Who's the most overrated Roman Emperor? Who's the most

>>3134281
>the most overrated Roman Emperor
Julius Caesar
>most underrated Roman Emperor
Mehmed II

>>3134281
Overrated: Marcus Aurelius
Underrated: Septimius Severus

>>3134281
Marcus Aurelius and Tiberius respectively.
Tho it's pretty hard to gauge underratedness, cause most later emperors are downright unknown rather than improperly rated. I picked Tiberius because I've often seen him considered "barely better than Caligula" tier, which is really inappropriate, Sejanus' years notwithstanding.

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>>3134289

>>3134289
First Post Best Post

Most overrated: Hadrian
Most underrated: Theodossias

Most overrated: Marcus Aurelius
Most underrated: Basil II

>>3134289
Except Julius Caesar wasn't ever an Emperor you fucking brainlet normie.

>>3134281
Overrated: Marcus Aurelius -- spent most of his reign in a war camp on the frontier, repelling endless hordes of migrating Germanics, which is probably the reason why he found time to sit down and write philosophy. Stood by helplessly while the Antonine Plague ravaged and permanently crippled his country

Underrated: Vespasian -- emerged victorious from the year of 4 emperors, put down the Jewish revolt, driving them from their ancestral homeland. Had a vigorous, ambitious domestic policy, including reforming state finances, starting construction on the Colosseum, and reforming the disciplinary system for the legions. Was the first emperor to be directly succeeded by his own son.

>>3134281
A good emperor IMO is one who faced a crisis and pulled Rome out of it more or less single handedly. The overrated emperors are the ones who ruled during periods of stability and everyone goes "oh he was such a great emperor, look how peaceful everything was during his reign"

>>3134348
Neither was Mehmed.

>>3134281
Does socks tan lines.

>>3134340
this
Basil II was one of the best emperors in roman history, and is ignored.

>>3134289

Julius Caesar was never emperor.

>Overrated
Marcus Aurelius
>Underrated
Majorian

>>3134647
Depends on what you mean by "Emperor".
>The title of imperator was given in 90 BC to Lucius Julius Caesar, in 84 BC to Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, in 60 BC to Gaius Julius Caesar

>>3134281
Most overrated: Marcus Aurelius. If he had spent a little less time focused on philosophy and a bit more on making sure the heir to the Roman Empire wasn't a worthless hedonist, well, who knows what might have happened.

Most underrated: Domitian. He was pragmatic enough to see that the Senate had been reduced to nothing more than an honorary rubber stamp for the emperor, but just for pointing it out, he was assassinated and his memory condemned, even though he helped the Roman economy hold on for a bit longer.

Leave Marcus Aurelius alone you fucks

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>*reforms your thread*

>overrated
Marcus Aurelius
>underrated
Domitian

>>3134766
I like how every text book on the late empire spends so much time explaining his great administrative reform designed to bring stability to the empire for centuries only to admit it failed almost immediately after his resignation. It's almost as if it was a naive wishful thinking and not a great reform after all.

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>>3134780
He was the only emperor that tried. That's what made him so great. No other emperor even gave a single fuck about economic reforms to fix a system that had grown so broken that it was literally falling apart at the seams.

With no knowledge of economic theory, shit, without even a word for it in the Latin language, Diocletian single handedly tried to stop peasants being starved in the streets by price gouging by merchants. Just because many of his things fell apart doesn't mean he should be commended.

Plus, the actual administrative reform (the creation of the dioceses and the divisions of the provinces) were a complete success in the medium term and probably led to the empire surviving a century longer in the west than it otherwise would have. Diocletian had just lived through a period where governors had the manpower to single handedly launch a one man usurpation using their legions. By dividing the provinces he made the 4th century (compared to the 3rd) far more peaceful since usurpers needed to gather together a larger group of conspirators to make a bid for the throne.

Diocletian shouldn't be consigned to a textbook. The shit he did really needs to be looked at in depth to see what he was doing through the eyes of a man that had lived through the Crisis of the Third Century and managed to stabilise it and reign for an almost unprecedent 20 years, oh, and to be the first Roman emperor to willingly abdicate at the end of it.

>>3134799
You're right ofc, but I still can't believe he really thought his scheme of power division is gonna work. Then again, it kinda worked 100 years later.

>>3134818
The actual Tetrarchy itself was a grand idea.

The only problem is that Roman society geared up young men to be disgustingly competitive and ambitious, and despite modern belief to the contrary, Romans were not exactly patriotic. They would willingly rip their own people apart and smash the empire to bits if it meant that they had a shot to wear that purple cloak.

Co-emperors worked when they actually had an interest in working together.

>>3134296
Idunno, when judging Tiberius, you're essentially dealing with two men, the young and the old.
Old Tiberius was shit tier even if he technically did leave Rome richer. Young Tiberius, on the other hand, was a fucking baller.

>>3134281
Overrated Constantine
Underrated Domitian

>>3134831
Doesn't this mean the Tetrarchy was actually a bad idea since it failed to account for the psychology of the ruling class and the inevitable power struggle? It would've been better if he had established a strong, centralized dynasty instead.

>>3134281
>Who's the most overrated Roman Emperor?
Trajan. Huge pointless expansions that he could barely hold on to that were immediately abandoned when he died.

>Who's the most underrated Roman Emperor?
Claudius. Managed to stabilise the empire and make it properous after Caligula.

