Roman Emperors (Trajan to Commodus)

Time To Get Into Some More Roman History(!)

Your test scores, all of your test scores, have been abysmal lately, so lets try to pay attention today, yes?  Stop pencil fighting, stop flicking that little triangle-shaped piece of paper that you call a "football", and stop passing notes to the girl with the bangs in the sweater who doesn't like you.  And I hope all of you already used the restroom, because I'm not handing out any hall passes.

Last period ended with the death of Nerva, and that brings us to this man:

TRAJAN 98-117AD

His full title was Imperator Caesar Nerva Traianus Divi Nervae Filius Augustus (you will need to remember his full name for the upcoming test) and he was the son of one of Vespasian's commanders.  Trajan was adopted by Nerva and became emperor after Nerva's death in 98AD.  He's known for renovating the Colosseum (marble seats!), conquering Dacia (Romania), and setting up a 100ft column (Trajan's Column) decorated with spiral reliefs to celebrate his victory.  For those of you interested in the history of the early church (and in extra credit points), in 112AD, Pliny, governor of Bithynia, wrote Trajan an interesting letter (and received an interesting response) concerning Christians and how they were to be managed.  He died in 117AD of a stroke after putting down a Jewish revolt in North Africa and Palestine.  Next up was...

HADRIAN 117AD-138AD

Hadrian was supposedly adopted by Trajan when Trajan was on his deathbed, but some people speculated that Trajan's wife set the whole thing up by inserting an impostor into the room to pose as Trajan.  At any rate, Hadrian secured his position by executing a few of Trajan's generals and sending a clear message that he would tolerate no opposition.  Hadrian came off as snobbish and arrogant and he spent much of his reign outside of Rome.  When he was in Italy, he stayed at the Villa Adriana, a retreat he built for himself 20 miles away from the city.  He angered the Jews and set off the Bar Kokhba Revolt by doing things like abolishing circumcision, renaming Jerusalem "Aelia Capitolina", and building a temple to Jupiter on the ruins of The Temple which had been down since 70AD.  After he quashed the rebellion, he outlawed Torah Law, forbade Jews from entering Jerusalem, and killed several prominent Jewish scholars.  Today, Hadrian is remembered for building a wall (Hadrian's Wall) in Britain, and for being obsessed with his boyfriend, Antinous.  He died of heart failure in 138AD.

ANTONINUS PIUS 138-161AD

Antoninus Pius was adopted by the childless Hadrian and became emperor of Rome after Hadrian's death.  He was the son of a former consul and had been a proconsul in Italy and Asia.  He wasn't Hadrian's first choice as successor, but he secured Hadrian's favor by agreeing to make sure the Senate named Hadrian a god (posthumously) and by adopting Lucius Verus (the son of Hadrian's first choice) and Marcus Aurelius (Hadrian's nephew-in-law).  Antoninus Pius spent the entirety of his unusually long and peaceful reign in Italy.  He built theaters and temples and made some legal reforms, but he never led any armies.  He ruled Rome at the height of her prosperity.  Oh, and he died peacefully.

LUCIUS VERUS  161-169AD

So, Lucius Verus co-ruled Rome with Marcus Aurelius in 161AD.  Rome had seen unofficial co-rulers before.  For example, Augustus groomed Tiberius to succeed him in ruling Rome which made Tiberius co-ruler in all but name, similarly Vespasian ruled with Titus and Nerva ruled with Trajan.  But Rome had never before been under two simultaneously elected co-emperors.  The situation, such as it was, worked out tolerably well (and set a precedent for what would later become the norm).  Lucius Verus oversaw the defeat of a resurgent, encroaching Parthian empire in Syria and was awarded a triumph after his generals sacked the cities of Selucia and Ctesiphon.  No one really remembers Lucius at all.  He was kind of a playboy, spending his time in taverns and at chariot races.  He died of smallpox (the Antonine Plague) in 169AD and Marcus Aurelius became the sole emperor.

  

MARCUS AURELIUS  161-180AD

Marcus Aurelius is remembered as The Last Stoic and he wrote a book, The Meditations, that outlined his stoic philosophy.  The Antonine Plague, a smallpox epidemic that was spread across the empire by soldiers returning to their various posts from Mesopotamia, killed 10% of the empire's population during his reign and he consulted several oracles (one of which was famous for featuring a clairvoyant snake named Glycon) for advice on what to do.  Meanwhile, in the north, the Danubian Tribes were breaking south into Roman territory.  Marcus Aurelius spent the rest of his reign pushing the tribes out of Roman territory and grooming his son Commodus to take his place.

COMMODUS  161-180AD

...have all of you seen Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, the World War II movie about a band of soldiers in Nazi occupied France?  It's a pretty good war movie; in the same camp as Kelly's Heroes, The Great Escape, and Where Eagles Dare, but there's a shocking scene at the end of the film where the basterds kill(!) Adolf Hitler.  I mention this because the film Gladiator has an equally shocking (though less incendiary) scene wherein the emperor Commodus is killed by a former Roman general.  In the Colosseum.  In front of thousands of cheering spectators.  According to actual history, Commodus was poisoned by his mistress and, when the poison failed to kill him, she hired a wrestler named Narcissus to strangle him.  But before any of that happened, Commodus (the son of Marcus Aurelius) managed to make a real mess of things.  By all accounts, Commodus was a lout; a slothful lout.  He let his lieutenants (his friends and his mistress) run the government and spent his time pretending to be Hercules and fighting in the Colosseum against physically handicapped opponents and opponents armed with wooden weapons.  He renamed Rome "Colonia Commodiana" in honor of himself.  Meanwhile, his lieutenants plotted against him and Commodus was ultimately assassinated (but not by Russell Crowe).  It's probably an overstatement to lay the decline and fall of the Roman empire entirely on his shoulders, but he certainly didn't do anything to stop it.

Did you get all of that?  Most of you weren't even taking notes.  It makes me look like a bad teacher when all of you fail, so when you take the test next week, try to lean over and look at The Smart Kid's paper so you can copy what he writes down.

...wait, does this class even have a The Smart Kid..?  Unbelievable.  Maybe I'll just go ahead and hand out a bunch of "F"s right now.  Class dismissed.