Dilettantes think about the Roman Empire. True Roman connoisseurs rank the Roman emperors.

I owe my own rankings to the influence and inspiration of truer Roman connoisseurs than me. You don’t get more of a true Roman connoisseur than the Youtuber and X-Twitter account Daily Roman Updates, named for his updates on the Roman Empire (“It’s gone”) – and I’m prompted by his joke about asking favorite Roman emperors as an icebreaker at dates or parties, despite his inner voice repeatedly pleading with him not to say to say it.

 

 

Of course, any such ranking is subjective opinion, although there does appear to be some broad consensus (or consensuses?) about the good or better Roman emperors. You don’t get such common labels as “the five good emperors” (which I understand to have originated with Machiavelli and been advanced by Gibbon) without some consensus.

Or the phrase used by the Roman Senate itself in the inauguration of later Roman emperors, invoking two emperors as the paragons of Roman emperors. Don’t be surprised if the emperors from either the five good emperors or the Senate’s inauguration phrase feature prominently in my top ten.

And again I am influenced in my rankings by truer Roman connoisseurs. I’ve seen a post by Daily Roman Updates of his top five Roman emperors, which is largely the same as my own but for one notable exception (which we’ll get to shortly).

Similarly, the Youtuber Spectrum has ranked the Roman emperors in videos and my rankings echo his in many respects, although I dissent in others.

Youtuber Dovahhatty – whose Unbiased History of Rome videos are probably my single biggest influence for Roman history on Youtube (and the source of my feature images) but who now sadly appears to be inactive there and on X-Twitter – does not actually rank the emperors. However, he does depict them 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.

Of course, by definition I am only ranking my top ten Roman emperors in my top ten, but I rank the balance of Roman emperors in my special mentions. And because you can’t rank the best Roman emperors without also ranking the worst Roman emperors as well – primarily because the worst Roman emperors are legendary in their cruelty and depravity – I rank my ten worst Roman emperors with the balance similarly in special mentions.

As for any matter of subjective opinion, my criteria for ranking my top emperors are somewhat loose, but primarily might be stated to be their effectiveness in managing or maintaining the empire, which may give rise to some moral dissonance as to what we might look for in leaders of modern democratic states today, given that the lifeblood of empire was brutal war or conquest – “they make a desert and call it peace”.

Conversely, my criteria for the ranking of the worst emperors might be stated to be their ineffectiveness, often characterized by imperial defeats, and usually combined with that aforementioned legendary cruelty and depravity.

As for the ground rules for whom I rank, my primary rule is that I am only ranking Roman emperors until 476 AD, when the last western Roman emperor Romulus Augustulus was deposed – with the exception I do not include eastern emperor Zeno, who reigned briefly in 474-475 AD before returning for a longer second reign from 476 onwards (indeed commencing just before Romulus Augustulus was deposed).

That’s really just a matter of brevity and also that I am more familiar with the ‘classical’ Roman emperors. I know that is short-changing the eastern Roman emperors, particularly as they had a millennium of imperial history after that and probably had more basic competence or effectiveness on average, or at least not the same depths of legendary cruelty and depravity as their worst counterparts in the classical empire.

So yes – sorry Byzantine bros, I am not ranking any eastern Roman emperors from 476 AD onwards in my top ten. Instead, they will get their own top ten and special mentions, good and bad, in which I will effectively rank my top best and worst eastern Roman emperors after 476.

Oh well, what the hell – you can have a ranking of eastern Roman emperors for my top ten as a treat. I rank Basil II (the Bulgar-Slayer) as the best eastern Roman emperor and he would easily rank in my top ten if it extended to 1453 AD. (He was that notable exception for Daily Roman Updates’ top five emperors as against my own, although I wouldn’t rank him in fifth place as Daily Roman Updates did).

Otherwise, I’d rank Justinian (narrowly missing out to Basil II in a close call for best eastern Roman emperor) and Heraclius in my top ten emperors if extended to 1453 AD – probably also Alexios I Komnenos, although he illustrates the further problem of scale between the eastern Roman empire and the classical empire in comparing the emperors of both together. That is, he was operating on a far smaller scale than the emperors of the classical empire – although that also cuts both ways in that he overcame the greater challenges of fewer resources against more powerful enemies posing more genuine existential threats.

As for top ten worst Roman Emperors, I’d easily rank the eastern Roman emperor (and usurper) Phocas among them, pronouncing judgement in the same terms as Heraclius “Is this how you have ruled, wretch?”

On that note, I acknowledge my hubris from my armchair of hindsight in judging people, the least of which has ruled far more than anything I ever have (as in anything at all) – although I’d like to think that I’d have done a better job than the worst of them. Oh, who am I kidding? I’d be partying it up to legendary depravity as well.

My ground rule still leaves the issue of which emperors to rank prior to 476, given the list of claimants to that title – a list that as historian Adrian Goldsworthy points out is likely never to be complete or exhaustive, given the paucity of the contemporary historical record and that we are still finding ‘imperial’ coins minted in the name of claimants, previously unknown or ‘new’ to us.

So I’ve gone by Wikipedia’s list of Roman emperors, although I reserved the right to consider their entries noted to be of more dubious legitimacy in further honorable (or dishonorable) mentions. I have not noted when emperors ruled the whole empire as the majority of them did, but have noted when emperors ruled either the eastern or western empire after its division (and prior to 476).

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

In addition to my usual star and tier-rankings (which, given that I’m also ranking the worst emperors, goes all the way down to 1 star and F-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. Debased the empire that is, not the currency – all emperors did the latter, with a few exceptions, although I will point out those worthy of particular mention.

MAXIMUS

I’ll also note victory titles awarded to or claimed by Roman emperors (setting aside of course the title of emperor or imperator itself) for victories in battle against adversaries or opponents, which I’ll extend to include literal triumphs (for their triumphal processions in Rome).

DEIFIED OR DAMNED

I’ll note those emperors who were deified after their deaths (I’ll allow this to include sainted) or damned – that is the subject of a damnatio memoriae, or cancelled posthumously to use the modern term. Of course, deification became a little like the Roman currency in the later empire (until Christianity effectively abolished the practice) – so routine that it became debased.

SPECTRUM RANKING COMPARISON

Because of the influence of Spectrum’s rankings for me, I’ll compare them to my own.

 

 

(10) BEST: MAJORIAN –
NON-DYNASTIC / LAST WESTERN ROMAN EMPERORS (WESTERN EMPIRE)
(457 – 461 AD: 4 YEARS 11 MONTHS 1 DAY)

 

The last, best hope for the western Roman Empire, but alas it was not to be – albeit enough for him to be one of the historical figures labeled as the “Last of the Romans”.

There were probably emperors who might well have outranked Majorian for a place in my top ten but I just couldn’t resist Majorian for my usual wildcard entry in tenth place. What can I say? I’m a romantic for people fighting against the odds.

I also have a soft spot for stories of so-called lost legions, those left still standing or holding the line beyond the high tide mark of the empire – and Majorian was virtually a lost legion all to himself.

When I first found out about Majorian, it was a revelation. I had assumed that by the time of his reign, the western Roman empire was essentially dead on its feet, still standing only as it was propped up by the German barbarian tribes that had all but conquered it. After all, by 457 AD, Rome had been sacked twice by Visigoths and Vandals respectively, narrowly avoiding a third sack by Attila the Hun. Its emperors had all seemed to be one feeble emperor after another, useless or puppets (or both), as well as less than two decades away from the last such emperor being deposed altogether.

Majorian was having none of that. Seemingly cut from the same cloth as another entry in this top ten two centuries earlier, he strove to pull the empire out of its spiral of doom, defeating all of Rome’s enemies he fought even in that twilight of the western empire.

He had of course come from a distinguished military career, starting and serving under none other than that other legendary last of the Romans Flavius Aetius, particularly distinguishing himself fighting against the Franks. That saw him rise to the position of magister militum in the western empire, along with Ricimer, a Romanised German general who was increasingly the maker and breaker of emperors in the western empire.

Upon rising to the imperial throne, he defeated another attack by the Vandals on Italy, before setting upon the reconquest of former imperial territory in Gaul and Hispania, defeating the unruly barbarian allies or ‘foederati’ who had overrun that territory to return them to subordinate status and confined areas of settlement – the Visigoths, the Burgundians and the Suebi.

The jewel in the crown of his reconquest was to be the Vandal kingdom, which had conquered the Roman province of Africa – province of Rome’s old enemy Carthage and whose wealth and grain had formerly been the lifeblood of the western Roman empire – for its own, definitely not as subordinate foederati like other barbarian tribes in the empire.

Had he engaged them on the battlefield, one might anticipate that he would have defeated them as he had consistently defeated all his other adversaries (including the Vandals themselves in Italy) – but alas it was not to be. He did not get to engage them in the battlefield at all, as the fleet he had painstakingly built was scattered or destroyed, usually attributed to treachery paid by the Vandals.

Defeat as they say is an orphan – and Majorian soon found himself orphaned by history, betrayed and assassinated by his former colleague Ricimer.

In fairness, it is not clear whether Majorian could have decisively reversed or stalled the fall of the western empire, although surely his position would have been much improved by the reconquest of Africa.

It is tempting to imagine counterfactuals as to what he could have achieved if he had been able reconquer Africa. Or if the Leonid dynasty in the eastern empire, which pretty much sat around being useless until after 476 AD when emperors such as Zeno and Anastasius ascended the throne, had decided to lend its fleet to the campaign by Majorian rather doing so on its own a few years later for its chosen emperor Anthemius, resulting in disastrous defeat and near bankruptcy for itself. One can imagine that in those circumstances the western Roman empire may well have endured, perhaps long enough to when the eastern empire under Justinian lent itself in earnest to reclaiming or restoring its western half.

However, the precariousness of Majorian’s position and achievements are perhaps demonstrated by the extent to which his fleet could be exposed to treachery paid by the Vandals, or he himself could be deposed and assassinated by Ricimer – not to mention how quickly his reconquests unravelled afterwards.

Still, I tend to share the opinion of Edward Gibbon, who wrote that Majorian “presents the welcome discovery of a great and heroic character, such as sometimes arise, in a degenerate age, to vindicate the honour of the human species”.

(By the way, if I was to add Roman emperors after 476 AD, this is probably where I’d compare Alexios Komnenos – as arguably Majorian and Alexios were operating on similar scales in attempting to salvage or restore their empires, except Alexios succeeded in his attempt, so I’d rank him slightly higher)

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

EMPIRE SAVER

Sadly, almost but not quite. At least saved it for a few more years, so I’ll rank him as such.

 

MAXIMUS:

I’m not sure the western Roman empire had victory titles or triumphs at that late stage, but he damn well deserved them for his victories over the Franks and Alamanni prior to his accession to the throne, and over the Vandals (in Italy), Visigoths, Burgundians and Suebi as emperor.

 

DEIFIED:

With Christianity as the official religion of the empire, the Romans had ceased deifying emperors, but perhaps literary deification as the Last of the Romans

 

SPECTRUM COMPARISON RANKING:

Spectrum ranks the western Roman emperors after 395 AD separately, but not surprisingly ranks Majorian at the top of those – he was the standout after all.