>>3134864
Seconding Domitian. His ego tripping and general cuntiness obfuscated the big picture of what he did and lead to a lot of slander. I think it should be the six good emperors, but I do understand how he turns people off. He certainly wasn't wise like his successors, but there's more than that.

>>3134871
>it failed to account for the psychology of the ruling class and the inevitable power struggle?

I think he was naive enough to believe that a love of Rome might be enough. It worked for a time.

>It would've been better if he had established a strong, centralized dynasty instead.

Rome was just too big and too unwieldly by this point. Even in ages of peace Roman "dynasties" were basically horseshit. The imperial institution was never solid enough for something similar to the All Under Heaven mantra to take root. Roman emperors were men, and men could be killed and replaced by any one of their lieutenants if they ceased to be considered useful.

Diocletian at least managed to succeed in making it harder for emperors to couped by massively changing courtly practice and making the emperor far more sacrosanct. A visitor would have to go through layers of bureaucracy, bullshit and court etiquette to get close, whereas previously an emperor would typically get shanked in the back while he was pissing outside his tent.

>>3134883
>Huge pointless expansions that he could barely hold on to that were immediately abandoned when he died.
The Dacian province made Rome sick with wealth from the silver and gold mines, it wasn't abandoned for a few centuries. The Parthian conquests were returned because the Romans BTFO the horseniggers, but the Euphrates formed a better natural border that was easier to control. Trajan is pretty overrated though compared to Augustus or Majoran.

>>3134281
I dont know about overrated, but underrated 100% goes to Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus.

Twice given dictaorship of rome in dire circumstances both time he quickly quelled the problems and retired from dictator giving up the most powerful position in the known world to retire to his farm, twice.

>>3135035
I don't think you get what underrated means.
Cincinnatus is a legend. First and foremost.

>>3134445
>Stood by helplessly while the Antonine Plague ravaged and permanently crippled his country

Could he really have done anything about this?

>>3135067
>Roman legend

>implying you had heard of him until reading that wiki page

;^)

>>3135075
he should have put more money into research for a vaccine

>>3134289
WE

>>3135082
That was a high quality post, colleague.

>>3134340
>Basil II
Seconding this. Could make the top 10 imo.

>>3135082
You don't wanna address what I said?

>>3135082
Also I like how you immediately assume I read wikipedia because the article calls him what he is.
How the fuck is he underrated?

>>3135075
maybe if they had guns they could of defended themselves

food for thought, right?

>>3134289
I love everything about this post.

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>Overrated
Justinian. Normies praise him but he overextended and crippled the Empire to satisfy his own vanity.

>Underrated
Majorian

I'm actually going to be possibly slightly controversial here and say that Majorian was one of the greatest emperors in the history of Rome.

The fact that he was able to essentially start with nothing and then make a genuine attempt at rejuvenating the Empire, reforming the law, winning victory after victory, preserving the legacy of the Roman past while looking to the future, only to meet a tragic end, betrayed by his own countrymen, it makes him quite a romantic figure in my mind.

Marcus Aurelius for being overrated and Aurelian for being underrated.

Aurelius did protect the borders but his failure of raising Commodus tarnishes him. Normies only like him for the philosophy garbage anyway.

Aurelian defeated two upstart breakaway empires in record time while reforming administration and punishing corruption. He should have invested in foreign bodyguards however.

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>>3135164
>Justinian. Normies praise him but he overextended and crippled the Empire to satisfy his own vanity.
What crippled Justinian's vision for a reunited Roman world was the Justinian Plague, which struck his empire down right as he was on the verge of total victory, leaving him with a fraction of his tax base and manpower reserves at the worst possible moment. It was one of the most devastating epidemics until the Black Death, and totally fucked his empire's ability to project force, hitting the east disproportionately hard because that's where all the major metropolitan areas still were in what remained of classical era Europe.

Which is a real shame, because if it hadn't been for the plague Justinian would rank up there with Julius Caesar, Scipio Africanus, and Constantine as some of the greatest and most important Romans to ever live. His legal reforms would live on for over a millennia and are an important reason why the Byzantine Empire lasted as long as it did.

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>>3134289

>>3134293
Damn, I was going to post this. I just got through from Antoninus Pious to Elagobalus in the History of Rome podcast today and was left with the distinct impression that Severus wasn't that bad and Marcus wasn't that good.

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>>3134281
Underrated: Antoninus Pious. Left Rome in a surplus, improved infrastructure, had a solid disaster relief policy, and held the Empire at peace for most of his reign. I know he's considered one of the Five Good Emperors, but I rarely hear anything said about him at all, most people hop on Augustus, Aurellius, Hadrian, Titus, Vespasian, and Trajan's dicks when it comes to talking about good emperors.
Overrated: Caligula, in that he wasn't nearly as bad as Nero, Commodus, Caracalla, or Elagobalus. His depravity and controversy are a little overrated. After all, Xerxes attacked the sea once, the horse thing was a political point, and...fucking his sister I can't defend, but he didn't have any of the kinks Elagobalus had or pull the bullshit Commodus did, or murder his brother like Caracalla, or use people as torches like Nero; Caligula was just a dickhead with mental health issues.

>>3135035
Cincinnatus didn't do jack shit that wasn't expected of him in the first place - almost every Roman nominated to the dictatorship gave it back with a few notable exceptions.

