Marcus Aurelius was the last of four good and wise Roman emperors. After him Commodus inherited the throne, followed by three other emperors in less than a year. This strife was one that the Roman Empire never really recovered from. So, what do you think would happen if his son was more like himself, or at least humane, rational and sane? I believe that around 200 BC, the Empire was pretty much still at the height of its power. Do you think that the Romans could have lasted until medieval times? Crazy emperors really damaged the empire more than invaders, and the conversion to Christianity was simply the last nail in the coffin. Marcus Aurelius had a fairly "Buddhist" and balanced world view, so if his successors moved in that direction, I believe Rome would thrive for quite a while longer.
What if Marcus Aurelius had a sane son?
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girld22
Banned
Hello,
Interesting topic. Well first of all Commudus wasnt nuts he was just a spoiled brats who did what he wanted to. Also not really defending Commudus but he did rule for like 10 years or something like that and he did continue his fathers policies for most of the time. The problem with Commudus is that he wasnt his father because he was lazy and spoiled.
The biggest problem was he withdraw from the marcomanni war that he shouldnt because this left the provinces valnuable and his father believved that one or two more campigns would have won the war.
Withdrawing ewas probably the biggest mistake because it give the impression that the romans were weak, encouraged other tribes and left the border valnuarble.
Interesting topic. Well first of all Commudus wasnt nuts he was just a spoiled brats who did what he wanted to. Also not really defending Commudus but he did rule for like 10 years or something like that and he did continue his fathers policies for most of the time. The problem with Commudus is that he wasnt his father because he was lazy and spoiled.
The biggest problem was he withdraw from the marcomanni war that he shouldnt because this left the provinces valnuable and his father believved that one or two more campigns would have won the war.
Withdrawing ewas probably the biggest mistake because it give the impression that the romans were weak, encouraged other tribes and left the border valnuarble.
The question is whether a sane Emperor is any less likely to be assassinated or overthrown by the soldiers than an insane one. Iirc quite a few perfectly sane Emperors suffered that fate in the century after Marcus' seath.
And that can be directly linked to Commodus and moreso the Severans. And like others said, Commodus wasn't insane (to the OP). I imagine a good POD would be to have Commodus die of the plague and his twin brother (who did die of the plague) Lucius (I think that was his name) survive, or have his slightly older brother not die before he reached his teens.
Commodus had a twin brother named Fulvus (means blonde, so presumably they were fraternal as a cognomen like that wouldn't make sense if they were both blonde) who died when he was 4. A perfect POD would be for him to live and Commodus to die. Given his youth when he passed, he could have matured in any fashion an author wished. If he was a chip off the old block instead of a wackjob, Rome would be in much better shape in the 3rd century. He would be 19 when he came to power in 180AD and if he died at age 70 he would reign 51 years.
I assume he'd marry the same woman Commodus did, it was an arranged marriage. They never had any issue and Commodus is said to have preferred men, but I'd be surprised if he never performed his...husbandly duties, the Romans had a flexible view of sexuality. So, if Bruttia Crispina remains childless or only has girls then Fulvus would be able to adopt a successor of his choosing rather than rolling the genetic dice.
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus, 16th Emperor of the Romans lay dying. Yet he had not a heavy heart. His son was by his side, his tawny blonde hair hanging in front of reddened tear filled eyes. He was a young man, of just nineteen years, and he was not the philosopher that Aurelius would have wished for. Of course few young men were. He was a good man though, fair and just with a charisma that made men twice his age and more want to follow him. And lead he could, his talent was clear. At politics and administration he was skilled, but at tactics and strategy he was gifted. Aurelius had been a competent general, but he had no illusions that he was especially skilled at the art of war, his son had already outstripped him in that field.
That had been clear since that day last year when he’d saved the right flank of the army, and turned incipient defeat into a crushing victory over the Marcomanni and their allies the Quadi and Iazyges. The legionnaires had made him a grass crown as done for the Republican heroes of old, and much was spoken of the fact that he was the same age as Alexander at Chaeronea when he’d done the same with his father’s left.
Marcus Aurelius could feel himself slipping away, if anything needed to be said it had to be now. He reached out a trembling hand to his son. “Don’t let it slip away…” he rasped. “You have to finish them…preserve what we’ve gained…safeguard Rome” He was coughing wetly now.
His son grasped his arm with the strength of youth. “I will father,” he said intensely. “Sarmatia*, Quadia, and Macrommania, they will all be made provinces as will all of Germania Magna west of the Albis. And if the Sassanids bother us again I will march east and end them once and for all. What Varus lost and Hadrian gave away I will return to Rome!”
The Emperor’s arm went slack and his eyes glassed over, but Fulvus was comforted by that slight smile that had graced his father’s face before the end. He gently lay his father’s arm down and closed his eyes. Standing he rubbed his tears away and composed himself, he was the Emperor now, and he had his duty. He strode from the room. “Prepare the Legions, we march.”
* Land of the Izagyes, south of the Quadi and between Dacia and the bend in the Danube. There were other more powerful Sarmatian tribes to the East, but that's what the Romans planned to call the province.
I assume he'd marry the same woman Commodus did, it was an arranged marriage. They never had any issue and Commodus is said to have preferred men, but I'd be surprised if he never performed his...husbandly duties, the Romans had a flexible view of sexuality. So, if Bruttia Crispina remains childless or only has girls then Fulvus would be able to adopt a successor of his choosing rather than rolling the genetic dice.
