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"Caligua may have been insane in many ways, but this happens to be the most sane thing he or indeed any Emperor has done"
-Aeneas on the promotion of Incitatus to the heir to the Roman Empire - 60AD"
At the time it must have seemed insane. If you took this out of context it sounds quite absurd. It seems to have worked out in the end through. With Incitatus on the throne the Emperor could no longer make any decisions (spoiler alert: horses can't talk or write... yet ). After some shenanigans this ultimately resulted in the Senate of Rome regaining power and leading a technically republican Rome into a new golden age.
The legacy of the horse lords even persist in democratic governments across the world today. Seems to have become a tradition to have a defeated king abdicate to a horse to transition a nation into a technical republic. Talk about taking emulating Rome to an extreme. Today royal marriages are just marriages between horses. Raised an interesting situation when the insane King of France tried to run in the royal races and got trampled.
What would have happened if the horse lords had not come to power?