>>3134281
>belt doesn't match shoes

you had one job lucky

Underrated Romanos Lekapenos
Overrated Marcus Aurelius

>>3134903
>After Romans BTFO the horseniggers
Not really, the retreat of the Roman legions from the Iranian boarders with their heartlands embolden stiffer resistance and the loss of more Roman soldiers to essentially hit-and-run and ambush attacks which the Parthians started to become more effective at using.

The scenario ended up becoming a short lived Roman equivalent to Vietnam. And face it, due to Trajan's decision to try and annex all of Parthia, Rome would NEVER again go on an offensive war of conquest and territorial expansion because that's how badly the war drained their manpower.

>>3135787
>I rarely hear anything said about him at all
because he's the one of the five good emperors that's least known about.

>>3135787
Nero was a golden boy compared to Caligula or Commodus.

>>3136543
Seconded. I'm pretty sure he gets a worse reputation than he reserves because of his treatment of Christians.

Leave Marky Mark alone you jackasses

Overrated Constantine
Underrated Aurelian

>>3134780
I think it's more along the lines of everyone talking about his reforms so much because that kind of marks the end of the old system and starts the new system of a divided Rome that only briefly was united under Constantine.

>>3134348
>he fell for it

>>3134281
>overrated
Traianus
>underrated
Aleksandr I Romanov

>overrated
augustus

>underrated
vespasian

>>3134883
Not only Caligula, but all the shifty corruption of the later years of Tiberius

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>>3134281
Underrated: Vespasian

>>3134281
Overrated: Marcus Aurelius
Underrated: Vespastian

>>3134281
>overrated
Theodosius I

>underrated
Constantius II

>>3135742
Severus couldn't properly raise his kids and if Marcus gets points off for Commodus then he sure as shit gets points off for Caracalla. Not to mention Severus was a treacherous, backstabbing bastard. The empire would've been better off if he just co-ruled with Clodius Albinus or made him his heir or whatever instead of betraying him to take the whole thing for himself.

>>3134329
Theodosius is fucking garbage. Imagine if he had just left Arbogast alone instead of weakening the empire with another civil war? That likely means his awful son Honorius never takes over as emperor of the west either. The Theodosian dynasty is the worst imperial dynasty short of the Angeloi since at least the Theodosians had Aelia Pulcheria in the East.

>>3134799
But literally everything that Diocletin did was a failure. The only thing successful in his reign was the amount of political dick succ he got for being an emperor and retiring. After having did everything wrong, his successors actually got around to modernizing the economy but it was far too late in the west since border fortifications are decades behind similar ones in the east.
>>3134831
Power was too centralized in the highest office and there was a further centralizing of political power in aristocratic class at the time. Roman society functioned best when it was broadly decentralized aside and the free-men were supported by a robust economy. The tetrarchy heralded back to the idea of co-emperors of the republic, but the provinces themselves held far too much political power through usurper legions.

>>3134281
Overrated: Justinian
Underrated: Basil II

>>3141444
>an anon that couldn't be further wrong
Theodosius managed to the do the one thing that Diocletin never managed to do: Actually unite the empire. He was also brutally schooling the new class of roman citizens, the barbarians hordes that were on the border through trial by swords to get them into military shape but there were far too many of them to integrate into roman society. He seriously just could not pick any good help early on. Arbogast suicided a roman emperor which Theo was friendly enough with and an ally and put a puppet in his place which is something that cannot and should not ever be stood for. Arbogast was given a position for his military expertise not to wield political power since he was a German and therefore not a roman yet. It would have been fine, and the empire would have recovered just fine after his reign if Honorius didn't kill Stilcho, and stilcho didn't allow a faggot with a chicken to kill him, which caused a genocide of German servants across the empire which would piss off the Germans who were beginning to settle down causing them to march to Rome to demand compensation and apologize for the behavior which Honorius then forbade as the Senate was offering compensation which led to Rome being put to sack.

>>3135787
>Caligula
Interesting point: G.R.R Martin specifically researched Caligula as inspiration for his character "King Joffrey" for A Song of Ice and Fire.

he was more or less just a spoiled little boy with a sadistic streak and unlimited authority to indulge it

>>3137112
Nero gets a bad reputation for a variety of reasons, but primarily because the senate hated him, and that's who wrote stuff down back then. He had a habit of forcing them to come to his concerts and listen to him play shitty music for hours on end. His threat to nominate his horse to the senate was his way of trolling them by pointing out how irrelevant they had become. When a city-wide fire burned down the most valuable and prized real estate in the empire, the senators were pissed that's where Nero decided he was going to put his giant, opulent palace. His attempts to deflect criticism by scapegoating Christians was opaquely self-serving even by the standards of the day. Studies of numismatics suggest that Nero also probably had the wholly unpleasant job of trying to fight economic deflation.

>>3136543
>Commodus
imagine if Donald Trump was everything that that liberals say he was: a brazenly shameless showboater who loves the spectacle and opulence of the public stage while disdaining the drudgery of every day ruling, for which he has no real talent. He was more at home winning rigged gladiator fights or trying to rename Rome after himself than he was at addressing the multitude of problems facing Rome in the aftermath of the Antonine plague.

Of the three he is probably the worst: right at the moment Rome needed a strong leader, it got an extremely weak one, and he more or less made the crisis of the third century inevitable

>>3134289
Okay, now let's talk about Roman Emperors.

