Dovahhatty’s Unbiased History XVI: Constantine the Great

But wait – there’s more!

I’ve ranked the thirty Roman emperors I consider as ‘good’ emperors and the balance of fifty-two Roman emperors I consider as ‘bad’ emperors, a total of eighty-two emperors from Augustus to Romulus Augustulus – but as I noted for my good emperors, the bad emperors don’t quite end there. There’s my dishonorable mentions for imperial claimants that don’t qhave the same authenticity or legitimacy as those I ranked in my Top 10 Worst Roman Emperors or special mentions.

Yes – it’s usurping time! Or at least, those imperial claimants generally generally labelled as usurpers. That term is bit elastic or a question of degree for Roman emperors, with the primary distinction being those who succeeded in their imperial claim and those who did not.

“A large number of emperors commonly considered as legitimate began their rule as usurpers, revolting against the previous legitimate emperor”.

Usurpation and civil war tended to be the order of the day for the Roman empire. While the imperial government itself was rarely called into question, “individual emperors often faced unending challenges in the form of usurpation and perpetual civil wars”.

“From the rise of Augustus, the first Roman emperor, in 27 BC to the sack of Rome in AD 455, there were over a hundred usurpations or attempted usurpations (an average of one usurpation or attempt about every four years). From the murder of Commodus in 192 until the fifth century, there was scarcely a single decade without succession conflicts and civil war”.

As I said at the outset of ranking the emperors, I’ve gone by Wikipedia’s list of Roman emperors but reserved honorable mention – or in this case dishonorable mention – for those entries in the Wikipedia list which are noted as being of “ambiguous legitimacy” or “varying ascribed status”. The junior co-emperors marked as the latter “are figures, mostly children, who are usually not counted as “true” emperors given their submissive status to the senior emperor, but are still present in some lists of rulers”.

And in contrast to my three honorable mentions, there’s a lot more dishonorable mentions for usurpers and other dubious imperial figures. After all, usurpers by definition tend to be ‘bad’, although some of them come close to or sit right on the line between my ‘good’ and ‘bad’ rankings.

Indeed, I’ve ranked eighteen such usurpers or other dubiously imperial claimants in sixteen dishonorable mentions (obviously ranking two together in a couple of dishonorable mention entries where they were essentially similar or close enough for the one entry).

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.