9. A SAMPLING OF ROMAN
EMPERORS:
There
were far too many emperors in 500 years of the Empire for us to look at them
all, so we will just take a quick look at some of the good and some of the bad.
A. Augustus : a good emperor
- Caesar' s
great-nephew and adopted son, named Octavian or Octavius
- a
slender, weak, sickly person, he took very good care of his health, worked hard
for the good of Rome, and
lived
well into old age
- he was
the first to be called "Imperator" (Emperor). He ruled Rome from 27
B.C. to 14 A.D. and was one
of
the best of the emperors
-
"Augustus" is not a name but a title - "His Sacred Majesty"
- as ruler
he continued many of Caesar's policies:
- continued to create jobs by public works projects and giving free land
in the provinces
- made tax collection more honest
- put provincial governors on salary and checked their work
- he made a
number of needed improvements on his own:
- gave the city of Rome a much needed fire department (before this fire
brigades had been private
businesses)
- started Rome's first police department to cut down on crime
- he decreased the size of the armies to make peace more likely and saw to it that officers and men got
decent pay
- above
all, Augustus' greatest gift to Rome was peace.
Rome had gone through three devastating civil wars
(the
worst kind of war for any state) and needed peacetime to restore the prosperity
of businesses, to allow
people
to return to normal life. His reign
started a period of relative peace in the empire - no major wars.
This
period is called the PAX ROMANA (Roman Peace) and it is the longest period
without major war in the
history,
of the western world. (Strangely, the method of keeping the peace was by threat
of or use of force:
Any
attack on the frontiers or rebellion from within was dealt with quickly and
harshly by units of the armed
forces.)
- when he
died, he had reestablished Rome's prosperity and strength
B. Gaius : (known to history
as "Caligula")
- Rome's
third emperor
-
unquestionably insane : a sadist and a totally selfish person
- wasted
Rome's wealth on self-indulgent extravagances
- practiced
all sorts of sadistic cruelties on citizens
- raised
money for his extravagances by cruel and totally illegal means
- took
little thought about government
- when he
was killed, after four years, he left the Roman treasury bankrupt
- Rome's fifth emperor
- a vicious egomaniac (who
had his own mother and grandmother killed), who suffered from severe delusions
of grandeur
(fancied himself a supremely talented athlete and artist), known to exercise
many personal
excesses and
perversions
- in fairness, he was as
emperor sometimes very good to the common people, but he was absolutely vicious
to
the nobles
- spent much of his time
listening to flatterers and indulging his athletic, sexual and artistic
interests instead
of governing
- it was he who began the
persecution of Christians. He blamed them for the Great Fire of Rome in 64 A.D.
(No, he did not
fiddle while Rome burned: the fiddle was not invented yet)
- after the fire had consumed much of the city, he did a great deal to help rebuild and beautify Rome
- in the end, even his own
supporters turned against him because of his autocratic behavior. He was forced
to
suicide before
he would be killed.