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>>3141607
>Interesting point: G.R.R Martin specifically researched Caligula as inspiration for his character "King Joffrey" for A Song of Ice and Fire.
And then they even cast a lookalike for the show.

>>3134348
you're the normie
YOU FELL FOR A MEME

Underrated: Aurelian
Overrated: Diocletian

>overrated
Diocletian, just because the tetrarchy didn't last at all
>underrated
as an emperor, Tiberius
as a man, Otho

>>3141607
Caligula nominated incitatus retard

>>3141636
whoops, I got my stories mixed up.

>>3134540
Why would Mehmed not be considered one? Ottomans were unironically the successors of Rome.

Overrated: Augustus. He was an insecure tyrant who let his lieutenants (Agrippa, basically) do a lot of the heavy lifting and taking credit. He established tyranny as an acceptable form of government, and let his wife, who didn't have the best interests of the empire anywhere close to the top of her priority list, essentially determine his succession. This created the most disastrous dynasty in roman history, producing Caligula and Nero.

Underrated: Would normally say Aurelian, but he's been brought up a lot here, so I'll go with Claudius Gothic us. According to Gibbon, Claudius prevented a gigantic Gothic Invasion of the empire from succeeding. Also, simply put, no Claudius Gothicus, no Aurelian.

Theodosius also gets props for ensuring the endurance of the Eastern empire, even while the Western Empire was going down.

>>3142644
>He established tyranny as an acceptable form of government, and let his wife, who didn't have the best interests of the empire anywhere close to the top of her priority list, essentially determine his succession.
To be fair, the guy tried everything he could to get someone who wasn't Tiberius to succeed him, but they all died. Livia probably poisoned them.
Should have picked Germanicus at the end, even if he was only 17, and had Tiberius killed alongside Agrippa Posthumous.

>>3141491
>his successors actually got around to modernizing the economy

Nonsense. 80% of the shit people have ascribed to Constantine was actually Diocletian's doing, and most of the emperors after Constantine were far too incompetent to do fuck all about the economy. Pathetic edicts by emperors like Theodosius II make clear how ineffectual any of their attempts were.

>border fortifications are decades behind similar ones in the east.

What the hell has that got to do with anything? The Western Roman Empire was compromised due to internal conflict, not external invasion.

>Power was too centralized in the highest office

Total opposite. The Roman state went from essentially being run by a few governors and their household slaves to hundreds of civil and military leaders and a far more vast bureaucratic system.

>provinces themselves held far too much political power through usurper legions.

The provinces didn't hold the reins of power over the legions. They were commanded by legates, and later duces and comes, appointed by the state.

>>3141532
>Theodosius managed to the do the one thing that Diocletin never managed to do: Actually unite the empire

Diocletian held the empire together for decades. It would never be so peaceful again. Theodosius had to fight an absolute fuck ton of civil wars and allowing usurpers to reign undisturbed for years in the west.

Theodosius was mostly pretty mediocre, and never deserved the title of "great". He pissed off the Goths greatly by using them as fodder in the battle of the Frigidus River thereby permanently earning the enmity of the one group in the Roman Empire that could fuck it up badly (aside from the Romans themselves).

Overrated - Justinian I.
Overextended the empire, leaving it much more vulnerable to attack, and then got rekt by the Justinian plague (not really his fault but oh well).
Underrated - Alexios I Komnenos. Absolute God tier emperor. Beset on all sides by enemies - Norman's from the west, turks from the east, and pechenegs from the south. Turned them all back with a combo of diplomacy, cunning and pure military skill. Set economic reforms to stablize a crumbling empire, and created the last great Roman dynasty.
Other option for underrated - Michael VIII Palaiologos - first emperor to hold Constantinople after the 4th Crusade. He pushed turks away while fighting off Charles of Naples, one of the greatest men of the age.

>>3134741
>The status of being imperator is equivable with being emperor.
Surely your joking?
Just because a word is derived from another doesn't that they are the same thing.

>>3134754
>Marcus Aurelius
>Not going against a genetic ingrained desire to not fuck over his own offspring makes him overrated.
You can't negate the greatness of a man by appealing to a default human disposition he had. You might aswell have said that he is overrated since he had smelly farts.

>Domitian
My nigga.

>>3135035
He wasn't an emperor and is thus irrelevant to the thread.

>>3143219
Actually being emperor is a social construct so there is no way you can say that he couldn't be emperor either.

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>>3134445
>Vespasian

>>3134281
>most overrated
Diocletian
>most underrated
Marcus Aurelius

>>3142869
>Economy
He reformed a system of taxes, which was great in and if itself but then proceeded to undermine it by tackling inflation and doing the worst possible thing imaginable: ending the commoners faith in the currency. Commoners stop using coins in trade and revert to bartering in kind = drastically slowed regional economy.
>Fortifications
The West was doomed to fall since the border fortifications we're never finished. Without control over the borders, there is no way to have control over the empire. So anything Diocletian did, did nothing to solve the issue of neighbors rising in power and prominence. This is compared to Theo who was at the borders clashing with the Germanic tribes thinning their numbers and getting them battle-hardened to serve as the border guards.
>Power centralization
That vast political bureaucracy you seem to imply existed was just not even close to true. Power still resided in the commander of legions: see every motherfucker with a hint of wanting to be emperor kicking off their rebellion in Britannia because of York.
>Uniting the empire
i wasn't simply implying they were physically held together. I mean he truly united the empire through Christianity which would unite the former Roman lands and even expand through the years as Christendom headed by the church.

