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.
I chose Titus and am left somewhat with mixed feelings.
ReplyDeleteYou see, he was viewed as the possible second Nero, however briefly that was.
But this was later proven to be wrong, or at the very least, it was proven not to be as serious as Nero was.
In fact, Titus's status as emperor appeared to be more used as a means to help others, even if those around him insisted he was being too generous.
This throws the Principate back in the face of Augustus. No doubt the system was created to establish a proper reason for the people to practically worship the emperors of Rome, but Titus did not appear to share in these sentiments.
To him, he was his people. He was happy when they were, and when they suffered horribly, so did he. He clearly suffered from the inability to do 'enough' for the people under his care. He connected with them through various means, including bathing in public baths that commoners accessed often.
To me, it seems that he did not want to be placed higher than the others. That the 'godly blood' that supposedly ran through his veins was not so different from the people than his ancestors insisted it was.