Were the Julio-Claudians really as bad as they seem?
The Julio-Claudian's were the first five emperors of Rome: Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero. This line of emperors ruled the Roman Empire until 68 AD, when Nero committed suicide. Most of them were said to be just absolutely horrible and insane rulers of Rome. They were truly as bad as they seemed to be hearing about them. There was of course the occasional good that they did, but for the most part they were crazy. The only 'normal' ruler from the Julio-Claudians was Augustus. He was the only one that did general good for the Roman Empire. Under Augustus's rule, Rome expanded and had control over modern day Spain, France, most of Turkey, and much of central Europe. He was a great fighter and ruler and was not insane like the rest of the Julio-Claudian rulers. Under the rule of the Julio-Claudian emperors after Augustus, Rome was falling apart. Tiberius pushed people that he didn't like off of cliffs just for fun. Caligula was ruler after Tiberius and he wanted to appoint his horse as part of the Senate. Caligula was also one of the men to suffocate Tiberius to death, so he was obviously not the brightest out of the bunch. Claudius came into heir at a very young age and beg and pleaded to not become the emperor. From what you can even read hear, among all of the bad things that they did for the Roman empire, you can assume that yes, they were pretty bad. Some of them did do some good with expansion regards to the empire, but they were mostly insane.
No comments:
Post a Comment