>>3143434
>doing the worst possible thing imaginable: ending the commoners faith in the currency

Nobody had any faith in the currency. That was entirely the problem and the reason he even bothered to reform it in the first place. After centuries of dumbfuck emperors debasing it the denarius was basically worthless shit.

>revert to bartering in kind = drastically slowed regional economy.

Actually the movement away from currency is usually greatly overstated. What really happened was merely that some army groups were able to be paid in kind and some groups of peasants were allowed to pay in kind to save the unnecessary bureaucratic burden. It didn't have the effect of damaging the provinces since it meant trade was less geared purely around the army on the frontiers as virtually the sole source of coinage which meant interior provinces of the empire became more prosperous.

Your stuff about the border frontier makes absolutely no sense. The fortifications were completely fine and Diocletian even straight up overhauled them. On the Danubian frontier he beat the shit out of the Sarmatians and built an entirely new series of defences. Under Diocletian the Saxon pirates that had been troubling Britain and the Gallic provinces for decades had their wings clipped.

>vast political bureaucracy you seem to imply existed was just not even close to true

You have no idea what you're talking about. Even the Notitia Dignitatum, which depicts only a small part of the Roman state's administration, suggests that the size of the state was made huge as a result of the reforms. It's levied at him by multiple sources including Zosimus, Lactantius and others.

>Power still resided in the commander of legions: see every motherfucker with a hint of wanting to be emperor kicking off their rebellion in Britannia because of York.

The point is that civil governors lost control of their troops to new military governors, who had far less troops individually. Their power was somewhat curbed.

>>3143434
Continued.

>I mean he truly united the empire through Christianity which would unite the former Roman lands and even expand through the years as Christendom headed by the church.

Nigga what. Theodosius' shit stirring inflamed pagan-Christian tensions to their highest point ever and the empire was torn apart with civil unrest, mad holy men burning temples and groves down, and autistic infighting between Christian factions. Theodosius permanently destroyed secular power over the Church by getting cucked by Ambrose. He wiped out a good 10-20% of the Roman army in his civil wars and spent most of his reign persecuting Arians and Donatists.

I would argue that Theodosius damaged the unifying fabric of the empire massively, and his incompetent long reigning songs allowed Theodosius' shitty influence to continue for decades until the average Roman provincial had come to loathe the pettiness of it all.

>>3141532
>Actually unite the empire.
He died a few months after this happened after constantly driving the Empire into civil war, weakening it militarily at a time where it needed all the manpower it could get. Immediately on his death it split back into East-West and each was largely separate despite Stillicho's best efforts to control both halves

In addition to this he also allowed the church to gain more autonomy by cucking out hard to Ambrose of Milan (an utterly detestable figure) as penance for the justified punishment of Thessalonica for killing imperial officials because their favorite chariot racer got arrested for being a homosexual rapist; any other emperor with any guts would've just marched troops in, arrested Ambrose and exiled him. Constantius II wouldn't have stood for that shit.

And how does he end the Gothic Wars? By cucking out hardcore to the invading barbarians, allowing them to settle without breaking them up or disarming them and allowing them to fight alongside the Roman military under their own leadership instead of Roman leadership meaning he is directly responsible for everything wrong in the 5th century. Fuck Theodosius; cucking out to the church and being a zealot regarding the persecution of pagans shouldn't be enough to qualify someone for the title "Great". He's possibly the single most undeserving person to have ever acquired that nickname.

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>>3143672
>punishment of Thessalonica for killing imperial officials because their favorite chariot racer got arrested for being a homosexual rapist

>it's an easterners going full retard over chariot racing episode

>>3143690
I mean he did slaughter (supposedly) thousands of people, women and children included, but I think under the circumstances they're acceptable casualties. The thing is that Theodosius was kind of a dodo and genuinely religious man so Ambrose pounced on it for political purposes, basically doing 700 years earlier what would later be repeated by Henry IV and Gregory VII at Canossa. Ambrose is pure scum.

>>3134348
>>3134647
The historians alive during the Empire tend to count him as the first emperor, so it's not retarded to include him.

Me, I look at the Julio Claudians as beginning with the Dictator Caesar, and ending with Nero, and being a transitional dynaty where there was clearly no emperor when Caesar started his career, clearly was one as Nero died and Galba won the job off of him, and the transition in between being just that -- a transition, not a situation where it is needful or helpful to draw a hard line.

But maybe that's just me

>>3134281
Anyway...

Most overrated has got to be Marcus Aurelius. Even if you disregard that his "Meditations" is sophomore-level philosophy suited for cat posters, and just arbitrarily say it is all deep and profound and wonderful -- being the author of a collection of musings on philosophy has nothing to do with being an Emperor. The very fast that he left his idiot cretin of a son in place to be the next emperor, fucking things over and murdering his dynasty, should be sufficiently disqualifying. He was not an Evil Emperor, but he was An Emperor Who Was Not That Good At It.


Most under rated... Maybe Tiberius. (I'm excluding the ones who are under rated because nobody remembers them at all.) Yeah, he got a little off there at the end, and I won;t argue he was a Good Emperor -- but he did his duty to his Father and to Rome, though he'd have been happier going off and just living his life. He knocked off some number of Senators, but he didn't do much harm to the Empoire as a whole.