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus, 16th Emperor of the Romans lay dying. Yet he had not a heavy heart. His son was by his side, his tawny blonde hair hanging in front of reddened tear filled eyes. He was a young man, of just nineteen years, and he was not the philosopher that Aurelius would have wished for. Of course few young men were. He was a good man though, fair and just with a charisma that made men twice his age and more want to follow him. And lead he could, his talent was clear. At politics and administration he was skilled, but at tactics and strategy he was gifted. Aurelius had been a competent general, but he had no illusions that he was especially skilled at the art of war, his son had already outstripped him in that field.
That had been clear since that day last year when he’d saved the right flank of the army, and turned incipient defeat into a crushing victory over the Marcomanni and their allies the Quadi and Iazyges. The legionnaires had made him a grass crown as done for the Republican heroes of old, and much was spoken of the fact that he was the same age as Alexander at Chaeronea when he’d done the same with his father’s left.
Marcus Aurelius could feel himself slipping away, if anything needed to be said it had to be now. He reached out a trembling hand to his son. “Don’t let it slip away…” he rasped. “You have to finish them…preserve what we’ve gained…safeguard Rome” He was coughing wetly now.
His son grasped his arm with the strength of youth. “I will father,” he said intensely. “Sarmatia*, Quadia, and Macrommania, they will all be made provinces as will all of Germania Magna west of the Albis. And if the Sassanids bother us again I will march east and end them once and for all. What Varus lost and Hadrian gave away I will return to Rome!”
The Emperor’s arm went slack and his eyes glassed over, but Fulvus was comforted by that slight smile that had graced his father’s face before the end. He gently lay his father’s arm down and closed his eyes. Standing he rubbed his tears away and composed himself, he was the Emperor now, and he had his duty. He strode from the room. “Prepare the Legions, we march.”
* Land of the Izagyes, south of the Quadi and between Dacia and the bend in the Danube. There were other more powerful Sarmatian tribes to the East, but that's what the Romans planned to call the province.
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I live in South Korea, so all my books in parents house in the states, and library access is a nonstarter. So, unfortunately I couldn't write a properly sourced timeline.
This. History tends to treat the Romans and the Byzantines as if they are two separate entities, but they're not. Medieval sources use the words Roman, Romoi and Byzantine interchangably.
As far as I know medieval sources never used the word "Byzantine" for any medieval population or country. IIRC this word was invented by the western histotians in the XIX-th century.
I should point out that after the Arab invasions and the introduction of Greek as the primary language of state (among many reforms at the same time) the empire effectively shfited from being the Roman empire into being an ethnically Greek state only thinly connected to the old empire. Basileus Giorgios explained it fairly well.
Whoever the guy prefers and regardless of his wife's fertility issues, there's ways around it. He'd just adopt one or more of his relatives and groom them for succession, seems typical for the Nervan dynasty. Trajan liked boys and Hadrian liked boys and Marcus Aurelius maybe also though as you can see not exclusively (which is how Commodus happened). The succession run was pretty good nonetheless because the adoption choices were solid and well-groomed for the job. Commodus clearly wasn't.
Rex Mundi
Banned
I don't know. Suppose that over the next two or three centuries, economic and political power in the United States shifted radically to the West Coast. Then suppose that the 'original' America (say a portion of land that includes all thirteen colonies) is conquered by a foreign power. During those several centuries, the government of America has already moved much of its apparatus and infrastructure to L.A., to the extent that the President spends much of his time there, with Washington D.C. relegated to his VP. The east coast falls with relatively little fanfare given the magnitude of the situation, and the government 'officially' moves to L.A., essentially confirming what was already a political reality.
This is an ASB scenario, obviously, but it's the closest modern analogue I can think of to what happened in Rome. Now, the L.A. President we have was elected as the President of the United States; the people of the west, who by this point were palpably wealthier and more educated than Americans in the east, still attempt to maintain an America. The person they elect as their next president is recognized by the last president of an undivided U.S.A. as a legitimate successor, and the entity he presides over still calls itself the U.S.A. Meanwhile, the eastern half of the country degenerates into a series of fragmented and unstable states. In this case, I think, the government based in Los Angeles would receive diplomatic recognition as a direct continuation of the U.S.A. Everyone would continue to call the Westerners "Americans", since they never stopped being such; only historical revisionism well after the collapse of Western America would change that.
To put it more simply, I don't think that the difference between the Ancient and Eastern Roman Empires was any greater than the difference between various incarnations of China. There seems to be a double standard where we unreservedly accept a continuity between two states separated by centuries of political turmoil and cultural evolution, but Byzantium always has to be distinguished from 'Rome'. To everyone who lived before the 1800's, ancient Rome was called Rome, and the Eastern Roman Empire was also just called Rome.
There was a subtile but important detail; they where still Romans, but no more Latins. The greek culture and neighbors with the roman aspects and all fused.
It's not revisionist to point that the base cultural aspects changed, evolved, over some top-side ones.
Rex Mundi
Banned
But that doesn't address my main point, which is that there were cultural changes and evolutions in other places - in some, greater than the changes that took place between the early Eastern Roman Empire and medieval Eastern Roman Empire - yet we have no problem calling them by the same name. We examine a polity that continued to exist in an unbroken line for centuries and say, "Well, things changed over the years so we're going to refer to it by a term that was never used to describe it contemporaneously."
If a distinction needs to be made, it's between Ancient Rome and Medieval Rome; there never existed at any point in history a man called the "Byzantine Emperor".