I’ve ranked the best – now it’s time for the rest.

I’m ranking all the Roman emperors (until 476 AD). I’ve ranked the thirty emperors I regard as good in my top ten best Roman emperors and twenty special mentions. I’ve ranked my top ten worst Roman emperors, but the Roman empire has so many more bad emperors to give – there were substantially more bad than good emperors, although the bad emperors tended to reign for shorter periods so it more than evens up by length of reign (otherwise you’d think the empire would have collapsed sooner).

My usual rule is twenty special mentions for a top ten – so here I have twenty special mentions for the balance of ‘bad’ emperors, but I’ve had to cram a number of emperors into some entries, albeit to a common denominator or theme.

I think you would have a reasonable argument to swap in any of my first eight special mentions for ‘bad’ emperors into my top ten worst emperors, except perhaps that they lack the name recognition, impact or endurance of reign of my top ten entries. After that, the special mentions become more borderline, right up to my last two special mentions as my dividing line between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ emperors.

 

To recap my top 10 worst Roman emperors ahead of these special mentions:

1 – Caligula

2 – Nero

3 – Elagabalus

4 – Honorius

5 – Valentinian III

6 – Commodus

7 – Caracalla

8 – Constantine II

9 – Arcadius

10 – Petronius Maximus

 

EMPIRE MAKER / SAVIOR / BASER OR EMPIRE BREAKER / DEBASER / DEBAUCHER

 

In addition to my usual star and tier-rankings, I also have my own particular (and hence subjective) rankings for those (good) emperors that made or saved the empire (or strengthened its base) – or the (bad) emperors that broke, debased or debauched it. Given these are my special mentions for bad emperors, I’ll throw in whether they are empire breakers, debasers or debauchers after their star and tier rankings.

 

DID DOVAHHATTY DO RIGHT?

 

Finally, because I have used Youtuber Dovahhatty’s Unbiased History of Rome animated video series as the source of images to depict each emperor, I’ll rank how well Dovahhatty did in his depiction of them.  His Unbiased History of Rome videos are probably my single biggest influence for Roman history – and certainly on Youtube.

While he does not actually rank the emperors as a whole, he does rank them individually by meme cartoon figures as being (good) chads or (bad) virgins, with the occasional (good or bad) wojaks. Of course, his tongue is firmly in his parody cheek, such as when he depicts some of the worst Roman emperors as the chads they proclaimed themselves to be.