Julius Ratus

Keep in mind that Chalon/The Catalaunian Fields, did not end the Hunnic threat. A few years later Attila, at the request of Valentinian III's sister, Honoria, the Huns invaded Northern Italy. Pope Leo "convinced" Attila to leave Italy and not sack Rome. By this point a massive epidemic had cut through the Huns and a simple pay off would have been sufficient to send the Huns home.

To Primus Pilus -- I think that the stable system inherited by Antoninus Pius should definately be added to his predecessors prestige because leaving stability makes it possible for good rulers to do their job. What Antoninus Pius gets credit for was that he didn't screw anything up. He left the empire in as good of shape as he found it. Another example of this would be the case of Tiberius. He left the empire in reletively good shape. Caligula would then loose points because he left Claudius a worse position than Tiberius left him. To M. Porcius Cato -- I agree that one who kills 10 is less guilty than one who kills a thousand. I also agree that the proscription lists and other such gestapo-esque measures should count against an emperor. The problem is, the persecutions of Diocletian, Decius, and Galerius were far greater deals than even Sulla's proscription lists. The reason that attacks on senators were considered so important is because it was the rich men who did the writing. Many more Christians died under Diocletian than senators under Sulla. A usurpur should definately be looked down upon depending on the motives. Did he assassinate a decent ruler in order to gain power or was there already a civil war going on which his sucession helped to end? Shouls Vespasian be looked down upon because he took over at the end of a civil war? The civil war of 69 AD should be blamed on Nero's inept rule, or maybe even on Vindex, but not on Vespasian. If anything, he should be credited for ending the civil war and bringing stability back to the empire. To Primus Pilus -- You said that you considered Antoninus Pius to be one of the better emperors. Indeed, he was one of the good five. What are your criteria on judging emperors? What things did Antoninus Pius do to warrant your praise? BTW, I don't know much about Antoninus Pius except that he carried on after Hadrian and left a good situation for Marcus Aurelius. I hope that your answer to my question will be educational for me.

The reason that my criteria were not all that explicit was that I hoped there would be some discussion on the topic. I hoped that better criteria could be found, so I picked three vague ones. Looking at your examples I would say that the whole Sejanus thing would be considered as disorder against Tiberius. Likewise, the persecution of Christians would be considered to be a negative action, as all persecutions are, because it disrupts public harmony. As far as a checklist goes, one would have to look at the sum of each emperor's activities to decide. For example, lets use Augustus because his reign was well documented and most of us here are pretty familiar with his reign. The first part to finding some consensus on his abilities would be to have common ideas on what are important. Since no one has offered any alternatives to my criteria I will use them. The Empire was prosperous under his realm. He left the city made of marble rather than stone for one. While this was probobly propoganda, it had to beased on some truth. There were no famines in Rome, so the people had food. There was external order to a large extent. His expedition against the Germans failed so that should be held against him. Apart from the Germans, Rome faced few if any external threats, and the German threat did not ammount to much at this period and so no territory was lost and there were no large scale raids committed by them on Roman territory. Internally, there were no major civil wars after Antonius was put down. There were no major rebellions, revolts, or riots. Even Egypt, a newly conquered land, seemed to have been handled smoothely. Now, the next phase of looking at this emperor is for people to cut up my assessment of him. Look and see if any of my facts are incorrect of misrepresented. Then add new facts into their respective categories.

Back a while ago on the Greatest Caesars post caldrail brought up a rating system for Emperors. His rating system was torn appart like the cow in the raptor scene in Jurassic Park but his point was missed. There can be endless discussion on who was the best Emperor or Gens or whatever but this will always boil down to fan-boy-ism. I will always argue for the point of Caesar because I like him and he wrote a good book, and Ciarn Hinds did a good performance of him in ROME, but none of thesereasons are acceptable by all, nor should they be. This is what caldrail seemed to be getting at when he brought up the idea of a rating system. I have thought long and hard about this but always became stumped. Then I talked to my father about it. He rates cigars on a forum and told me that the important thing to look for in subjects are things that are in common. With cigars, the thing must be constructed well and must smoke nice. The taste is based on personal prefernces so are left out of the rating. Applying this to emperors, if we are to develope a rating system upon which we all can agree, we must find things that all good emperors did. Here are my criteria: Prosperity External Order Internal Order By prosperity I look at the economic factors combined. Did the emperor spend revenues unwisely? Did he leave a surplus? Were his building projects for the public good or wastes (Hadrian's Wall vs The Golden House)? Did he have to excessively raise taxes? Externally speaking, was there peace? If there were wars, were they sucessful? Was the empire at least as strong when the Emperor died as it was when he took over? Internally, did the people seem to support him? Were there riots, civil wars, or revolts in the provinces? All of these things can be subjective but I believe that using these criteria we can come to a consensus and all of these factors can be backed up by the sources. I am trying to keep this simple because these criteria need to be applicable to any emperor. I purposefully strayed away from using assassination as a criteria because the motives need to be looked at. Nero died violently, but he did so as a result of civil war, so that death is already covered in internal peace. Claudius I was killed by his wife. One should never be judged based on the opinions held by their spouse so I would not count his mushroom dinner against his ability to rule as emperor. I think that this will become a multi-part project so I invite all of you to first take issue with my criteria. When we have come to a full consensus on the criteria then we have a standard that can be used. Then we can begin to rate the emperors based on our common opinions, which will open a new can of worms. I have had my two denarii so I will let you all have a go.

