If you read the stuff he did, he was crazier than even Caligula, but the stuff was less sexy so he didn't become as popular a figure with so many poeople.
Some of it may have been exadurated by the historians of the day, but if you just assume that all the bad stuff was made up, then you're inventing history out of thin air.
This is my favourite story of him:
Nice necro.
I find it bemusing that a military disaster in the Eastern Roman Empire that destroyed part of the Eastern Roman armies made the demise of the Western Roman Empire inevitable, according to some of the people who have posted in this thread.
Rome was doomed ever since Marcus Aurelius made Commodus his heir IMHO. Before that the five good emperors had chosen their successors yet the bequething of the empire to a very incapable heir set a dangerour precedent for the decades of barracks emperors. The Roman empire was in decline for centuries, it just kept up a few pretenses of royal power- the death of Marcus Aurelius and the admittence of the Goths into the mperor were the two greates blunders in Roman Imperial history.
I might agree with you if that was what actually happened.Well the West was already militarily strained to the breaking point and the East getting defeated allowed the Goths to roam unchecked into the West and towards Rome.
Why was the economy so poor? Was it all the destruction caused by civil wars and barbarian invasions? Was it the plagues? The over reliance on slave labor? Something else?I also have a bone to pick with this idea. Yes Commodus was not of the same calibre as his predecessors however Roma was not "doomed" since his ascension. The fragility of the Emperorship that lead to countless plots, conspiracies and civil wars, the poor state of the economy the failure of most Emperors to establish a lasting dynasty and a series of outside factors all contributed to Roma's fall.
The real answer is that the economy wasn't actually poor, as far as we can tell, until the fifth century when most of the Western Empire ceased to be run by the emperors anyway. In some indicators, trade was actually up.Why was the economy so poor? Was it all the destruction caused by civil wars and barbarian invasions? Was it the plagues? The over reliance on slave labor? Something else?
Why was the economy so poor? Was it all the destruction caused by civil wars and barbarian invasions? Was it the plagues? The over reliance on slave labor? Something else?
Yeah, you are. The hyperinflation (which may possibly have been overrated pace Alaric Watson) was more or less solved by the fourth century. It reared its ugly head again in the mid-fifth due to, of all things, Suebi minting on Roman soil (not Gothic minting, that didn't happen until like the 470s), by which point that was among the least of the emperors' worries.Overinflation, constant warfare shortlived Emperors and a shift from offensive to defensive warfare which is where the Empire got a lot of its precious metals. However I could be thinking 3rd Century in which case I may well be wrong and I take it back.
What i'm wondering is, if the romans had the same mindset and ability to gather forces that they had in the punic wars then they would have gathered another huge army, gone and crushed the invaders and then probably also raided across the danube to take revenge on the barbarians.
Sure, a few tens of thousands of elite forces were killed, but why couldn't they match the numbers they had more than half a millenium before with much less territory ? Why couldn't they overwhelm the barbarians numerically if not tactically ?
Sorry about necro posting![]()
Valens did everything wrong he could do. He had his troops march 18 kilometers, in the summer heat of Bulgaria, without food and water. Also, he didn't wait for Gratian's troops who were further west. Winning shouldn't be that hard.
Rome was doomed the day Tiberius Gracchus was slain on the stones of the city Forum, it was just a matter of how long they could keep the ghost going.
Ι guess this ghost went way to far...![]()
That's the joke.This is one impressive ghost, to have lasted till the 15th century AD, some 1500 years later (or so)
Ι guess this ghost went way to far...![]()