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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Sallent, post: 2939748, member: 76194&quot;]When looking at Roman emperors, the stories we have are full of bias and offer us at best a small glimpse into what they were like, but we will always get a distorted picture full of half truths and half lies.</p><p><br /></p><p>As a rule of thumb, those emperors who survived to a natural death and/or had successors from their same dynasty have come down in the history books as good emperors...because their successors were not about to let writers undermine their own legitimacy by tarnishing the reputation of their predecessor. Likewise, emperors who died violent deaths are always treated as villains by historians, especially if their successor was a member of a new dynasty. It is obvious that the founding emperor of a new dynasty would want to shore up their legitimacy by having historians destroy the reputation of the person they just usurped.</p><p><br /></p><p>There are a few notable exceptions to this rule though.</p><p><br /></p><p>1. Tiberius: Both Caligula and Claudius belonged to political factions that were enemies of Tiberius&#039; inner circle, so both were happy to have historians savage Tiberius.</p><p><br /></p><p>2. Caligula: yes, he died violently, but he had a successor of the same dynasty, so one would expect his reputation to be decent. However, some ancient historians implicate Claudius as a ringleader in the plot to kill Caligula, and the story of him hiding behind a curtain and being all innocent sounds more like a play than reality. Not saying Caligula was an angel, but if Claudius did usurp him then it suited Claudius to exagerate just how bad Caligula was in comparison to himself.</p><p><br /></p><p>3: Aurelian and Probus: Both could have been absolute monsters for all we know, and their reputations would probably be terrible today but for one small fact.&nbsp; Diocletian was from the same area of the empire as them, so in order to shore up his legitimacy and overcome the handicap of being a provincial, it was convenient for him to make sure historians praised and built up the reputation of two previous emperors who came from the same area as him. It was a way to say....&quot;I know I&#039;m an outsider, but Aurelian and Probus were neighbors of mine and they were larger than life...so emperors from our area of the empire (namely me) will definitely be larger than life.&quot;[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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