 

 

 

(10) WORST: PETRONIUS MAXIMUS –
NON-DYNASTIC / LAST WESTERN ROMAN EMPERORS (WESTERN EMPIRE)
(455 AD: 2 MONTHS 14 DAYS)

 

If Majorian was the zenith of the non-dynastic last western Roman emperors after the end of the so-called Theodosian dynasty in 455 AD, Petronius Maximus was the absolute nadir – and hence matching wildcard tenth place entry in my top ten worst Roman emperors.

I mean, while the other non-dynastic last western Roman emperors apart from Majorian were generally useless or puppets, Petronius Maximus was actively destructive, with a cowardly low cunning rat quality to boot.

Admittedly, his most destructive acts were prior to becoming emperor – because they were how he ascended to the imperial throne in the first place. They were two-fold – firstly duping his predecessor (whom we’ll see later in this top ten) into assassinating the man who was effectively the one holding the empire together, Flavius Aetius, and secondly then orchestrating the assassination of that predecessor, adding treacherous insult to injury by enlisting two loyal followers of Aetius among his predecessor’s bodyguard to do it.

All that evil wasn’t enough for him to ascend the throne – there were other contenders to the throne, including Marjorian (and one anticipates history would have turned out better with Majorian becoming emperor then instead). So Petronius Maximus, a wealthy Senator and aristocrat, bribed his way through the Senate and imperial officials to the throne.

He then sought to consolidate his position as emperor by marrying Licinia, the widow of his imperial predecessor – the fiend! – but then effectively sowed the seeds of his downfall by also marrying her daughter Eudocia to his son. That involved cancelling her betrothal to the son of the Vandal king Gaeseric in north Africa – who promptly set about preparations for their infamous sack of Rome.

However, Petronius Maximus wasn’t done with being a rat. With the Vandals sailing for Italy and the citizens of Rome in panic or flight, he abandoned any defence of the city and sought to organise his escape instead.

Fortunately, karma kicked in and he was abandoned by his bodyguard and entourage to fend for himself, when he was set upon by an angry mob (or soldier – accounts vary) and killed, with his mutilated corpse thrown into the Tiber.

Good riddance but sadly his downfall was also that of Rome in its second sack, as the Vandals of course still sacked the city – and still got the girl, as Gaeseric took Eudocia back to Africa with him (along with her mother and sister as well as many other citizens as slaves). Well at least someone got a happy ending, compared to being married to Petronius or his son.

 

RATING: 1 STAR*

F-TIER (WORST TIER)

EMPIRE BREAKER

 

MAXIMUS:

Well except for his ill-deserved name, although I suppose you could say Petronius Maximus did defeat Petronius Maximus.

 

DAMNED:

No formal damnatio memoriae – probably because the Senate and Romans were too busy with Rome being sacked – but someone should have damned him. I’ll take him being killed by the mob and tossed in the Tiber as an informal damnatio memoriae.

 

SPECTRUM COMPARISON RANKING:

As I noted for Majorian, Spectrum ranked the western Roman emperors after 395 AD separately, but ranks him similarly as the third worst of these emperors. Yes, there were two that were worse – indeed, arguably the worst Roman emperors.

 

 

 

(9) BEST: VALENTINIAN –
VALENTINIAN DYNASTY (WESTERN EMPIRE – BRIEFLY THE WHOLE EMPIRE AT THE OUTSET)
(364 – 375 AD: 11 YEARS 8 MONTHS 23 DAYS)

 

The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides – by barbarians. And he will strike down upon them with great vengeance and furious anger. And they will know his name is…Valentinian

Apologies to Tarantino, although I think Valentinian would have dug Tarantino’s vibe. Certainly I think if any characteristic described Valentinian, it was furious anger, albeit that of the righteous man.

I mean, he literally died of anger – from a stroke yelling at envoys from Germanic tribes for not sticking to peace treaties, although I prefer the Dovahhatty version where Valentinian had his stroke choking them out in pure rage.

It’s not a bad way to go – and who doesn’t secretly yearn for something similar, going out in a blaze of glory at work, yelling out someone who richly deserves it as I rage into, not against, the dying of the light. No? Just me, then?

Valentinian was the last great western emperor, “due to the successful nature of his reign and the rapid decline of the empire after his death” – certainly the last worthy of the title of the Great as he is also known as Valentinian the Great (although I understand that was by a convention that did not so much connote greatness as a term that also effectively translated as the first of his name).

Hell, I’ll say he was the last great emperor in either half of the empire until after 476 AD. Yes – I’m looking at you, Theodosius the so-called Great. I’ll deal with him later but I tend to agree with Dovahhatty who has Theodosius muse to himself “I’m busy thinking how to be horrible at everything and yet still be remembered as ‘great'”. Okay – I don’t quite go that far but you won’t be seeing him on the best or great side of the ledger. Just don’t confuse him with his father and Valentinian’s top general, Theodosius the Elder or ‘Count’ Theodosius (as his military title loosely translates).

And yes – I haven’t forgotten about Majorian. It’s just that Valentinian was the last emperor to campaign beyond the Rhine or indeed secure the borders of the empire against barbarians, as he skilfully and successfully defended against Germanic invasions – to keep the barbarians at the gates

After Valentinian’s death, the barbarians were inside the gates – “the calls are coming from inside the house!”. The Romans weren’t fighting them beyond the borders or even at the borders, but inside the borders, where they were to stay.

After Valentian, it’s depressing that the mark of a good emperor – such as Majorian – was one who fought and defeated the barbarians inside the empire. And that was depressingly rare, literally only a couple of emperors. Even emperors fighting at all were rare, as that was increasingly done by their military leaders – increasingly drawn from the barbarians themselves – who ruled the empire in all but name, although in fairness quite a few of them also fought and defeated barbarians inside the empire, including my favorites Stilicho and Aetius.

Back to Valentinian, it was like the fourth century trying to replay all the greatest hits of the crisis of the third century but Valentinian was having none of it and kicked it all back to the curb – Germanic tribes in Gaul and Germania, the ‘Great Conspiracy’ of rebellion and invaders in Britain, rebellion and usurpers in Africa, and Germanic tribes at the Danube.

You don’t rack up those victory names for nothing. Okay, occasionally emperors did, but not Valentinian – I’ve seen listed for him Germanicus Maximus, Alamanicus Maximus (with the Alamanni as perhaps his favorite punching bag), Francicus Maximus (for the Franks) and Gothicus Maximus.

Sadly, his brother Valens – whom Valentian made his eastern co-emperor – did not quite have the same mettle or military prowess, which is what led to those barbarians inside the gates after a little battle of which you might have heard, the Battle of Adrianople in 378 AD.

His sons had even less. So much for the so-called Valentinian dynasty, which saw the empire crumble, albeit not as much as the – shudder – Theodosian dynasty. The only decent Valentinian dynasty was Valentinian.

Valentinian occasionally has the reputation – among some modern historians as well as contemporaries – as a brute, but he founded schools, as well as providing state-funded orphanages, medical services in Rome’s poorest districts and penalties for infanticide. He was also capable in administration, particularly financial administration – he improved tax collection (including relief for the poor) and was frugal in spending. And unlike his brother Valens, he actually upheld religious tolerance (apart from slapping the odd pagan).

Okay, there’s the story about his two pet bears which he used to execute people, but I’m not sure I believe that. There’s also the story of Valentinian and his wife swinging with Justina, the hottest woman in the Roman Empire, such that he made a law to have Justina as his second wife (and mother of his son Valentinian II). That’s probably as much gossip as the story about the bears but it makes me respect him even more.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

EMPIRE SAVER

Arguably the last such emperor in the classical Roman empire.

 

MAXIMUS:
As I noted before – Germanicus Maximus, Alamanicus Maximus, Francicus Maximus and Gothicus Maximus.

 

DEIFIED:
Despite being Christian, the empire still retained its classical paganism and its deification of emperors – so he was deified

 

SPECTRUM RANKING COMPARISON: Pretty similar – not in Spectrum’s top ten, but not far off in twelfth place (after correcting for Vespasian in eleventh place)

 

 

(9) WORST: ARCADIUS –
THEODOSIAN DYNASTY: EASTERN EMPIRE
(395 – 408 AD: 13 YEARS 3 MONTHS 14 DAYS)

 

And now we come to the worst imperial dynasty, the Theodosian dynasty, effectively the Roman counterpart to the barbarians at the gates that – along with those barbarians – destroyed the empire.

Theodosius was the last emperor to (briefly) rule the empire as a whole, institutionalizing its imperial division by inflicting his two terrible sons on it, one on each of its western and eastern halves. The western empire did worse with the son it got but it’s as if the empire was trying hard to churn out the worst possible imperial clones to ensure its fall. As we’ll see, the western empire did that twice over but it’s like the eastern empire got Arcadius as the clone of his brother in the western empire.

Arcadius was much like his brother in the western empire, weak and useless, puppeted by subordinates but luckier in that the eastern empire was more robust. He was also fortunate to have capable administrators, notably the prefect Anthemius. I’m also prepared to give Arcadius slightly more credit than his brother because he seems to have had major health issues which incapacitated him and led to an early death.

Like his brother, Arcadius also caused major issues for the empire’s supreme military commander Stilicho as the latter attempted to shore up the eastern half of the empire against its Germanic barbarian invaders as he did the western half. Those Germanic barbarian invaders were the Visigoths led by Alaric, who menaced and ransacked the eastern empire before turning on the western empire and sacking Rome. Arcadius stymied Stilicho’s attempts to defend the eastern empire, albeit as always under the influence of subordinates – before incredibly declaring Stilicho as public enemy and appointing Alaric, the leader of the Goths sacking the eastern empire, as magister militum or military commander to defend that same empire.

At least Arcadius didn’t actively betray and execute Stilicho, as opposed to his brother as western emperor. However, the damage was done, albeit ultimately more to the western empire and Rome itself, with this and other actions widening the ever more gaping division between the western and eastern empires.

 

RATING: 1 STAR*
F-TIER (WORST TIER)
EMPIRE BREAKER

 

No need to bother with imperial victory titles or deification – nothing to see here, although in fairness I think the institutionalization of Christianity had done away with deification by then.

 

SPECTRUM RANKING COMPARISON

This is tricky because Spectrum ranks him with the other eastern Roman emperors after 395 AD (the death of Theodosius), which of course extends through emperors to 1453 AD and there’s quite a few emperors after 476 AD that he ranks as worse. He does rank him as second worst eastern Roman emperor between 395 AD and 476 AD – I dissent from that and rank him as the worst in that period, ranking the emperor Spectrum ranked as worse in my special mentions.

Spectrum’s reasoning was that Arcadadius was “essentially a puppet – luckily his uselessness ended up not having any major consequences, largely due to much better successors the empire ended up having”. I’m not sure I cut Arcadius that much slack, although I do agree with Spectrum’s statement – “Also, just look at his bust – it screams impotent!”

