Suetonius' Lives of the Caesars is one of the most important sources for the period following Nero's Death. Among his "Twelve Caesars" are Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian Suetonius includes all sorts of fascinating biographical details about the men he describes--along with plenty of sometimes unverifiable gossip and rumor.For extra credit, please read Suetonius account of any one of the caesars of this period (links above) . Pick an incident from the life of this caesar that shows a way in which Augustus' system (the Principate) can work well, or an incident that shows that system created by Augustus was not working out particularly well.
If you have fallen behind on your blogs, you can add to your extra credit by doing an extra blog entry on a *different* ceasar than you talk about in your first post.
The first emperor I chose to do is Vespasian. Something I found in the reading that showed the system Augustus had set up worked was that Vespasian reformed the financial system after the campaign with Judea was successfully ended. This would help the people of Rome to take better control of their finances, and also show them where their tax money was going if they were curious.
ReplyDeleteThe thing I found that showed that the system Augustus set up was not the greatest was the fact that Vespasian wanted to do a lot of construction projects, but he overthought it and a lot of them that were started, never got finished. In simpler terms, he was good at wasting money.
The second emperor I did was Galba. There wasn't really anything positive I could find regarding him in the reading, but something I found that proves that the system Augustus set up was not working was the fact that Galba was just given governorship over Hispania since he held the positions of praetor, consul and governor of different provinces, so what was one more place to rule over? Also the fact he was handed emperorship with the support of the praetorian guard. Then he was murdered since he wasn't really social.
The emperor that I chose was Titus. Titus for the most part, was an extremely good emperor for the Roman people. He did, however, do some things that could’ve resulted in catastrophic consequences for the Roman people, particularly how cruel he was especially as an emperor. On top of that, he was a greedy emperor, which again, could’ve put him in a vulnerable position as emperor. He accepted bribes on a consistent basis, and some of those bribes included political or personal benefits for Titus himself, which is a dangerous game to play, especially as a leader of the Roman Republic. Although he was greedy, and although he sometimes put up more than he bargained for, he still was an extremely influential person as far as how the Roman Empire should be run and how efficient it could be, thanks to his popularity, and some of the other things that helped him become great.
ReplyDelete- Nile Hesson