Yes, he too left a Bad Successor in place, but in Tiberius's day the fact that the Princeps's heir would be the next Princeps was not as set in stone (it had happened once) and he at least left his grandson in a position to step in as co-ruler down the road (which didn't happen, as Gaius was more murderous than Tiberius might have hoped. Again, I don;t list Tiberius as one of the greats, but I'd argue he does not belong as low in the rankings as he usually winds up.

>>3143320
>>most underrated
>Marcus Aurelius

Wat?

>>3134281
>overrated
Marcus Aurelius

>underrated
Vespasian

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Clau-Clau-Claudius tried really hard you guys.

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>>3134289
Good post.

>>3143506
>Nobody had faith in the currency
That is exactly the problem, he not only ruined any hopes of anyone going back to the currency-based trading system but also swept up many into unsustainable debts when he kept reissueing coins and didn't solve the problem of people clipping them.
>Bartering and the impact on the regional economy
More prosperous? Maybe because they left the urban areas and stopped interacting with the government and therefore avoided paying any taxes at all. The movement of people to the country and away from a coinage based system drastically slowed down the Roman economy and lowered the tax-base on which the Roman government sustained itself. When people are afraid of their coins getting devalued or being swept up into debt they stopped making large investments for the future. The most comparable state that can describe the Roman economy after Diocletin was rampant stagflation.
>Border defence
Yes, the Danube and the Saxon shore were the only places in the empire with actual border defence and were being repaired later. The much more expensive task was the establishment of true border defences along Illyria, Gaul, and Africa for the case of the Western Roman Empire. Those areas became highways for the movement of barbarian groups into the Roman empire which would tax the system. Most of the defences were centered around the east, which is why it managed to survive instead of collapsing like the West since they at least had something to defend the territory when the huns arrived.
>Roman state size
We are operating under the premise that a big and multi-part state is more efficient at stopping upstarts from rising up and commanding the state right? Then, why did even the greatest emperors after Diocletin have to fight multiple civil wars, every single time they rose to power?
Because the state was overly centralized which made it all too easy to pay some legios out of your pocket to bully a section of the empire to rise up in revolt.

>Over:
Marcus A.

>Under:
Julian the Apostate

>Can never have enough glory:
Augustus

>Power was curbed
Yeah, sure which is why literally every emperor after Diocletin that ruled for more than a couple years had to deal with upstart military commanders gathering a couple of legions and usurping a province to rule until the cubersome field army could manage to arrive and put them down.
>>3143541
These type of things happen when you try and convert religions anon. The thing was that Greco-Roman paganism simply could not unite the empire that had grown so vast. It even offered an alternative to the roman bravado and had a system to reign in excess. I would also like to point out that having a church separate from the secular authority is a bonus in itself. The papacy after the fall of Rome in the West was a pretty intricate system and operated rather well aside from some bad apples that managed to squeeze themselves in and ran the church as their fiefdom. But there was little to no counter to the churches hegemonic power.
>>3143672
You don't think civil government should be held responsible by a system of morals? The empire was never lacking for manpower, it was more an issue of supply that plagued the larger field armies. Wherever they arrived they would swoop up all the supplies the area could give, and then take some more to support itself.

As far as the Barbarian commanders, you could say he never managed to finish the job with them? There were plenty of instances where the option of eradication was available but he stayed his hand to train them. Everything wrong with the barbar relations in the 5th century can be attributed to Honorius and the Patrician classes rampant anti-germanic tendency since they were a stagnant dying breed in the empire. Without Stilchos murder, the relations with the Barbarians would have remained great, instead Rome had to barter and beg for their support.

>>3146337
>The most comparable state that can describe the Roman economy after Diocletin was rampant deflation
fixed it for you.

>>3146458
I believe that the consumption of goods decreased as well, with merchants taking a hard beating by the economic instability of Diocletian reform along with inflation since his monetary reforms did nothing but decrease the actual value of the coins by undermining the peoples faith in them.

>Most overrated
Marcus Aurelius

>Mosr underrated
Aurelian

>>3134831
The problem with the Tetrarchy was that Galerius was a fucking retard who was either so ambitious that he thought he could rule the entire thing himself by playing keikaku master (Maxentius should've been made a Caesar for instance) but vastly overestimated his ability while overlooking the possibility of someone as ambitious as Constantine.

Alternately you can go with the conspiracy theory that Galerius, as a Dacian, actually hated Rome and thus intentionally sabotaged the entire thing to bring the Empire down.

>>3134735
>Majorian
Except in the end he accomplished nothing

>>3141438
Second that brother. His pampering of an already uncontrollable army ushered in the crisis of the third century

>>3135846
>Lekapenos
Legitly good choice

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Sheeiitt, I forgot that Basiliscus was actually emperor at one point for a short time. Though nobody would consider him overrated but holy fuck is he probably the single stupidest man to ever become emperor or indeed hold any kind of important role in Roman history.

>>3134889
When re-listening to History of Rome, Mike mentioned that Domitian was basically held hostage in the city during the Year of the Four Emperors and got to see first hand the chaos of it and the capriciousness and pompous self-importance of the Senate. He posits that likely left a large impression on Domitian giving him a lifetime hatred of the Senate and thus his constant attempts to fuck them over, elevate himself above them openly, etc. Everything he did was a giant middle finger to a body he saw as corrupt and ineffectual, a rotting limb that needed to be severed.