 

 

 

(8) BEST: DIOCLETIAN –
NON-DYNASTIC / TETRARCHY (WHOLE EMPIRE AND THEN EASTERN EMPIRE UNDER TETRARCHY)
(284 – 305 AD: 20 YEARS 5 MONTHS 11 DAYS)

 

Dominus of the Dominate – Diocletian ended the Crisis of the Third Century and stabilized the empire, instituting what has been called the Dominate, as opposed to the Principate founded by Augustus, via the system of government for which he is best known, the Tetrarchy.

“It is perhaps Diocletian’s greatest achievement that he reigned twenty-one years and then abdicated voluntarily and spent the remaining years of his life in peaceful retirement.”

That was a rare achievement for emperors in the third and fourth century – few emperors died naturally and most died violently. He was also the first emperor to abdicate voluntarily to peaceful retirement, from which he could not be coaxed back, growing cabbages that have become the stuff of legend –

“If you could show the cabbage that I planted with my own hands to your emperor, he definitely wouldn’t dare suggest that I replace the peace and happiness of this place with the storms of a never-satisfied greed.”

That people sought to coax him back as emperor suggests something of a mixed quality to his reign that was summed up by the Youtuber Spectrum (who also ranked him in eighth place) – “the dude who tried to fix all the issues of the empire and to be honest kind of failed”.

His pet Tetrarchy failed when he wasn’t in it to hold the hands of his co-emperors – and of course it also inherently involved the concept of the division of the empire that would ultimately become permanent between its eastern and western halves. As Adrian Goldswothy observed, it meant fewer civil wars in a more muted form of the crisis of the third century, rather than a true return to the lost comparative stability of the first and second centuries.

The less said about his economic policies such as his edict for price controls the better, as they were a often an abject failure, resulting in higher tax burdens, inflation, reduced social mobility and effectively pre-empting feudalism. Diocletian also institutionalized the Roman equivalent of the military-industrial complex and bureaucratic state, although some historians have considered the burden of the latter to be overstated.

And of course, there was his Great Persecution of Christianity, which would ultimately prove to be ineffective and counter-productive, as well as seeing him maligned by subsequent Christian emperors after this persecution had been replaced by tolerance and status as official religion.

Even the Dominate which he instituted moved the style of government, particularly to modern democratic eyes, away from the more senatorial and collegiate style of the Principate, to one that was more authoritarian, autocratic, bureaucratic, and despotic.

However, it was one that served the needs of the empire at the time better than the Principate and continued to do so with modifications until at least into the seventh century.

Above all, it kept the borders of the empire secure under Diocletian (and thereafter for almost a century) – with Diocletian, who had risen to the throne from humble origins through a distinguished military career, campaigning successfully against Germanic tribes and Sarmatians at the Danube (taking the victory title of Sarmaticus Maximus), a rebellion and usurper in Egypt, and the Sassanids in Persia.

(By the way, if I was to add Roman emperors after 476 AD, I’d probably substitute Heraclius for Diocletian, as an emperor with a similarly mixed record – but perhaps with higher highs and lower lows).

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

EMPIRE MAKER:

Yes, yes – technically there was only one empire maker as such, but Diocletian qualifies for his Tetrarchy and the Dominate, effectively instituting a new form of governance of the Roman empire after the Crisis of the Third Century.

 

MAXIMUS:

O boy – Germanicus Maximus, Sarmaticus Maximus, Persicus Maximus, Britannicus Maximus (suppressing the Carausian Revolt or so-called Britannic Empire), Carpicus Maximus, Armenicus Maximus, Medicus Maximus, and Adiabenicus Maximus. Half of those come from campaigns against the Sassanid Persians.

 

DEIFIED AND DAMNED

Well, it was the Dominate after all – divine honors came with the territory. He even called himself Jovius.

 

However, Christianity has a long memory of its persecutions – there was no formal damnatio memoriae but he was removed from monuments and his memory was diminished under Constantine, both to magnify Constantine himself and because of Constantine’s Christianity.

 

SPECTRUM RANKING COMPARISON:

Exactly the same in eighth place!

 

 

(8) WORST: CONSTANTINE II –
CONSTANTINIAN DYNASTY (WESTERN EMPIRE BUT IN THREE-WAY SPLIT OF WESTERN, MIDDLE & EASTERN EMPIRE)
(337 – 340: 2 YEARS 7 MONTHS)

 

A whiny little toad, who couldn’t even get usurping his gay younger brother right and got pawned instead.

Letting his father’s name down, Constantine II spent his time whining that he didn’t get more than the western third of empire he got in 337 AD as one of three brothers because he was the eldest.

He was of course fine with his brother Constantius – the one who actually got things done – doing the dirty work of whittling down their father’s male relatives in what is known as the massacre of the princes so the three brothers could inherit their father’s empire. He just thought he was entitled to more of it. Constans got the central third, including Italy, while Constantius got the eastern third – you know, the third fighting the Persian Sassanids.

And so Constantine bullied his younger brother and ward Constans as an easy target – Constans also being targeted for ‘indulging’ “in great vices” and ‘scandalous behaviour’ with “handsome barbarian hostages” or his select bodyguard. The Romans were not exactly progressive about these things, particularly when it suited them for political accusations.

And yes – I said ward, because Constantius had designated Constantine II the guardian of Constans until Constans came of age.

So Constantine II bullied Constans into giving him part of Africa but squabbled over Constans retaining Carthage, refused to relinquish his guardianship when Constans turned eighteen, and just tried to usurp Constans instead, marching into Italy with his troops in 340 AD.

Only to be ambushed and killed by the forces of Constans – not even by Constans or his main forces, but by a detachment of troops Constans sent ahead of himself and his main forces while taking care of imperial business in Dacia, fighting actual enemies of Rome.

Congratulations, Constantine II – you played yourself.

Constans then got his brother’s third of the empire, consisting of Hispania, Gaul, Britain and northern Africa.

 

RATING: 1 STAR*

F-TIER (WORST TIER)

EMPIRE DEBASER

I’ve gone with empire debaser for him – it can’t be said that he broke or debauched the empire, but I think it can be said he debased it. His father had fought to unify the empire and eliminate usurpers – only for Constantine II and his brothers to divide it, compounded by him trying to usurp his brother’s realm – preempting the successful usurpation of Constans by Magnentius a decade later.

 

MAXIMUS:

Yeah, right.

 

DEIFICATION

One hopes not. I haven’t seen any reference to his deification.

 

SPECTRUM RANKING COMPARISON:

Spectrum ranks him even lower, the fourth worst Roman emperor before 395 AD (although that may drop down two places to sixth worst if we included the rankings from the western Roman empire, two of which definitely rank lower).

 

 

 

(7) BEST: MARCUS AURELIUS –
NERVA-ANTONINE DYNASTY / FIVE GOOD EMPERORS
(161 – 180 AD: 19 YEARS 10 DAYS)

 

Best known as the Stoic philosopher-emperor and for his Meditations, lending him an aura that sees him as one of the best known Roman emperors in popular culture and public consciousness, as well as one of the best. It’s a rare list of top Roman emperors that does not include him.

And I’m not here to argue otherwise. He was the last of the line nominated as the Five Good Emperors (in what is often styled as the Nerva-Antonine dynasty or perhaps more aptly the Trajanic-Antonine dynasty) , last emperor of Rome’s golden age and victor of the Marcommanic Wars – the most serious incursion into the empire and Italy itself for over two centuries.

The Marcomannic Wars were not the first threat to the empire he had to face – once again the Roman Empire faced the usual tag team of Persians and Germans, fighting the Roman-Parthian War of 161-166 AD with a revitalized Parthian Empire and a rebellious kingdom of Armenia that usually went hand in hand with any conflict with Persia.

The Romans won, with Marcus taking the title Parthicus Maximus – although it was primarily his adoptive brother and co-emperor Lucius Verus and the latter’s generals that had led the campaigns.

However, the Roman-Parthian War also brought something else – the Antonine Plague, originating in Mesopotamia and extending throughout most of the reign of Marcus Aurelius, from 165 AD to 180 AD, estimated to have killed about 10% of the empire’s population but which was particularly destructive to its army.

Ancient chroniclers depicted the impact of the plague on the army as one that saw it “reduced almost to extinction”, which compounded the impact of stripping legions from the Rhine or Danube for the war against Parthia and opened the empire up to the Marcomannic Wars. Marcus Aurelius led the Roman forces against the various invading German tribes through 166 AD to 180 AD, successfully repelling their invasions and restoring the borders of the empire (complicated by the revolt of a major usurper, Avidius Cassius in the eastern empire in 175 AD).

The death of Marcus Aurelius marked the end of Rome’s golden age – or as Roman historian Cassius Dio wrote, the point at which “our history now descends from a kingdom of gold to one of iron and rust”. Most of that was of course Marcus Aurelius’ heir and successor to the empire, his son Commodus – who remains something of a black mark on Marcus Aurelius.

How much blame fairly falls on Marcus Aurelius for his son’s character is another matter, as well as what realistic prospects there were for some alternative succession without civil war, but it was probably best summed up by writer Iain King – that the emperor’s “stoic philosophy – which is about self-restraint, duty, and respect for others – was so abjectly abandoned by the imperial line he anointed on his death”.

(By the way, if I was to add Roman emperors after 476 AD, I’d probably substitute Justinian for Marcus Aurelius, given the parallels of the Justinian Plague and a reign that saw the golden age of the eastern Roman empire only to fall apart shortly after, particularly with a less capable successor).

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

EMPIRE SAVER:

Yes – I’m giving him this one for the Marcomannic Wars

 

MAXIMUS:

Relatively modest with titles of Armeniacus, Medicus, Germanicus, and Sarmaticus – went all maximus for Parthicus Maximus.

 

DEIFIED:

Of course – also virtually a stoic saint!

 

SPECTRUM RANKING COMPARISON:

I rank him just one place lower, as Spectrum ranked him in sixth place.

 

 

 

(7) WORST: CARACALLA –
SEVERAN DYNASTY
(211 – 217 AD: 6 YEARS 2 MONTHS 4 DAYS)

 

You wouldn’t like him when he’s angry – the Incredible Hulk of the Roman Empire, not in superhuman strength but in violent temper, smashing his way from one end of the empire to another.

I hadn’t finished ragging on the Severan dynasty with Severus Alexander, so here’s the second entry from that terrible dynasty in my top ten (with a third to come), Lucius Septimus Bassianus – or as he is known to history, Caracalla, his nickname from the cloak he wore while cosplaying as a soldier. What is it with two of the worst Roman emperors being nicknamed for their clothing (and military cosplay clothing at that)…?

Technically he reigned as co-emperor with his father (and founder of the Severan dynasty) Septimus Severus from 198 AD and then with his younger brother Geta as well from 209 AD. His father died in February 211 AD and his brother died in December 211 – the latter with a little help from Caracalla. Or a lot of help, as Caracalla orchestrated Geta’s murder by the Praetorian Guard – worse in the guise that Caracalla had their mother Julia Domna arrange a peace meeting with his brother in her apartments, thus depriving Geta of his bodyguards, and then had him murdered in her arms.

Low blow, bro – although their mother got over it, obviously reconciling herself with the thought that one live imperial son in the hand was better than a dead one in damnation memoria (which Caracalla of course had the Senate decree for Geta). Indeed, she essentially ran Caracalla’s imperial administration for him, as he found it too boring.

