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I think for this thread the main sticking point would be the definition of 'evil'. Do you mean that they did things to hurt people on purpose with no 'valid' reason behind it? That they acted in a selfish way in order to get what they wanted, without taking the feelings of others into account? Or their 'atrocities'? Or are you talking about the individuals who ruled and ordered such things? Or some other reason? By defining the term 'evil' you could open the whole debate.

Review by Ian Hughes If a member of the public was to be asked the question of when the Roman Empire fell, the usual answer would be centred on events in the fifth century, and some may even give the specific date of 476 – the year when the last emperor in Rome was overthrown. For many scholars this is an unacceptable situation, as they know that the Roman Empire in the East continued into the next millennium, never mind the next century. Part of the reason for this state of affairs is a legacy of the historians of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-centuries. For them the Eastern Roman Empire – now known as the Byzantine Empire – was a degenerate, money-loving, corrupt entity dominated by court intrigue and eunuchs: a far cry from the majesty of Rome in the first century AD. In his new book Byzantine historian Jonathan Harris asks the question of why, if the inhabitants were as lazy, corrupt and inefficient as usually depicted, could their empire have lasted for nearly a thousand years longer than its Western counterpart... ...continue to the review of The Lost World of Byzantium by Jonathan Harris p.s. interview with the author coming soon!

I firmly believe that natural causes killed Germanicus. After years in Western Europe he travelled to Syria and Armenia where he would have been exposed to bacteria and contagion for which he had little natural immunity. The idea of the infant Gaius (Caligula) frightening his superstitious father to death is pure fiction. I could be wrong about this but I think the idea was never even mentioned before Robert Graves used it in his fictional work I, Claudius.