>>3134289
There needs to be a movie called The Triggering where Mark Whalberg has to save his family from shitposting.

"The Memes, its the memes, they are killing us."

>>3134445
Jews weren't driven from Judea after the first jewish roman war. Judea was extremely devastated with over a million people killed displaced or sold into slavery, and Jerusalem a smoldering ruin, however jews weren't forced to leave.

Hadrian did that after the second jewish roman war.

>>3135082
anyone with any interest in rome at all knows who Cincinnatus was

>>3146973
Who the fuck was that thought that crowning someone called Basilisk was a good idea?

>>3146428
>The empire was never lacking for manpower
Yes it was, that's the entire reason they started using largely barbarian armies. The aristocracy retreated into their villas and just tended to their estates. The lower classes no longer saw the military as a viable career choice (because it was just march around and get killed by some barbarians for nothing) so they stayed to work fields under the aristocrats in a proto-serfdom. Being unable to recruit large numbers of people anymore (it took Theodosius everything he had to get the ramshackle army that fought the Gothic Wars) meant that the Roman Legions stopped being Roman and became nothing but barbarian mercenaries that even stopped fighting under Roman commanders.

Combine that with his decision to use the Goths at the Frigidus River as a dummy group to soak up casualties and thus piss them off and you were left with a Western Empire that could barely defend itself and got damn lucky they were able to beat Atilla... and even then Atilla just moved on and did his thing anyway and it's only lack of supplies and disease that turned him off more than losing to Aetius.

And you're ignoring that the very problem with the barbarians wouldn't have been a problem if he'd settled the Goths the way Rome had always settled barbarians. Do not let them stay in large groups, do not let them keep their weapons, do not let them fight under their own leaders. It'd be like if a bunch of Mexicans came pouring over the border and we let them have southern Arizona as Nuevo Mexico complete with their own government and national guard force; it's an utterly stupid idea and nobody would allow that to happen yet Theodosius did and look how that came back to bite Rome in the ass.

As far as morals, I can agree that emperors shouldn't just go off a slaughterin' when they get the will too but that doesn't mean either that they should allow bishops and Popes to push them around like Theodosius did.

>>3145813
Damn do i miss this Turk shitposter.

>overrated
Diocletian, he gets too much credit for his Christian persecutions while he really didn't do enough.
>underrated
Elagablus. Being both Syrian and a homosexual/transgender whore, he was a proto-swede.

>overrated

Hadrian

>underrated

Maximinus Thrax

They're all high evils that earned their spot in Hell.

>>3148177
Hey there Dante

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>underrated
DeAndre Africanus

>>3148179
Hey there, LARPer. You done sucking off your colonial massa, G*rman?

>>3148189
I'm Irish. Never conquered by romans. : ^ )

>>3148195
Rome > England > Ireland
You're still falling for colonial memes.

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>>3134540

>>3146337
Your first paragraph is unfair. You can't blame him for recognising the state of affairs that existed at that time and taking steps towards formalising it.

Your points on tax are wrong because taxation proved to be more intensive over the following decades. That had some other knock-on effects such as 'agri deserti' and people trying to avoid tax, but it was far superior to the chaos of the 3rd century. And the 4th century had a massive amount of "investment for the future" compared to prior centuries. It heralded the last building boom in the imperial period as new villas and townhouses were constructed, particularly in places like Britannia.

Your third paragraph is mostly nonsense. There WERE border defences in all of those areas mentioned. North Africa even had defences mostly sufficient in deterring border raids from the tribes there. Gaul had a fuck load of fortifications. What are you even talking about? The west had just as many as the east, aside from on the Persian frontier which had a far more organised army and fortified cities were far more common. The East did not survive because of its fortifications, that is absolute horseshit.

>highways for the movement of barbarian groups into the empire

The main barbarian threat to the empire crossed on the Danube river into the Eastern Empire. The others in the 406 Rhine crossing only did so because there were autistic usurpers stealing the border garrison there. The Danubian provinces had suffered similar problems for decades.

>why did even the greatest emperors after Diocletin have to fight multiple civil wars, every single time they rose to power?

The 4th century was a period of relative stability compared to the previous status quo. Usurpers were relatively limited in number even if the wars were still pretty destructive. It was the 5th century which saw an absolute fuckton of usurpers.

Your final point is completely wrong. You seem to mistaking centralisation and decentralisation.

>>3147155
>Yes it was, that's the entire reason they started using largely barbarian armies.

But that's wrong. Roman generals actually recruited because, and i'm going to drop this redpill on you here despite it being unpopular, barbarians tended to be cheaper, more effective fighters that didn't need to be trained, and arguably more loyal. It's the same exact problem of modern globalisation where your labour pool expands.

A massive number of soldiers were lost in the civil wars of 408-430 and were never replaced, but that wasn't because of manpower issues, but because of a lack of cash.

A reminder that the Visigoths were mostly stalwart allies of the Romans, defeating the Suebi for them, reclaiming much of Gaul for them and defeating Attila for them.

>>3143298
>Muh I selfidentify as an emperor and thus am one.
That's actually not bad, I might have to steal it.