What he didn’t find boring was lavishing attention on the military and LARPing as a soldier in the provinces. And by lavishing attention, I mean spending money and debasing the currency to do it. The denarius? Caracalla smash! He instituted another coin for Rome’s currency but debased that too.

That is, when he was taking time off from his purges and massacres, including his infamous purge of Geta’s supporters and his equally infamous massacre of the inhabitants of Alexandria because he was insulted by a play about him in that city.

One seemingly positive achievement was that he did decree all free men (with certain exceptions) as Roman citizens, thereafter puzzling historians as to his motives, although it is usually attributed to extending the tax base.

In fairness, he also did a reasonable job at shoring up the empire against Germanic tribes along the Rhine and Danube. On the other hand, the latter part of his reign was spent entirely away from Rome, starting with an ongoing tour of the provinces, reputed to bankrupt provincial governments with his extravagant expenses. It was this that prompted Edward Gibbon to write that “every province was by turn the scene of his rapine and cruelty”. That’s metaphorical rapine I presume, although you never know with the bad Roman emperors.

He then obsessively began LARPing as Alexander the Great, to the point of starting a war with Persia’s Parthian Empire by a Red Wedding style of massacre (although the accounts vary), which may have indirectly played a part in the rise of the Sassanids that followed as a rod for the empire’s back – and definitely played a part in a knife for his own, as he was assassinated during his war with Parthia.

“Caracalla has had a reputation as being among the worst of Roman emperors, a perception that survives even into modern works…historian David Magie describes Caracalla, in the book Roman Rule in Asia Minor, as brutal and tyrannical and points towards psychopathy as an explanation for his behaviour”.

 

RATING: 1 STAR*
F-TIER (WORST TIER)
EMPIRE DEBASER

 

MAXIMUS:

Britannicus Maximus mooching off his father’s campaign but he got Germannicus Maximus on his own.

 

DEIFIED:

Dude should have had a damnatio memoriae but got deified instead. I mean, they’d deify anyone those days.

 

SPECTRUM RANKING COMPARISON:

Very similar as fifth worst emperor before 395 AD (although that would drop two places to seventh worst emperor if we included Spectrum’s separate rankings from the western Roman empire).

 

 

(6) BEST: VESPASIAN –
FLAVIAN DYNASTY
(69 – 79 AD: 9 YEARS 11 MONTHS 22 DAYS)

 

Founder of the Flavian dynasty (of himself and his two sons), restorer of the Pax Romana, divine pharaoh – and possibly…the Messiah? Well perhaps not that last one – to paraphase Monty Python’s Life of Brian, he wasn’t the Messiah, just a very good emperor.

Vespasian restored the Pax Romana and political stability to the empire after the civil war of the Year of the Four Emperors, as well as fiscal stability to an empire left desperately in debt by the depradations of Nero and Vitellius (albeit with some slight debasement of the currency).

“His fiscal reforms and consolidation of the empire generated political stability and a vast Roman building program.” The latter included that most famous of Roman landmarks, the Colosseum.

Vespasian had a distinguished military career in Britain and, most famously, leading the campaign (and besieging Jerusalem) against the Jewish Revolt, in the First Jewish-Roman War.

He left the latter for his son Titus to achieve victory while he advanced his imperial claim in the civil war of succession after the death of Nero, seizing Egypt and its critical grain supply to Rome. In Egypt, he was hailed as literally divine pharaoh (son of the creator god Amun or Zeus-Ammon, and incarnation of Serapis) amidst claims of miracles and visions – doubling down on literally messianic prophecies.

“According to Suetonius, a prophecy ubiquitous in the Eastern provinces claimed that from Judaea would come the future rulers of the world. Vespasian eventually believed that this prophecy applied to him, and found a number of omens and oracles that reinforced this belief.”

“Josephus (as well as Tacitus), reporting on the conclusion of the Jewish war, reported a prophecy that around the time when Jerusalem and the Second Temple would be taken, a man from their own nation, viz. the Messiah, would become governor “of the habitable earth”. Josephus interpreted the prophecy to denote Vespasian and his appointment as emperor in Judea.”

One of the more entertaining theorists of ‘Christ-myth’ history, Joseph Atwill, in his 2005 book Caesar’s Messiah, proposes that the Gospels and Jesus were nothing more than Flavian fanfiction written by Josephus and others, concocting Christianitity as a pacifist and pro-Roman religion as a solution to the problem of militant Judaism. Although apparently Atwill proposes that the Son of Man in the Gospels was Vespasian’s son Titus – which would make a Flavian holy trinity of Vespasian the Father, Titus the Son, and Domitian the Holy Spirit…?

Back to more mundane earthly matters, aided by the spoils of war from the Jewish Temple, Vespasian restored the finances and treasury of the empire, through tax reform and other means, most famously the urine tax on public toilets (such that urinals are named for him in modern Romance languages) with an anecdotal saying attributed to him that money doesn’t stink.

Apart from the First Jewish-Roman War, Vespasian suppressed the (second) Batavian Rebellion in Gaul and expanded the Roman conquest of Britain in campaigns led by the skilled general Agricola.

“Vespasian was known for his wit and his amiable manner alongside his commanding personality and military prowess..According to Suetonius, Vespasian ‘bore the frank language of his friends, the quips of pleaders, and the impudence of the philosophers with the greatest patience'”. Hence, it could be said that Vespasian had a flair for diplomacy and tact to rival Augustus (in marked contrast to his younger son) – and at a similarly critical juncture to placate the Senate and secure the stability of the principate under a new dynasty.

Dying of diarrhea (no, really), “Vespasian appears to have approached his own impending cult” (of imperial divinity) “with dry humour: according to Suetonius, his last words were puto deus fio (“I think I’m turning into a god”).

 

RANKING: 4 STARS****
A-TIER (TOP TIER)
EMPIRE BASER

 

MAXIMUS:
No imperial victory titles as such, but he did have a triumph with his two sons for their victory in the First Roman-Jewish War.

 

DEIFICATION:
Yes, he turned into a god

 

SPECTRUM RANKING COMPARISON:
Spectrum initially omitted Vespasian from his rankings, but did a supplementary video stating he would have ranked Vespasian eleventh out of all emperors before 395

 

 

 

(6) WORST: COMMODUS –
NERVA-ANTONINE DYNASTY
(180 – 192 AD: 12 YEARS 9 MONTHS 14 DAYS)

 

His accession was the exact moment Rome went from a kingdom of gold to a kingdom of iron and rust, according to contemporary historian Cassius Dio. (Almost literally in the form of him devaluing the currency).

I mean, you have seen the gospel according to Ridley Scott, Gladiator, haven’t you? As Dovahhatty joked, the “historian Ridley Scott already debunked all this garbage”.

Yes, it’s – ahem – not entirely accurate to history, but it does capture the essence of Commodus, even if it is turned all the way up to eleven (and he didn’t actually murder his father Marcus Aurelius to succeed to the throne).

Joaquim Phoenix nailed it with a despicably oily performance as Commodus – it’s something he does well, as in the Joker film. Come to think of it, his Joker would adapt reasonably well to Commodus.

In real life, Commodus was not killed in the arena by Maximus, a vengeful ex-general sentenced whose family Commodus had executed but was strangled in his bath by his wrestling partner Narcissus as part of a wider plot. However, if that doesn’t smack of symbolism for his reign of dissolute narcissism, I don’t know what does.

He was the first emperor “born in the purple”, that is, as during his father’s reign as emperor, and remained the only one for about two more centuries, as well as the empire’s best advertisement for an imperial line of succession by adoption,

In fairness, “whereas the reign of Marcus Aurelius had been marked by almost continuous warfare, Commodus’ rule was comparatively peaceful in the military sense” – mainly because he flaked out on finishing his father’s wars along the Danube properly – “but was also characterised by political strife and the increasingly arbitrary and capricious behaviour of the emperor himself”.

Not that he was any more interested in peacetime imperial administration than he was in the empire’s military policy – he preferred LARPing as Hercules or as a gladiator, the latter more akin to an abattoir for animals (when human gladiators weren’t taking a dive against him), which turned off even the usually bloodthirsty Roman audience.

Edward Gibbon’s title for his chapter on Commodus sums it up – the “cruelty, follies and murder of Commodus”. In it, Gibbon wrote “Commodus had now attained the summit of vice and infamy”.

Also – “But every sentiment of virtue and humanity was extinct in the mind of Commodus. Whilst he thus abandoned the reins of empire to these unworthy favourites, he valued nothing in sovereign power, except the unbounded licence of indulging his sensual appetites”.

 

RATING: 1 STAR*

F-TIER (WORST TIER)

EMPIRE DEBAUCHER

 

MAXIMUS:

He shared his father’s triumphs as Germanicus and Sarmaticus. He claimed the title of Germanicus Maximus from the victories of his generals, and Britannicus from the extension of Roman Britain to the Antonine Wall. Sigh.

 

DAMNED & DEIFIED.

After his death, the Senate declared him a public enemy, albeit without any formal damnatio memoriae. Subsequent emperor Septimus Severus, seeking favor from the family of Marcus Aurelius, had Commodus deified. Sigh.

 

SPECTRUM RANKING COMPARISON:

Similar as Spectrum ranks him as third worst emperor…except if we add Honorius and Valentinian from Spectrum’s separate rankings of the western Roman emperors to the absolute bottom of the list, it would make him fifth worst emperor.

 

 

 

(5) BEST: CONSTANTINE –
CONSTANTINIAN DYNASTY (WESTERN EMPIRE AT OUTSET AND THEN WHOLE EMPIRE)
(306 – 337 AD: 30 YEARS 9 MONTHS 27 DAYS)

 

“In this sign thou shalt conquer”.

Diocletian may have created the Dominate but Constantine…dominated it (heh).

It’s hard to go past Dovahhatty’s summation of Constantine’s greatness –

“Having ruled as Rome’s emperor for over three decades, he displayed wisdom and virtue, was never defeated in battle, defended the empire against barbarians countless times, reunited Rome after a terrible civil war, transformed Christianity into a Roman, civilizing faith, and gave the empire a new capital that would last for over a thousand years. And it is for these reasons, and a thousand reasons more, that history will forever remember him, as Constantine the Great.”

Although, as we’ve seen, that title of the Great was used by Roman chroniclers to signify the first of his name (as emperor) rather than greatness, in the case of Constantine the greatness also applies.

In the eastern Roman empire, “it became a great honor for an emperor to be hailed as a new Constantine; ten emperors carried the name”, including the last ever Roman emperor, Constantine XI.

That carried over in the west as well. The Holy Roman Empire “reckoned Constantine among the venerable figures of its tradition” and Charlemagne “used monumental Constantinian forms in his court to suggest that he was Constantine’s successor and equal”. Charlemagne was one of many monarchs or royal dynasties that claimed descent from Constantine – Geoffrey of Monmouth even claimed it for King Arthur. (Weirdly, Monmouth also had Caracalla as a king of Britain).

“The age of Constantine marked a distinct epoch in the history of the Roman Empire…He built a new imperial residence at the city of Byzantium and renamed it New Rome, later adopting the name Constantinople after himself…It subsequently became the capital of the empire for more than a thousand years, the later Eastern Roman Empire”.