I bet Caesar would have liked to have his namesake at Alesia... The Caesar, 155mm SP Artillary, rate of fire is 6 to 8 rounds per minute on sustained fire, a battery of 8 guns can lay down over 1 ton of death in one minute. Made in Gaul by Giat. Here is the link http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=htt...6lr%3D%26sa%3DN

Happy birthday man. Put down a brew for me, and I dedicate half the Stolichnaya/Jaegermeister (your choice) I drank tonight to you.

Greater than Napoleon is stretching it a bit IMHO.

Despite my history major, I am able to overlook historical inaccuracies if the story is good. Alexander was rather accurate, as far as movies go, but there were few battles and alot of gay love story, so I hated it. I CLAVDIVS was well done and the acting was good, an it was historical enough with few blatant inaccuracies, so I liked it. My problem with the Augustus movie was the bad acting.

I have seen both CivCity ROME and Caesar IV on the shelf. Does anyone think that Civ City will run on my 1 gb computer? Probobly not.

I tried watching it once. The movie has a cool cover, but I couldn't finish it, it was too horrible. I CLAVDIVS was infinately better. ROME too for that matter.

Has anyone else read the Emperor series by Conn Iggulden? It is not the most historically accurate series about Caesar that has ever been written but it has a good storyline, at least I think so. I have read the first three and am waiting for the last to come out in paperback.

I have a few choices. I have always loved the Divine Julius so I could go with him. Trajan wasn't bad, was the last emperor to spread the boundaries of the Empire, and hell, you can't go wrong with one of the Five Good Emperors. Also, I have a lot of respect for Constantine, even though he gets alot of bashing from revisionists these days.

The toga was worn by some women, namely prostitutes. I don't remember wear I read that but when my history professor comes back from his confrence I may ask him. I generally don't go for a toga because it is way to big and complicated for me. Most people end up wearing a Greek himation (a.k.a -- a sheet) and calling it a toga, whereas I prefer the Greek tribon (yes, the oversized scarlet cloak worn by sexy Spartans and ugly philosophers).

Any of the Osprey books would be suitable. They are reasonably cheap, reliable (though they do tend to display an over emphasis on uniformity, at least in the ancient world), and the pictures are pretty. My 2 denarii.

Why do people keep on worrying about when wheat was used for bread? I ask, when were barley and hops first made into beer? That's true civilization! Now on a serious note. I would put my vote for the Sumerians, because to the best of our knollege they seem to have had cities, wheels, fire, bread, and even beer first. Also, i consider the written record to be one of the halmarks of civilization. As far as a Chinese or Mesoamerican candidate, since the Chinese have known how to write for a long time, a closer examination of their earliest writings would give us a better idea as to which one of them (Sumerian or Chinese) came first. Since writing was a later development in the Mesoamerican world, we may never know if they were civilized first, as archaeology is our primary source for them.

I saw the trailer, it looked like a super movie. As far as historical veracity goes, the movie shows the character of the Spartans and heroized them to the point of mythical unrealism. Go back 2400 years and Herodotus does essentially the same thing. Read the section on the battle of Marathon. Heroes come back from the dead to aid the Athenians. And even in the battle of Thermopolae, all the Spartan died on the last day and the allies had returned home, how would anyone have know what had actually happened. All in all, I think the movie will be good because while it dosen't capture the details faithfully, it will display the legendary stature that the Spartans had gained on that day in the 5th Century B.C..

