Disgraceful Emperors of Ancient Rome: A Five Hundred Year Overview
-By – Brenda Ralph Lewis

The imperial history of Ancient Rome started well enough, with Octavius Caesar, whose reign name, Augustus, meant “worthy of respect”. But, it did not continue that way.

Ancient Rome acquired its emperors almost without realising it. Ironically, it came about through the suspicion that Julius Caesar, already Dictator of Rome and its most powerful military leader, intended to make himself king.

The Murder of Julius Caesar and its Aftermath

’King’ had been a dirty word in Rome since 509BC. In that year, the seventh and last Roman sovereign, Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, was driven out after his son and heir, Sextus, raped a lady named Lucretia: afterwards, Lucretia killed herself. Almost five centuries later, in 44 BC, Julius Caesar the would-be king as some believed, was murdered in the Senate as a potential, if not an actual, tyrant.

The thirty-year civil war that followed so exhausted and unnerved the Romans that when Caesar’s great-nephew and adopted son Octavius finally emerged as victor in 31BC, they were only too glad to allow him supreme power if only he would get rid of corruption, strife and insecurity and, above all, perpetual war.

Augustus, the Strong Man of Rome

This meant, in effect, a strong man who had to be an absolute ruler if he was going to fulfill the hopes of his subjects. Consequently, after 27BC, Octavian edged his way into a position where he was emperor in all but name, and later became known as Caesar Augustus Imperator.

Although he preferred to call himself simply princeps – first citizen – something much mightier than monarchy had appeared in Rome. Augustus was all powerful, holding every important office of state.

He was even worshipped as a god in some parts of the Roman Empire: in his time, this stretched from Gaul (France) and Spain in the west into Asia in the east, and along most of the North African coast from Egypt to present-day Tunisia.

A Succession of Villains

As first Emperor of Rome, Augustus largely lived up to the meaning of his name. Unfortunately, the same could not be said about some of his successors who between them set new standards of debauchery, mass murder, incest, extravagance, greed, sadism, ambition and, in some cases, madness.

Their excesses were matched by an equally violent response. Five of the first eleven emperors of Rome were assassinated and another two killed themselves rather than face the fury of their subjects. This pattern of murder and suicide recurred throughout the five centuries in which the emperors ruled Rome and its empire.

Killing Disreputable Emperors

One of the earlier suicides was the famous Nero who slit his own throat in 68AD rather than be flogged to death on the orders of the Senate. Arguably the most flamboyant of the early emperors was the third, Gaius Julius Caesar Germanicus, better known as Caligula. A crazed sadist and possibly a schizophrenic and an alcoholic, he may have murdered his predecessor, Tiberius and ordered the deaths of several members of his family.

Reputedly, Caligula dis-embowelled his sister Drusilla, who was pregnant by him, in the belief that the infant she carried would eventually kill him. However, when Caligula was assassinated in 41AD, his killers were far more mundane: his Praetorian Guard, supposedly his bodyguards, murdered him, because his sadistic excesses were becoming a danger to the Roman state.

The Five Good Emperors

Although Rome was lucky in some of its later Emperors, such as Marcus Aurelius (121-180AD) soldier, statesman, philosopher and writer, both he and his four predecessors, collectively known as The Five Good Emperors, were lone stars in a black sky.

Even then, one of the Good Emperors, Hadrian, took a young boy, the beautiful Antinous, as a lover whose early and mysterious death in 130AD sent him into a frenzy of grief. This, though, was nothing compared to the eccentricities and later madness of Commodus, son and successor of Marcus Aurelius. Yet another candidate for assassination, Commodus was strangled in his bed on the last night of 192AD by his wrestling partner.

The Empire in the Depths of Disgrace

Imperial Rome probably reached its greatest depth of disgrace in 193AD, when would-be emperors gambled for the throne. The highest bidder, Didius Julianus enjoyed his prize for only three months before he, too, was murdered. But then, killing emperors who overstepped the mark or simply got in the way of ambitious rivals, was a regular theme in the history of imperial Rome

The Roman Empire was a remarkable achievement for a civilisation that began as two primitive settlements sited on the seven hills around Rome. It grew into the greatest land empire ever seen in Europe and was so powerful that more than fifteen centuries after its fall, its influence is still apparent in the world today.

Yet despite the power, the glamour, the magnificent towns, the innovative technology, a dark underbelly of scandal, vice and heinous deeds of almost every kind lay behind the scenes in the corridors of Roman power.

Sources:

Kerrigan, Michael: Roman Emperors: A Dark History ( Grange Boooks Ltd., 2008)ISBN-10: 1848040326/ISBN-13: 978-1848040328

Grant, Michael, The Roman Emperors: A Biographical Guide to the Rulers of Imperial Rome 31BC to AD476 (New York, NY, Barnes & Noble, 1997) ISBN-10: 0760700915/ISBN-13: 978-0760700914

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