Any historians here? How true is this? This seems more narrative than fact. The fact that it also selectively focuses on rome instead of the multiple centuries after of kings and queens with near equivalent (maybe not idk) power is suspicious to me. Because it feels like you should find something that breaks such a pattern fairly quickly after that.
Also how legitimate and reasonable is my cursory attempt at research to check if this idea/theory/narrative is valid or sensible. I will post it below in parts because it exceeds the character limit:
https://youtu.be/MtW4n7Q3zYU?si=dlhmJF4SG83wbrU6This was the closest I could find to a moderately critical(Critical doesnt mean "mean" or "bad" or "harsh" it just means the basic fucking due dilligence of questioning your priors and investigating their validity) covering of the 5 good emperors. In this video he makes some points that kind of make me doubt that the emperors had any particularly exceptionally greater power than the Kings and Queens of the next century that would make deserving of giving these emperors the lionshare credit for the stability, as they needed to heed the senate just as much, and part of their success was guaranteed by the fact that the elites seemed to benefit the most from their rule. And 5 emperors is hardly a good enough sample to not amount it to luck, as weather was fortunate during that time, the east was weak, there were few wars, and few disease.Is it really a coincidence that the "end" of the "good reign of emperors" happened to end on the death of the one emperor where the east was angry, wars started propping up, and disease also showed, up, and all of these conditions were thrust onto a 16 year old Commodus?Are historians insane? How can you be aware of all these facts and blame Commodus rather than the conditions of his rise to rule. Shit was already starting to rile up during Marcus Aurelius' rule.Even if Commodus does genuinely make mistakes, he had to deal with problems none of the other emperors did, all while coming into power at a younger age than they did. Why do I have to consider somebody great, because they passed an easier test? We would never do that for intelligence.So either there is some information about the emperors and commodus that I dont know, that the historians know about, which I inexplicably have no access to...or all the Historians are wrong and stupid and have a childish narrative view of roman history where theyre conditioned to look up to the 5 good emperors as "good" the same way a child is conditioned to look up to their unremarkable rich dad, who doesnt really do anything, and is sometimes actually harsh and unreasonable, but gives them lots of money and lets them eat all the candy they want, and the consequences of that upbringing never rears its head until theyre so disconnected from their childhood that they lack the awareness to blame anything but their surrounding conditions, not how they got to those conditions.I think thats a good analogy.
posted this on /lit/ because i already posted it to /his/ and that place is shit and I got no significant and relevant answers
>>25244797Bumping to agree /his/ sucks. It used to be my home board until a certain type of poster began colonizing. Won’t name them because I’m sure they’ll shit up your thread too.
I can't speak for the others, but Hadrian certainly did 'earn' his position through politics and warfare. Trajan certainly didn't keep him around for fun, and his input was valued even if the letter of inheritance was fake. His awful architecture aside he also exercised that power responsibly. Mostly.I wish someone had planted a dreidel into antinious's spine or something to ensure Hadrian finished the job two years later. And he might have raped a guy in the woods once instead of repaying him the money he borrowed to buy hunting dogs.
>>25245600Damn Hadrian seems to be the one who even people who dont necessarily adopt the "5 good emperors" narrative dub as good.Why doesnt he get any shit for just immediately murdering a bunch of senators, isnt that usually used a mark of a bad emperor by people when you fuck with the senate and make them mad? and why doesnt he get shit for his cult but Commodus does? Other than that he seems "fine" if only because nothing much happened during his reign.I may be crazy...or Im noticing a sort of double standard where certain actions are fine aslong as no civil war comes of it, whereas if a civil war comes of other actions youre an insane tyrant
>>25245617Part of it was that he wasn't present that often. You could do what you like because if you screwed with Hadrian he would murder you, BUT he was rarely near enough to care. There was something funny about those sensors. Give me a minute to go find my book.
>>25245622>>25245617Right. If you meant Nigrinius, Lucius Quietus and co, it's probable that he tried to pressure or assassinate Hadrian on a hunting trip. The details are murky, but generally it's accepted SOMETHING happened. I've seen things that suggested the others were seen as normal Imperial politicking because they were all Trajan's friends, one that tried to blame a stoic book on revenge, etc. But it was voted on, ultimately, by the senate.Hadrian also quite successfully blamed Attianus for parts. But Quietus and Nigrinius would have had a lot of actual influence too and support from some quarters. I think they were plotting and got caught with their hand in the cookie jar, possibly by Calventius Viator. When it all went to hell everyone voted to save themselves.
>>25245639So I guess Hadrian just gets no shit for fucking with the Senators like other emperors do because nothing bad came of it? I may be pushing towards one direction too hard, but I happen to find a sample size of 5 emperors who all adopted except for the last one, whos son is considered one of the worst emperors, to be a good and convincing sample size that isnt subject to external factors that have little to do with the emperors actions in and of themselves being "good" or the fact that adopted sons were better because they "earned" their position due to a lack of entitlement. Especially when it feels like the sample size of Kings and Queens afterwards should be big enough to disprove that idea, but at that point it feels like the type of people that assert that Idea would just move the goalposts.
>>25245647More because probably everyone knew someone was trying to coup him and he caught them at it. Or it was stage managed well enough that it didn't matter. Further, his consolidation of and release of some of Trajan's conquests probably overshadowed things. The deaths did haunt him for a while but it was a shadow on his reign, rather than a storm cloud.
>doing more research on hadrian>come across thisohhhhh no, hadrian cursed the palestinians to be genocided kek
No, it's because Commodus was brought up by a Stoic, just like Nero was.
>>25245617>Why doesnt he get any shit for just immediately murdering a bunch of senators, isnt that usually used a mark of a bad emperor by people when you fuck with the senate and make them mad?The senate was already mostly useless by the end of the Republic; they didn't know how to govern and they didn't serve in the military and only cared about their own self-interest. Most of the skilled bureaucrats in the Empire were not of senatorial rank and hand't been for decades at this point. >Any historians here? How true is this?Nerva was only an okay Emperor, his greatest act as Emperor was picking Trajan as his successor desu. Most of the Emperors were pretty skilled governors, and their greatest gift was providing the Empire with internal peace for some 90 years. They also get judged positively based on what comes after them, which is a staunch decline in ruler skill, tons of internal fighting, and then even massive issues in their external wars. It was probably the best period for the Empire since the rule of Augustus, and you wouldn't see Emperors as skilled as Trajan/Hadrian/Aurelius until Diocletian 100 years later.
>>25244790There was a video I watched recently covering this very topic. You might have to dip into psychohistory a bit to find out (the real discipline not Asimov's invention)
>>25246314>There was a video I watched recently covering this very topic.If you can ever find it id appreciate it
>>25246323Its by a woman historian are you sure?
>>25246357Is it adding anything interesting or insightful or critical to the 5 good emperors narrative beyond what i effectively consider "wow these guys sure were lucky no wars or bad weather or disease happened until the one dude who gave the empire to his 16 year old son, was been attacked, and just came off bad weather and disease". I'm just not interested in most of the answers in the thread because theyre just affirmations of surface level knowledge im already aware of and they dont explain the incredible convenience and happenstance beyond "well they were just good emperors because uhhh they did good stuff like killing a bunch of senators and getting them mad and suffering zero consequences for that when nearly every other emperor suffered consequences" I dont care whether the "senate was actually weak then" how convenient that they werent weak every single other time somebody pulled some bullshit like that and got called a tryant and psycho for killing officials