I put my vote down for the gens Julii. While the Cornelii were a major factor in the Republic, they were soon overshadowed by the Julii. Also, they did not have as lasting an impact on Western history or mindset as the Julii had. Did Jesus say, "Give to Cornelius what is Cornelius'"? Even though the Julian gens was replaced by the Claudii and the Flavii, the name stuck. Suetonius wrote about the twelve Caesars, even though only three of them were actually of the Caesar family. Later Roman Emporers were called Augusti and their co-emperors were called Caesari. Even later, the emperors of Germany and Russian were called Kaisar and Tsar until 1918 and 1917, respectively.

The white fawn story is typical Plutarch. It is merely a story meant to give us an insight into the character of Sertorius. It seemed like Sertorius was opposed to Sulla, not Rome itself, mone me si erro. Here is another "what if" to the equation. What if, when Sulla died, Sertorius returned Iberia to Rome, and allied to the son-in-law of Cinna and the Nephew of Marius, Caesar. Now this is supposing that Sertorius did not get executed by the Roman government.

I go with Sparta. I have always loved the Spartans and one only has to read the Moralia and Vita Lycurgus, both by Plutarch, to see that the Spartans had culture. They were known for their singlemindedness and brutal society, but they also exhibit tremendous wit.

Decimus Caesar - This panicked the Veterans of the Persian army who were just as well armed and trained as the Greek Hoplites. They were not just as well armed. The Persians used little armour, and when they did have armour it was mostly quilted cloth or leather (an exception would be the Immportals who wore iron scale armour, but this was not as extensive as the panoply). Persian shields were made of wicker rather than bronze plated wood. Their spears were much shorter than those carried by the Greeks in the time of Marathon, Thermopylae, and Plataia. The Persians had as much training as the majority of Greeks did, id est, very little to none. None of the Persians would have had the extensive training that the Spartans enjoyed. Decimus Caesar - Still, this lack of good Persian infantry might have led to the Persian King of Kings recruting Greek mercenaries into his armies... The Persians did recruit Greeks. The Thebans sent men to fight for the Persians at Plataia. In fact, the Thebans had supported the Persians from the begining, and those who fought with the Spartans at Thermopylae were little more than hostages. Indeed, they surrendered to the Persians at the first opportunity. (Herodotus, Book 8) Decimus Caesar: I think they might have done it originally as revenge for the burning of the Persian city of Sardis. Herodotus backs this up. M. Porcius Cato: I assure you that the Greeks--especially the Athenians--cared about Asia Minor a great deal. The Greeks and the Persians had two very different mindsets. To the Persians, contiguity was land based. Ionia was connected to Persia's territory by land and was seperated from Greece by a body of water, so they thought that Ionia was in Persia's sphere of influence. To the Greeks, the sea was what connected places together (hence their solidarity to oversea colonies, something that was lacking in the ancient Near East, e.g. Carthage and Tyre). The Athenians considered themselves to be linked to the Ionians by blood and so they were prepared to fight the Persians for the independence of the Ionic poleis.

I think that everyone is getting confused. The horse was not reared by Gaius Julius Caesar, but by Gaius Caesar, a.k.a. Caligula, and it was not his pet, but his son.

I think that Rome could have carried on if it had gone on with the trend set by Nerva and Trajan. As long as there were adopted Emperors rather than a hereditary succession, the best man for the job was chosen. Despite the sentimental love of the Republic, the Empire under Trajan was far more stable than the Late Republic. Marcus Aurelius was a philosopher, but he was also a pragmatic leader. Furthermore, no on in his time had lived to see the republic, nor had their grandfathers. The Empire was the way things had been in the living memory of all Romans in Marcus Aurelius' time. The Barbarians were held in check by the Emperors and the Parthian capital was repeatedly sacked. Diocletian had the right idea politically, and if Constantine had passed on the Empire to someone who had any skill whatsoever, rather than his quarrelous progeny, the Empire might have been able to survive.

I highly doubt that Easter "usurped" any Celtic pagan ceremonies. How would the Eastern Jews that formed Christianity know anything about the religions of the Gauls or that cold little Island in the North that had not even been conquered by Rome at the time of the Crucifixion? Furthermore, why would the cultures of the civilized East need to steal holidays from the barbaroi?

In Greece, the Persians were unable to field their two most effective arms, the cavalry and the chariotry. The only reason Alexander was able to beat the Persians was because Macedonia had arguably the best Cavalry in all of Greece (the Thessalians and Boetians came close). The 10,000 mercenaries under Klearchus and later Xenophon were unable to win the civil war for Cyrus and were forced to fight their way back to Greece, so there is one Persian vistory over Greeks. edit: spelling