>>3148846
I self-identify as an imperator. If you try to remove my purple cloak I will scream.

>>3148839
And then Honorius ruined it because he was fucking retarded.

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>>3147155
Not him, but,
>Yes it was, that's the entire reason they started using largely barbarian armies.
The armies of Flavius Aetius had an almost equal proportion of allied soldiers to state soldiers as the armies of Scipio Africanus.

The difference was in the citizenship model: for Scipio those auxiliaries were from allied city-states in the process of romanizing, people who wanted to be Romans, were willing to fight for and pay taxes to Rome, to whom Rome rewarded with partial citizenship.

By the 5th century that process had broken down completely, and migrants were stranded in legal limbo and kept as permanent second class citizens. Having no incentive to adopt Roman culture they didn't, hence why we consider them "barbarians" even though they had lived within Roman borders for decades: they were simply not permitted to participate in the proper Roman economy so they maintained their own way of doing things.

Further disincentivizing them was the fact that the generals treated them like disposable toy soldiers. This is the reason why Italians stopped joining the army: you were playing Russian roulette and stood a very real chance of being hanged as a traitor because your general was an ego-maniacal son of a bitch with a messiah complex who decided to make an ill-conceived play for power.

Drawing recruits from plebs mired in proto-serfdom was little more of an issue than drawing those mired in urban poverty. The difference is that you had plebs doing things like cutting off their own thumb in order to avoid service, reasoning that being a cripple was preferable to dying a traitor's death, which was their most likely fate if they decided to serve, plus citizens have rights. Imported foreign labor is simply easier to exploit.

476 AD was not the first time in Roman history that it had to be bailed out by one of its satellite peoples, but it was the first time that it was bailed out by people who had no cultural incentive to preserve the central bureaucracy

>>3149949
Made worse by the fact that even after foederati troops like the visigoths served in the military, they were given piss poor compensation and when they protested it, Honorius had their families killed sparking a full out rebellion.

Then when Alaric came to the table to negotiate a peace, he was spurned at the last second by the emperor in Ravenna, leading to the sack of Rome.

>>3147155
The nobility abandoned state service because under the Judio-Claudian dynasty, showing your head would get it cut off by some lunatic.

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>>3150131
Exactly, the common thread in all of this were Romans who wanted to keep their easily exploitable labor-force. That late into their history they had stopped seeing "Rome" as an ideal but as a birth-right.

The founding myth of Rome was two warring clans putting aside their differences and uniting at the behest of the women, who threw themselves between them begging for peaceful reconciliation. From that point until well into the Empire, Rome was a place which was constantly making new Romans, either peacefully via treaty, or bloodily by conquest. It's the reason why the Republic could weather brutal military losses and still have a pool of manpower to draw from, which was something none of the Hellenic city-states or the MENA oligarchies/despotisms could say about themselves.

By the time of the Empire being a citizen was more of a tax liability than an asset because the primary advantage of citizenship, that you had a say in how the government works, was a cruel farce at this point, as the Principate was still a de jure Republic but it was all a facade masking the nakedly authoritarian state it had become.

The Dominate was simply the emperors dispensing with the facade and ruling in an openly despotic state. The whole point of a despotism is that the ruling class exercises unlimited authority over the lower classes and says fuck all to the concept of citizenship. The Germanics didn't Romanize, or begin the process of applying for citizenship, because there was literally no point.

>>3134289
This is brilliant

>>3148177
Good news, there is no hell, we live forever in an eternal cycle of life and death.

All "Roman Emperors" after the rise of Christianity should be disqualified from consideration because the world had changed and they had fundamentally betrayed the real Rome (Julian excluded)

>all these answers for most overrated being Marcus Aurelius
Rather good proof that he's in fact not at all overrated

>>3150359
>they had fundamentally betrayed the real Rome (Julian excluded)
all they did was get it to acknowledge reality: that they were living in a despotic state in a world very different than the one that Cinncinatus and Scipio Africanus lived in.

The Romans of the late Republic were the ones who traded their birthright for a mess of pottage.

It was the worst kind of compromise: the wealthy kept their privilege and free labor, the poor got their welfare state, second class citizens did all the real labor, and it was all managed by an entity outside of the public government, which had become so gridlocked as to be essentially nonfunctional, and maintained purely as political theater.

>>3150131
>Then when Alaric came to the table to negotiate a peace, he was spurned at the last second by the emperor in Ravenna, leading to the sack of Rome.

There's actually a great bit in Zosimus where he says that a Roman general of Gothic ancestry called Sarus attacked the Goths while they were at the negotiating table because his and Alaric's families were rivals. It ended up fucking the entire negotiations.

>>3150359
Fuck off, LARPer.
Rome ought to be betrayed, LARPer. Why you continue to suck massa's dick? Even those 'dumb blacks' you complain about on /pol/ can at least recognize their rapists.

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>>3134289

>>3135262
Aurelian is the James K. Polk of Roman Emperors.

>well known and respected by anyone with even a passing familiarity with Roman history
>commonly listed among the greatest emperors in Roman history
Normies not knowing him does not make him underrated.

>>3151492
Polk is one of the most overrated presidents and the Mexican-American War paved the way for the civil war and american imperialism across the western hemisphere for the next hundred years.

>>3151525
I meant James K. Polk in the sense that he's commonly held to be among the upper tier of people who held that office but because normies don't know him people say he's underrated.