitus wisely began his Annals after Augustus&#039; death... </p><p>Let us not forget that all our sources on the 1st c. emperors are biased. And let us not take into account if an emperor was canonized by the Senate or not, we all know they were systematically divinized when their successor now in charge had been appointed by them: not divinizing them would have directly ruined the legitimacy of the reigning emperor![/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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