(October 26, 2010 at 4:43 am)padraic Wrote:(October 22, 2010 at 1:00 pm)Chuck Wrote: So were most other mid-to-late Roman emperors starting around 200 AD, one possibly exception might be Julian the "Apostate".
Depends on how you define the word 'thug'. If you mean something like "brutally ruthless", the Julio-Claudians were a pretty rough bunch overall. In his early days, Octavius ( Caesar Augustus) was a real cunt. Tiberius had his moments,as did Caligula and Nero. Roman culture itself was pretty thuggish by our standards.
But most of the successions prior to 200 AD were reasonably orderly, palace intrigues usually didn't mean civil war. Majority of the emperors were picked and groomed for the throne to some degree by their predecessor. The whole office of the emperor, while at times ruthless and despotic, had continuity and pipeline before 200 AD, and not populated by a string of usurpers who came through coup d'état and mostly go by the same route with in a year or two like between 200AD - 280 AD.