He also proclaimed that the Praetorian Guard, by now a byword in assassinating the emperors they were meant to safeguard, would be ABOLISHED – the subject of the greatest sequence in the entirety of Dovahhatty’s Unbiased History of Rome, even if Constantine didn’t gloriously slaughter them all as depicted.

As for the usual beating back barbarians from the borders, Constantine drove back the Picts in Britain (having succeeded his father as emperor while they were both in Britain), as well as winning campaigns against the Franks and Alemanni on the Rhine, and the Goths and Sarmatians on the Danube. He also reoccupied most of the long-lost province of Dacia (in his campaigns on the Danube) and at the time of his death was planning a campaign against the Sassanids in Persia (to end their raids on the eastern provinces).

However, as Adrian Goldsworthy wryly points out, Constantine spent as much (or more) time fighting other Romans as the Tetrarchy collapsed into chaos and civil war. However, this was as (or more) important for the empire as defeating the barbarians at its borders – as Constantine reunited and restored the empire under one emperor.

It was also during these civil wars that Constantine embraced Christianity for himself and the empire – through the legend of the sign that literally came to him in a dream, the Chi Ro or Labarum that he then had placed on the shields of his soldiers before winning the famous Battle of the Milvian Bridge against the usurper Maxentius. “By this sign, thou shalt conquer” – and he did!

Constantine didn’t just become the first Christian emperor – he also became a saint, “one of the only saints to be canonised in the Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox & Anglican Churches”. Indeed, he was (and is) hailed as the ‘Thirteenth Apostle’, a pretty impressive feat for someone who had his eldest son Crispus and wife Fausta executed – which remains a black mark against his name.

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****

S-TIER (GOD TIER)

EMPIRE-MAKER

Yes – only one emperor was truly the empire maker but Constantine gave it a makeover, enduring for a century in the west and more than a millennium in the east.

 

MAXIMUS:

And how! Germanicus Maximus, Sarmaticus Maximus, Gothicus Maximus, Dacicus Maximus.

 

DEIFIED:

And sainted too, earning the double whammy of deification and canonization.

 

SPECTRUM RANKING COMPARISON:

Similar but Spectrum ranked Constantine higher as third best emperor. By contrast, Daily Roman Updates had Basil II in fifth place in his top five Roman emperors, but I have ranked Roman emperors past 476 AD separately.

 

 

(5) WORST: VALENTINIAN III –
THEODOSIAN DYNASTY (WESTERN EMPIRE)
(425 – 455 AD: 29 YEARS 4 MONTHS 21 DAYS)

 

Jeez – this guy. Arguably the worst Roman emperor ever (albeit not quite in my rankings), although you could easily shuffle him and my next entry, his predecessor, for that spot, as they are so uncannily similar as to be interchangeable.

Each was a model of supine inactivity as the empire crumbled, except for betraying the loyal subordinate who was the one holding things together and stabbing that man in the back, with each having one of the two notorious sacks of Rome following shortly afterwards. Between the two of them and their inexplicably long reigns, almost 60 years in combination, they broke the western Roman empire and presided over its fall. It’s like the Roman Empire cloned its crappiest emperor, just so it could have him reign twice to ensure its own fall.

In the case of Valentinian III, that loyal subordinate was his general Aetius – who defeated Attila the Hun’s invasion of Gaul. One could argue that his betrayal of Aetius was even worse than the corresponding betrayal by his predecessor. Firstly, because he waited until Aetius had defeated the Huns and felt secure enough that he no longer needed Aetius. Secondly because the creep did it himself, the only time he ever drew a sword, striking down the unarmed Aetius and in a pack to back him up no less. And thirdly, he had the sheer hubris to boast that he had done well to dispose of Aetius in such a way, prompting a counsellor’s famous reply “Whether well or not, I do not know. But know that you have cut off your right hand with your left”.

Edward Gibbon summed it up best with this acid observation in his characteristic prose – “But the emperor of the West, the feeble and dissolute Valentinian, who had reached his thirty-fifth year without attaining the age of reason or courage, abused this apparent security to undermine the foundations of his own throne by the murder of the patrician Aetius. From the instinct of a base and jealous mind, he hated the man who was universally celebrated as the terror of the barbarians and the support of the republic.”

And in the case of Valentinian III, the notorious sack of Rome following shortly afterwards was the Sack of Rome by the Vandals in 455 AD – although he wasn’t alive to see it as fortunately karma had kicked in and he had been killed by two of Aetius’ loyal followers, orchestrated by Petronius Maximus.

And yes – Valentinian III was the predecessor to whom I was referring all the way back in my tenth place entry for Petronius Maximus. A disgrace to the proud name of Valentinian the Great, although Valentinian III hailed from that worst of classical Roman dynasties, the Theodosian dynasty.

“Valentinian’s reign is marked by the dismemberment” – DISMEMBERMENT! – “of the Western Empire; by the time of his death, virtually all of North Africa, all of western Spain, and the majority of Gaul had passed out of Roman hands. He is described as spoiled, pleasure-loving, and heavily influenced by sorcerers and astrologers and devoted to religion”. That’s right – Valentinian III, resorting to sorcery and astrology in the ghost dance of the Roman Empire.

That devotion to religion, of course being Christianity – somewhat inconsistent with the influence “by sorcerers and astrologers” – at least contributed to him giving greater authority to the Papacy, which might explain his only good decision, using Pope Leo as an envoy to Attila the Hun in the latter’s invasion of Italy, which succeeded (among other things) in persuading Attila to leave Italy without sacking Rome, never to return to attack Italy or the empire as it turned out.

 

RATING: 1 STAR*

F-TIER (WORST TIER)

EMPIRE BREAKER

 

MAXIMUS:

No, just no.

 

DAMNED:

He should have been – I’ll take his assassination as damnatio memoriae.

 

SPECTRUM RANKING COMPARISON:

As noted previously for Majorian and Petronius Maximus , Spectrum ranked the western Roman emperors after 395 AD separately, but stated that he would not only rank Valentinian III as the second worst of those emperors, he would rank him as second worst of all Roman emperors.

 

 

 

(4) BEST: HADRIAN –
NERVA-ANTONINE DYNASTY / FIVE GOOD EMPERORS
(117 – 138 AD: 20 YEARS 10 MONTHS 29 DAYS)

 

The definitive Roman emperor, exceeded as such only by my top two entries.

That’s notable in that he did not add any conquests to the empire, but indeed withdrew from the conquests of his predecessor, particularly in Mesopotamia but to some extent in Dacia as well. Although the Romans themselves tended to esteem expansionism, Hadrian focused on the consolidation of the empire – “Hadrian preferred to invest in the development of stable, defensible borders and the unification of the empire’s disparate peoples”.

It is hard not to see that as the correct focus, as Hadrian presided over an empire at its peak strength and stability, without any adversary of real substance let alone rival or threat to it. Otherwise, it might have become overstretched (or more so) – and it’s possible that even his predecessor who had conquered Mesopotamia (from Persia) “may have thought his gains in Mesopotamia indefensible and abandoned them shortly before his death”.

As such, unlike other emperors in this top ten Hadrian did not even have to engage in any robust military action in defense of the empire – with one notable exception where he was very robust indeed with the one substantial adversary that revolted against the empire during his reign, which we’ll get to shortly.

However, Hadrian didn’t just sit on the empire’s laurels. He “also developed permanent fortifications and military posts along the empire’s border (limites or in the singular, limes) to support his policy of stability, peace and preparedness”, including the wall in Britain that famously bore his name. “Hadrian’s policy was peace through strength”, emphasised by discipline – “troops practised intensive, regular drill routines” and historian Cassius Dio “praised Hadrian’s emphasis on spit and polish as cause for the generally peaceful character of his reign”.

Fortifications weren’t all he built or rebuilt – Hadrian was famed for his building projects throughout the empire. To that end, Hadrian “travelled almost constantly throughout the empire” and “was to spend more than half his reign outside Italy”.

Hadrian was notoriously fond of Greece and the Greeks – the Historia Augusta opined he may have been “a little too much Greek” – and fond of a Greek in particular, the youth Antinous.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that but I would say that Hadrian deifying Antinous after the latter’s untimely death as a gay god was a step too far. Some men will literally apotheosize their dead catamite instead going to therapy.

The other notorious aspect of Hadrian’s regime was wiping Jerusalem and Judaea off the map in response to the Jewish Bar Kokhba Revolt. The Caledonian chieftain Calgacus as quoted (or concocted) by Tacitus had seen nothing yet when he said the Romans make a desert and call it peace – Hadrian showed how it was really done.

Hadrian was also initiated into in the Greek Eleusinian Mysteries – which I’d like to think of as the classical equivalent of the Illuminati, or perhaps just the actual Illuminati as who knows how far back that secret society and their conspiracies go…?

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

S-TIER (GOD TIER)

EMPIRE BASER

 

MAXIMUS:

I don’t think he claimed any – putting down revolts isn’t quite the same thing

 

DEIFICATION:

O yes – although his successor had to insist on it to the Senate

 

SPECTRUM RANKING COMPARISON: Exactly the same in fourth place, as was the placement by Daily Roman Updates if I recall correctly.

 

 

(4) WORST: HONORIUS –
THEODOSIAN DYNASTY (WESTERN EMPIRE)
(395 – 423 AD AD: 28 YEARS 6 MONTHS 29 DAYS)

 

Chicken boy.

“Honorius continued on living as he always had, laying around, babbling like an idiot as the world around him fell apart, but for one exception. One day Honorius turned it all around and decided, for once, to do the best possible thing he could do for the empire and died, after ruling Rome for a godawful thirty years.”

Arguably the worst Roman emperor ever, although you could easily shuffle him with Valentinian III – a.k.a Honorius II – for that spot, as they are so uncannily similar as to be interchangeable. I know I said it before for Valentinian III but it’s worth saying again for Honorius – each was a model of supine inactivity as the empire crumbled, except for betraying the loyal subordinate who was the one holding things together and stabbing that man in the back, as well as each with one of the two notorious sacks of Rome following shortly afterwards. Between the two of them and their inexplicably long reigns, almost 60 years in combination, they broke the western Roman empire and presided over its fall. It’s like the Roman Empire cloned its crappiest emperor, just so it could have him reign twice to ensure its own fall.

Now I have ranked Honorius as worse than Valentinian III as Honorius came first and you know how it is for the diminishing returns of sequels – Valentinian III hit all the same beats and even tried to have some new twists but it just wasn’t up to the original. Less flippantly, Valentinian III inherited the wreckage of the western empire from Honorius – in particular, the barbarians firmly ensconced within the empire as they had not been before Honorius. Not that Valentinian III would do or was ever going to do anything but wreck it further.

In the case of Honorius, the loyal subordinate he betrayed was his general Stilicho, who had also been his regent and was his father-in-law. Now I have argued that Valentinian’s betrayal of Aetius was worse, but that is more a matter of his direct personal involvement – killing Aetius himself – being more despicable. The betrayal by Honorius of Stilicho was more destructive for the empire.

Firstly, at least Valentinian III waited until the threat of Attila and his Huns had receded from Italy (and the empire itself as it turned out) before his betrayal of Aetius. Honorius betrayed Stilicho when the threat of Alaric and his Visigoths to Italy and Rome was still very much dire. Secondly – and worse – Honorius’ betrayal of Stilicho strengthened that threat, both by removing Stilicho as the one effective deterrent to it and with the defection of Stilicho’s foederati troops en masse to Alaric following Honorius’ massacre of their families as Stilicho’s camp followers.Thirdly, at least Valentinian’s betrayal of Alaric had the prompt consequence of Valentinian’s own assassination, where Honorius continued to burden the empire with his reign for another fifteen years.

Although Honorius didn’t have to wait that long for the sack of Rome which followed as a consequence of his betrayal of Stilicho. That betrayal led in a direct line to the sack of Rome by Alaric and the Visigoths in 410, which again was arguably worse than the corresponding sack of Rome by the Vandals in 455.

Firstly, the sack of Rome by Alaric in 410 was a profound shock to the empire, the first such sack for eight centuries. While the sack of Rome by the Vandals was more destructive – such that the Vandals lent their name as a synonym for destruction ever since – it lacked that same sense of shock given the recent occurrence of the first sack. Secondly, at least Valentinian wasn’t still alive to injure Rome further with his continued existence for its sack in 455 AD. Thirdly, Honorius added insult to injury with his initial alarm that Rome had “perished” was a reference to his favorite pet chicken he had named Roma, where he was relieved to find out it was only in reference to the actual city. That story has been identified to be likely an apocryphal one, but it’s just too true to his character and symbolic with respect to it involving a chicken (and its modern slang usage) that I accept it anyway.

The only distinction between Honorius and Valentinian III that led to the former reigning fifteen more years after his betrayal of Stilicho was that Honorius was fortunate enough to have a capable general (and briefly co-emperor) in Constantius III to substitute for Stilicho propping up him and the empire. All Valentinian III had after Aetius was Petronius Maximus and we’ve seen how well that went – Valentinian’s own assassination and the sack of Rome.

Also, Honorius was literally the creepy uncle to Valentinian, albeit more to Valentinian’s mother (and his half sister), so I blame Honorius somewhat for how Valentinian turned out.

As usual, Edward Gibbon had the best snark about Honorius, which I can’t resist quoting in all its glory –

“His feeble and languid disposition was alike incapable of discharging the duties of his rank…the amusement of feeding poultry became the serious and daily care of the monarch of the West, who resigned the reins of empire to the firm and skilful hand of his guardian Stilicho…The predecessors of Honorius were accustomed to animate by their example, or at least by their presence, the valour of the legions; and the dates of their laws attest the perpetual activity of their motions through the provinces of the Roman world. But the son of Theodosius passed the slumber of his life a captive in his palace, a stranger in his country, and the patient, almost the indifferent, spectator of the ruin of the Western empire, which was repeatedly attacked, and finally subverted, by the arms of the barbarians. In the eventful history of a reign of twenty-eight years, it will seldom be necessary to mention the name of the emperor Honorius”.

 

RATING: 1 STAR*

F-TIER (WORST-TIER)

EMPIRE BREAKER

I’m not going to even bother with imperial victory titles or deification – he had none and deserved less. I’m not sure the Senate was doing damnatio memoriae by then.

SPECTRUM RANKING COMPARISON:

Spectrum ranks Honorius separately as the worst western Roman emperor, but consistently states that he also ranks him as the worst emperor for all emperors. I’m inclined to agree, but while my three worst Roman emperors were not quite the empire breakers Honorius was, their legendary depravity trumps it for me.

 

 

 

(3) BEST: AURELIAN –
NON-DYNASTIC / CRISIS OF THE THIRD CENTURY
(270 – 275 AD: 5 YEARS 3 MONTHS)

 

Restitutor Orbis and Sol Invictus, the Restorer of the World and the Unconquered Sun.

 

“Flash

Ah-ah

Saviour of the universe

Flash

Ah-ah

He’ll save every one of us

Flash

Ah-ah

He’s a miracle

Flash

Ah-ah

King of the impossible”.

 

Really, I could just continue with the lyrics of Queen’s Flash Gordon theme song for the rest of this entry…and I will!

 

“He’s for every one of us

Stand for every one of us

He’ll save with a mighty hand

Every man, every woman, every child with a mighty Flash.

 

Flash

A-ah!

Flash

A-ah!

He’ll save every one of us.

 

Just a man, with a man’s courage

He knows nothing but a man

But he can never fail

No one but the pure in heart may find the golden grail

Oh-oh-oh

Oh-oh-oh-oh”

 

Aurelian, Aurelian, we love you

But we only have five years to save the Roman Empire!

 

It was the darkest depths of the Crisis of the Third Century, the Roman Empire was on the brink of doom as Germanic barbarians and Sassanid Persians rampaged deep within it, while the empire itself had broken into three parts, the western and eastern parts all but seceding as or conquered by the Gallic Empire and Palmyrene Empire respectively.

And then Aurelian became emperor – “as emperor, he won an unprecedented series of military victories which reunited the Roman Empire after it had nearly disintegrated under the pressure of barbarian invasions and internal revolts…During his reign, he defeated the Alamanni after a devastating war. He also defeated the Goths, Vandals, Juthungi, Sarmatians, and Carpi. Aurelian restored the Empire’s eastern provinces after his conquest of the Palmyrene Empire in 273. The following year he conquered the Gallic Empire in the west, reuniting the Empire in its entirety.”

Or in the characteristic eloquence of Edward Gibbon, “every instant of that short period was filled by some memorable achievement. He put an end to the Gothic war, chastised the Germans who invaded Italy, recovered Gaul, Spain, and Britain out of the hands of Tetricus, and destroyed the proud monarchy which Zenobia had erected in the East on the ruins of the afflicted empire”.

All under the guise and wearing the mask of Sol Invictus, the divine Unconquered Sun.

I can’t resist quoting Dovahhatty on Aurelian, as he transcends mere Youtube video and becomes art:

“The empire was now at the mercy of evil and chaos, enemies within and abroad, tearing it apart. And in these darkest of times, the greatest of all men arose…Aurelian. At the start of the crisis, he enlisted in the legions to serve Rome when she needed him most. Battle after battle, he defeated Rome’s enemies with talent and skill never seen before. Emperor after emperor he served, killing barbarians and traitors alike, always loyal and victorious.”

The preceding emperor chose Aurelian to be his successor on his deathbed – “With tears in his eyes, Claudius begged Aurelian to save Rome as its emperor with his last dying breath. For God and Empire, he put on the mask, marching on Italy and deposing the usurper Quintillus. When the Vandals dared invade his home, he marched back and slaughtered every last one of them. And as the Germans invaded Italy itself, he crushed their hordes against the ocean, denying them any mercy”.

“Once in Rome, he restored the economy from decadence, cleansing the city of all corrupt senators. To make Rome eternal, he ordered built the Aurelian walls, so that it would stand a thousand years more. After decades of terrorizing the Danube, Aurelian crushed the Goths and delivering justice to Cniva. For the empire’s sake, he evacuated the citizens of Dacia, strengthening the Danube against invasion”.

“Sailing east, Aurelian gathered his cavalrymen and slaughtered Zenobia’s army, making her flee away. Palymyra was then destroyed for all time, Zenobia captured before fleeing to the Sassanids”

“Returning west, he defeated Tetricus’ legions of traitors, making him bow again to the light of Rome. Restoring the empire from the brink of collapse, Aurelian was acclaimed Restitutor Orbis, the Restorer of the World…In only five glorious years, Aurelian had made Rome one empire with one emperor under one god”.

Sadly however, we come to Dovahhatty’s postscript – “Setting sail for the east, Aurelian engaged in one final campaign, seeking to destroy all of Rome’s enemies. But just as his unrivalled accomplishments made him a hero, so did it fill others with envy and resentment. As Aurelian built a world of good and order, their evil and chaos grew more and more threatened. Through lies they convinced themselves, a perfect man could not be allowed to exist. In the darkest of nights, the Praetorians gave in to their evil and committed their worst crime…the world is stilled”

Alas, that’s right – his reign was only for a “short period”, as he was betrayed and assassinated while on his final campaign to settle scores with the Sassanid Empire. But for the short duration of his reign – only five years, cut short by his untimely assassination – he might well be the top entry.

Even so, but for Aurelian, the empire may well have fallen in the third century, instead of falling in the fifth as it did, with its eastern half enduring for a millennium beyond that. His reign may not have quite ended the crisis, but it saved the empire and came close enough to give his successors the opportunity to end it.

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****

S-TIER (GOD TIER – OR IS THAT SOL INVICTUS TIER?)

EMPIRE-SAVER – THE GREATEST OF THEM ALL

 

MAXIMUS:

Gothicus Maximus, Germanicus Maximus, Parthicus Maximus. Hell – I’ll give him Maximum Maximus and of course he was also Restitutor Orbis.

 

DEIFIED:

Of course!

 

SPECTRUM RANKING COMPARISON:

Similar, including that he would likely have taken out top spot with a longer reign, but Spectrum knocks him down a bit lower that I did for his brief reign, to seventh place. If I recall correctly, Daily Roman Updates ranked him exactly as I did in third place.

 

 

 

 

(3) WORST: ELAGABALUS –
SEVERAN DYNASTY
(218 – 222 AD: 3 YEARS 9 MONTHS 4 DAYS)

 

With great power comes great degeneracy.

Certainly one of the weirdest emperors, Elagabulus is what happens when you let an omnisexual teenager of dubious mental stability loose with absolute imperial power AND his own cult. It’s like Elagabulus read Suetonius’ The Twelve Caesars with its lurid depictions of imperial depravity and said hold my beer.

And so “Elagabalus developed a reputation among his contemporaries for extreme eccentricity, decadence, zealotry and sexual promiscuity” – “his short reign was notorious for sex scandals and religious controversy”.

It does however make for entertaining reading – indeed one of the most entertaining entries in either my top ten worst (or best) emperors. It’s a pity Suetonius wasn’t around to write the tabloid history of Elagabalus.

Elagabalus was his god name – literally. He was born Sextus Varius Avitus Bessianus, a relative (by marriage) of the Severan dynasty – a family connection which his grandmother (and emperor-maker) Julia Maesa boosted further by spreading the rumor that he was the illegitimate son of the emperor Caracalla. His family held hereditary rights to the priesthood of the syncretized Syrian-Greek-Roman sun of the same name (or variants of it) he adopted, having served as high priest from his early youth.

So naturally he brought his god with him to Rome, in the form of his pet rock – again literally, a black conical meteorite from the temple of the god in Emesa, Syria.

The new god of itself was not so weird, since it was readily assimilated to the Roman sun god Sol – the worship of whom had become increasingly prevalent under the Severan dynasty, becoming known as Sol Invictus or the Unconquered Sun. Yeah – that’s right, the same deity Aurelian, but not badass in battle from one end of the empire to the other and more dirty dancing around an altar.

What was weird was Elagabalus installing his god as the chief deity of the Roman pantheon and suborning that pantheon to his god – compounded by equivalent of forcing Roman Senators to go to his church and watch him as he danced around the god’s altar, which was hardly conducive to imperial dignity.

Speaking of the Severan dynasty, it’s something of a running theme in my top ten worst Roman emperors, with Elagabalus as the third entry from that dynasty (although not the worst imperial dynasty – that goes to the Theodosian dynasty with two entries in this top ten).

Perhaps the most entertaining part of this emperor’s history are the lurid tales of his sexuality. However, “the question of Elagabalus’s sexual orientation and gender identity is confused” due to the salaciousness of the sources, which includes accounts of him asserting and adorning himself as a female, to the point of reputedly seeking out sex changing surgery. Hence some have asserted or claimed him or her as the transsexual Roman emperor.

I am not sure that one should want to claim Elagabalus as one’s poster boy or girl, but moreover, I am not sure that these accounts are accurate to that extent, smacking as they do of Roman hyperbole to characterize someone of, ah, unmanly conduct – un-Romanly conduct that is. However, I do think that the historical sources are clear enough to say that Elagabalus swung every which way, hence my omnisexual quip.

Which has gone down a treat with historical writers. As per Edward Gibbon – Elagabalus “abandoned himself to the grossest pleasures with ungoverned fury” – and Barthold Georg Niebuhr – “the name Elagabalus is branded in history above all others” because of his “unspeakably disgusting life”.

Even Sir James George Frazer, author of The Golden Bough, got in on the act – “The dainty priest of the Sun [was] the most abandoned reprobate who ever sat upon a throne … It was the intention of this eminently religious but crack-brained despot to supersede the worship of all the gods, not only at Rome but throughout the world”.

A more neutrally stated modern assessment is by Adrian Goldsworthy -“Elagabalus was not a tyrant, but he was an incompetent, probably the least able emperor Rome had ever had.”

Interestingly, some have sought to reclaim his reputation. It’s a running theme throughout my top ten worst emperors that almost every entry – or at least almost every entry of major significance – has some advocate for them, as indeed it is for my top ten best emperors to the converse of people querying their legacy or reputation, arising as it does for figures that lack the comprehensive documentation of their contemporary counterparts.

In particular, modern historian Warwick Ball has picked up the Elagabalus ball (heh) and run with it, describing him as “a tragic enigma lost behind centuries of prejudice” – and one whose religious syncretism was ultimately successful in the long term, “in the sense that his deity would be welcomed by Rome in its Sol Invictus form 50 years later” and “came to influence the monotheist Christian beliefs of Constantine, asserting that this influence remains in Christianity to this day”.

 

RATING: 1 STAR*

F-TIER (WORST TIER)

EMPIRE DEBAUCHER

No surprise there, surely?

 

MAXIMUS:

No victory titles as such but he did claim the title of Pontifex Maximus as high priest of his god – and did have something of a regular annual triumph for his god, parading his pet rock about the city.

 

DEIFIED AND DAMNED:

It was a fine line between the divinity he claimed for his god and that for himself. When marrying a Vestal Virgin – outraging Rome yet again – he claimed the marriage would produce god-like children. And of course after the usual assassination by the Praetorian Guard, the Senate rolled out a damnatio memoriae on him.

 

SPECTRUM RANKING COMPARISON:

I’m not quite as hard on him as Spectrum, who ranks him as THE worst emperor before 395 AD, possibly the worst of all Roman emperors (although Spectrum seems to hint that he ranks two subsequent emperors as even worse).

 

 

 

 

(2) BEST: TRAJAN –
NERVA-ANTONINE DYNASTY / FIVE GOOD EMPERORS
(98 -117 AD: 19 YEARS 6 MONTHS 10/14 DAYS)

 

The Optimus Prime of Roman emperors. No, really, as in the Senate gave him the title of Optimus or Optimus Princeps, “the best” or “the best emperor”, one of the two benchmarks or gold standards invoked by the Senate for every new emperor thereafter, wishing them to be better than Trajan…but none were (with the possible exception of Aurelian). A little like Jedi wishing may the Force be with you.

Everybody loved Trajan. The army, with whom he was popular as he had distinguished himself in military campaigns against the Germanic tribes. The Praetorian Guard, whose revolt had forced his predecessor Nerva to adopt him as heir and successor. The people. The Senate, who deified him after his death, and as I said, invoked him thereafter for new emperors.

“As an emperor, Trajan’s reputation has endured – he is one of the few rulers whose reputation has survived 19 centuries.”

“Even Christian historians saw him as a virtuous pagan, among other things for not persecuting them too hard during his reign (Catholic tradition holds that Pope Gregory I briefly raised Trajan from the dead in order to convert him). He is immortalized in Heaven in The Divine Comedy”.

He was a successful soldier-emperor, who took the Roman Empire to its greatest territorial extent by the time of his death – a greater area is argued on occasion for Septimus Severus, although that is not clear and just extended worthlessly further into the Saharan desert at most.

Famously, he extended the empire by the conquest of Dacia in his wars against it, and by his annexation of Mesopotamia, Armenia and Assyria as Roman provinces in his war against the Parthian Empire. Less famously, he seems to have quickly and quietly annexed the Arabian client kingdom of Nabataea, possibly because they were just signed up from his pure awesomeness because little else is recorded of it.

And his general Quietus suppressed a widespread revolt by the Jews in the eastern provinces that henceforth bore an adaptation of the name Quietus – the Kitos War, yet another of those recurring revolts by the Jews against the empire before Hadrian wiped Judaea and Jerusalem from the map.

It wasn’t just all conquest or war – he was also a philanthropic ruler, albeit at some cost in debasing the currency. He oversaw prolific building projects and social welfare policies.

May Trojan’s force be with you, indeed.

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****

S-TIER (GOD TIER)

EMPIRE-MAKER

 

MAXIMUS:

Germanicus, Dacicus, Parthicus – and of course, Optimus or best

 

DEIFIED:

By the gods and divine Trajan, yes!

 

SPECTRUM RANKING COMPARISON:

Exactly the same, in second place – just as it was for Daily Roman Updates, and the Roman Senate for that matter.

 

 

 

 

(2) WORST: NERO –
JULIO-CLAUDIAN DYNASTY
(54-68 AD: 13 YEARS 7 MONTHS 27 DAYS)

 

What can I say? You just can’t argue with the Gospel of Suetonius. Or the Book of Apocalypse, with Nero literally as the Beast of the Apocalypse – or as I like to quip, that sixy beast, given that the Number of the Beast was alphanumeric code for Nero Caesar.

Well, Nero or some weird revenant superpowered uber-Nero, with one of the heads of the beast having healed from a fatal wound, matching the so-called Nero Redivivus Legend, or the widespread belief that Nero was either not dead after his apparent suicide or somehow would return.

I mean, you can’t argue with legendary cruelty and depravity that is so legendary as to give rise to the further legend of coming back from the dead to keep doing it. After his death, at least three leaders of short-lived, failed rebellions presented themselves as “Nero reborn” – Pseudo-Nero, or is that pseudo-uber Nero?

In other words, you just can’t argue with the legend – legend that lends him notoriety as one of Rome’s two archetypes of evil emperor, even if that notoriety exceeds the historical reality and is likely exaggerated, by the Roman elites who hated him and wrote his histories, as well as the Christian writers who saw him as “one of their earliest and most infamous villains”.

I am inclined to accept that his legendary cruelty and depravity was exaggerated, particularly in its most lurid details. However, I just can’t go past that name recognition or iconic status…and I’m also inclined to accept that “he was really off his rocker”, albeit probably later in his reign.

Dare I say it – there’s just a little too much smoke for there not to have been fire, just perhaps not the Great Fire. That was attributed to him as arsonist – or that he fiddled while Rome burned as the saying goes, or that he sang or played the lyre as the legend went. However, it does seem plausible that he was tone deaf to placing too much priority on lavish palaces for himself in the reconstruction – or that he used it as an opportunity to scapegoat Christians.

“Most Roman sources offer overwhelmingly negative assessments of his personality and reign. Most contemporary sources describe him as tyrannical, self-indulgent, and debauched”. Or as Suetonius wrote, in his chapter on Nero that is the second most entertaining chapter in The Twelve Caesars – “his acts of wantonness, lust, extravagance, avarice and cruelty”.

Unlike the empire breakers in this top ten, he did have some basic competence as emperor, notably with respect to wars and revolts, even if that was more his generals (and there was little that could realistically challenge an empire then at the top of its game) – the general Corbulo who fought the Roman–Parthian War of 58–63, and made peace with the hostile Parthian Empire and the general Suetonius Paulinus who quashed the famous revolt in Britain led by queen Boudica (even if he went so beserk on the Britons afterwards that Nero had to recall him). During his reign, the client Bosporan Kingdom was also annexed to the empire, and the First Jewish–Roman War began (albeit finished by the Flavian dynastic duo, Vespasian and Titus, that fought it for Nero).

But we are talking about someone who killed his own mother, even if that mother was the infamous Agrippina and she was scheming against him (as she had originally schemed for him and against his predecessor Claudius). It took him a few attempts too, which I like to think of as the original source of that legend of Nero being hard to kill permanently. Like mother, like son.

His early reign was decent enough – it seems modern scholars follow Roman historians in seeing his mother’s death as the point he lost the plot. Which is where those lurid details come in – “he started to become more preoccupied with leading a decadent life…drank and ate a lot, and immersed himself in perverted sexual behaviour, both with men and women”.

My favorite is the reference in Suetonius that forever burnt itself into my adolescent mind when I read it – that he “devised a kind of game, in which, covered with the skin of some wild animal, he was let loose from a cage and attacked the private parts of men and women, who were bound to stakes, and when he had sated his mad lust, was dispatched”.

And there was his infamous persecution of the Christians, swallowing up even Saints Peter and Paul – including that he “had many of them tied up on poles next the road, then covered in tar and set on fire, so they could function as street lighting during parties.

He also “fancied himself a wonderful poet, singer and lyricist” – hence the last words attributed to him, “what an artist the world is losing!”.

Those last words came after the Senate had Nero declared a public enemy and condemned to death in absentia – his death at his own hand sparking Rome’s first succession crisis, which might be dubbed the crisis of the first century but for the empire being too stable and secure at that time, as well as a brief civil war between rival claimants known as the Year of the Four Emperors.

 

RATING: 1 STAR*

F-TIER (WORST-TIER – OR IS THAT BEAST TIER?)

EMPIRE-DEBAUCHER

 

MAXIMUS:

No victory titles as far as I’m aware.

 

DAMNED:

Not a formal damnatio memoriae but he was declared public enemy by the Senate.

 

SPECTRUM RANKING COMPARISON:

One of the biggest differences in our rankings – Spectrum noting (with some justice) that he wasn’t a bad emperor (but not a good one either) and ranking twenty-nine emperors as worse than Nero prior to 395 AD (with at least Honorius and Valentinian III also as worse afterwards).

 

 

 

(1) BEST: AUGUSTUS –
JULIO-CLAUDIAN DYNASTY
(27 BC – 14 AD: 40 YEARS 7 MONTHS 3 DAYS)

 

THE Roman emperor – the first and best emperor, the definitive and archetypal emperor.

The most august emperor. Dare I say it, the most Augustus of emperors, or rather, Augustus of Augustuses, since all emperors were titled Augustus for his title (not to mention the eighth month of the year) or Caesar for his adoptive family name.

Augustus is commonly nominated as the best or top emperor and I’m not about to dissent from that. It’s a common nomination for a reason. The Roman Senate themselves routinely invoked him as the first of their two benchmarks or gold standards when inaugurating new emperors. I’ve already referred to the second part of this invocation in reference to Trajan, but of course the full phrase also invoked Augustus – felicior Augusto, melior Traiano, may you be “luckier than Augustus and better than Trajan”. Luckier or more fortunate that is, with the connotation of divine fortune that favored Augustus. And since the Senate deified Augustus, consistent with the imperial cult he cultivated (heh), he made his own divine fortune.

Caesar Augustus – born Gaius Octavius and also known as Octavian – instituted the Roman Empire itself, characterized by the imperial peace, the Pax Romana or Pax Augusta. The grandnephew of Julius Caesar and named in Caesar’s will as his adopted son and heir, he inherited Caesar’s name, estate, and the loyalty of Caesar’s legions.

He formed the Second Triumvirate with Mark Antony and some other guy no one remembers (Lepidus) to defeat the assassins of Caesar. The Triumvirate effectively divided the Republic between them as a duumvirate of Octavian and Antony, with the former in control of its western provinces and the latter its eastern provinces. Octavian then famously fought and defeated Antony in the latter’s alliance (and romance) with Cleopatra, taking Egypt from de facto Roman client state to province.

With Octavian as sole ruler of the Republic, he adopted the title by which he has thereafter been known (and used to honour his imperial successors) – Augustus. And also Princeps or First Citizen (Princeps Civitas), which has come to denominate the Principate, the system of imperial rule instituted by him and which endured for two centuries until Diocletian’s Dominate. That system essentially involved Augustus maintaining the façade or formal appearance of the Republic over the reality of imperial authority and institutions of empire, hence the modesty of the Princeps title.

And having transformed the Republic into an empire, he dramatically enlarged the empire – annexing Egypt of course in his defeat of Anthony and Cleopatra, but also conquering northern Hispania (modern Spain and Portugal), the Alpine regions of Raetia and Noricum (modern Switzerland, Bavaria, Austria, Slovenia), and Illyricum and Pannonia (modern Albania, Croatia, Hungary, Serbia). He also extended the borders of the province of Africa (the former territory of Carthage), peacefully converted the client state of Galatia (part of modern Turkey but with Gauls!) into a Roman province, and added Judea to the province of Syria as a recurring source of unforeseen Roman imperial woes, not to mention Christianity.

In other words, he sealed up the Mediterranean under Roman supremacy (not to mention Italy’s alpine buffer), making the Mediterranean their b*tch – or mare nostrum as they called it. Not so much Germany though, with Augustine famously mourning the defeat and loss of three legions under their commander Varus in the Battle of Teutoberg Forest – “Quintili Vare, legiones redde! “(“Quintilius Varus, give me back my legions!”).

Oh well – even the greatest can’t win them all. However, it is a convenient segue to a comparison between Augustus and Julius Caesar. Caesar may well have been more charismatic than Augustus and definitely was a greater military leader, but I would say that Augustus obviously had greater political acumen than Caesar – given that the latter’s ambitions provoked his own assassination while the former’s created the empire. And fortunately Augustus could rely on the skill of his military commanders to compensate for his lack of skill – foremost among them Marcus Agrippa, who can lay claim to being among the best Roman military leaders.

After that comparison to Julius Caesar, I can’t resist quoting Dovahhatty’s comparison of Augustus to Alexander the Great (upon him visiting the latter’s tomb, where Dovahhatty has Augustus scoff “Pfft – what a loser!”):

“For when Alexander became king, he was twenty. When Octavian was adopted by Caesar, he was nineteen. When Alexander took thirteen years to conquer the sh*thole of the East, Octavian took the same time to subdue the entire Mediterranean. And while Alexander’s empire disintegrated the nanosecond after he died, Octavian would lay the foundations for the greatest empire in human history”.

Beyond the frontiers of his empire, Augustus “secured the empire with a buffer region of client states and made peace with the Parthian Empire through diplomacy”. Within them, “he reformed the Roman system of taxation, developed networks of roads with an official courier system, established a standing army, established the Praetorian Guard as well as official police and fire-fighting services for Rome, and rebuilt much of the city during his reign”. As he famously said, he found Rome a city of brick and left it a city of marble.

Finally, the longevity of Augustus’s reign and its legacy to the Roman world should not be overlooked as a key factor in the success of the Roman Empire, if only because as Tacitus observed, the younger generation at his death in 14 AD (after his reign of over 40 years!) had never known anything else than his Principate.

But it wasn’t just that – “Augustus’s own experience, his patience, his tact, and his political acumen also played their parts. He directed the future of the empire down many lasting paths, from the existence of a standing professional army stationed at or near the frontiers, to the dynastic principle so often employed in the imperial succession, to the embellishment of the capital at the emperor’s expense. Augustus’s ultimate legacy was the peace and prosperity the Empire enjoyed for the next two centuries under the system he initiated. His memory was enshrined in the political ethos of the Imperial age as a paradigm of the good emperor. Every emperor of Rome adopted his name, Caesar Augustus, which gradually lost its character as a name and eventually became a title. The Augustan era poets Virgil and Horace praised Augustus as a defender of Rome, an upholder of moral justice, and an individual who bore the brunt of responsibility in maintaining the empire”

(By the way, if I was extending my top ten to emperors past 476 AD, the top five would remain the same. Basil II, Justinian and Heraclius would be in sixth to eighth place and I’d probably shuffle Valentinian out for Alexios I in ninth place, while placing the last emperor Constantine XI in my wildcard tenth place. That is probably over-ranking him, but I just can’t resist the symmetry of first and last emperors in first and tenth place. Besides, he chose to go out with the empire in a bang rather than a whimper – and that’s worth something, even a wildcard tenth place).

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****

S-TIER (GOD-TIER)

EMPIRE-MAKER – THE GREATEST OF THEM ALL, WHO MADE THE EMPIRE ITSELF

 

MAXIMUS:

Augustus didn’t claim any formal victory titles that I could find, but did hold three triumphs – for his conquest of Pannonia, for the naval victory against Cleopatra and Antony at Actium, and for the conquest of Egypt.

 

DEIFICATION:

Divine Augustus!

 

SPECTRUM RANKING COMPARISON: Exactly the same – top spot, as he also was in the ranking by Daily Roman Updates, but no surprise there.

 

 

 

(1) WORST: CALIGULA –
JULIO-CLAUDIAN DYNASTY
(37-41 AD: 3 YEARS 10 MONTHS 6 DAYS)

 

“Would that the Roman people had but one neck”

Ah – Caligula, dreaming of choking out all Rome, the archetype of legendary cruelty and depravity as well as that of the capricious and insane tyrant, so much so that there is a trope of the Caligula named for him (and we all know the type, depressingly frequent in history and culture).

Cue the gag for Caligula learning his capriciousness from Tiberius in Capri.

As I said for Nero, what can I say? You can’t argue with the Gospel of Suetonius, or the Revelations of Bob Guccione in his 1979 Caligula film. Or with the Gospel of Robert Graves which follows Suetonius, or the Revelations of Judge Dredd with Caligula as its Chief Judge Cal in The Day the Law Died.

Also, as I said for Nero, while there may be some issues with the accuracy of sources, particularly the more lurid details recorded by Suetonius, there’s just too much insane smoke for there to have not been an insane fire.

Speaking of Suetonius, if you only read one chapter from Suetonius’ The Twelve Caesars (and it is available free online), then that should be his chapter on Caligula. It’s a hoot! Although I say that from the safe distance of two millennia as well as from Rome itself, because I wouldn’t put it past his ghost or ghoul to get me.

Caligula of course wasn’t his name, but his nickname – uncannily similar to Caracalla subsequently, for an item of clothing worn by each while cosplaying as a soldier, although in Caligula’s case it was his mother cosplaying him as a child in army camps and for his boots rather than a cloak. That’s right – his nickname translates as “Little Boots” or “Bootsy”, which is adorable until he grows up to become emperor.

And you don’t want to make Caligula emperor – you wouldn’t like him when he’s emperor.

Although the sources suggest that people initially did like him as emperor, because among other things, he seems to have ruled well for the first six months until falling sick – “upon recovering, Caligula had permanently lost his hair and apparently his mind”. Or as he perceived it, he had become a divine being. And who’s to say? I can well imagine that’s exactly how a divine being might act when trapped in a mortal form – particularly the divine beings from classical mythology, as it’s how they act a lot of the time. After all, only a god could be that crazy and get away with it.

Anyway, all this sadly suggests that he might have been decent but for sickness making him insane. Or not, I have my doubts – and I note the Gospel of Robert Graves, a.k.a I, Claudius, has him as somewhat psychopathic from the outset.

It’s all there in the sources, particularly Suetonius, which “focus upon his cruelty, sadism, extravagance, and sexual perversion” – “committing incest with his sisters, sending his army against the sea after declaring war on the ocean god Neptune and having them stab the waves and collect shells as booty, marrying a woman who was 9 months pregnant so he wouldn’t have to wait for an heir (whether or not it was his is unclear), using a tax hike upon the birth of his daughter to provide gold for him to roll around in, and wanting to make his favorite horse a consul”.

Also arbitrarily confiscating property in increasingly outrageous for his own spending, punishing citizens for being handsome or having more hair than him, and opening up his palace as a brothel. Actually, I’m with him on that last one.

Indeed, Caligula was so over the top insane that it sometimes seems to be parody or epic trolling – Caligula would rock it on Twitter X.

I can’t resist quoting The Caligula trope on TV Tropes, given how well it encapsulates, well, THE Caligula:

“The Caligula will be wildly irrational, violently moody, extremely debauched, will never tolerate being told anything they don’t want to hear, and are probably afflicted with a god complex. In short, they will be a Psychopathic Manchild with the power of life or death over everyone whom they can reach. They may be a sexual deviant, or they might take pleasure in the pain and suffering they cause. They may indulge in renaming cities or even the entire country after themself or throwing out increasingly ridiculous decrees with brutal punishments in store for anyone who breaks them. Whatever form the madness takes, one thing is certain: to do anything the Caligula finds displeasing is to inevitably be dragged off to a grisly death or worse. Of course, any number of things might trigger their rage, and they might even decide on a whim to punish those who have not done anything at all”.

 

RATING: 1 STAR*

F-TIER (WORST-TIER)

EMPIRE DEBAUCHER

 

MAXIMUS:

Well unless you count Neptune. Caligula should have had a triumph with all the shells

 

DAMNED:

No formal damnatio memoriae but history has damned him

 

SPECTRUM RANKING COMPARISON:

Spectrum ranks him as the second worst emperor (prior to 395), with Elagabalus as the worst (as a combination of the worst traits of Caligula and Nero) – noting that it was an achievement for Caligula not to be ranked as the worst. However, I’m giving it to Caligula!