Roman Emperors: Petamus Deleamusque

(That's "search and destroy" for those who don't speak Latin.)

For me:

Search:

• Trajan.
• Hadrian for his awesome wall, and for being an effete liberal elitist. And for the beard.
• Marcus Aurelius, an obvious choice, but awesome in a philosopher-king sorta way nonetheless. (Also for the beard.)
• You know what? All five of the Good Emperors were appropriately named. (Perhaps my fave period of the Roman Empire, come to think of it.)
• Caligula, for comic relief.
• Julian the Apostate. The name alone is enough to put him here. And because paganism is so much funner than Xianity.
• Romulus Augustulus. People are too hard on him, poor kid never had the chance to be awesome. But he gets extra points for the ironic name.

• Augustine. The closest thing the Classical world had to Bush. (Though if Dubya had had a Virgil, his administration might have been more tolerable.)
• Claudius. Boring, rockist choice. Way overrated.
• Constantine. Fucked up Christianity pretty badly by secularizing it. Also an anti-semite.
• Theodosius I, for outlawing paganism altogether.
• Tiberius, for being a creepy pedophile.
• Nero, for being an overrated, lame Caligula rip-off.

D: Caesar for destroying the Republic

(er, that should be "Augustus", not "Augustine", btw... they were both dud of course, but only one was an emperor)

Caesar gets bonus points for being ballsy. And for his fashion sense. Solid-purple togae=win.

S:

Hadrian, for the quality choice of boyfriend.
Claudius, for writing the book on the Etruscans, although he could have worked harder to ensure its survival.
Marcus Aurelius, because every year in Latin people would ask when we'd finally get around to reading him, and every year they had to be reminded that he wrote in Greek.
Diocletian (see below).

D:

Constantine, for getting all the credit for Diocletian's hard work.
All the Eastern emperors, for being insanely sucky, except Justinian, who at least made for a juicy secret history, or at least, married someone who made for a juicy secret history...

Also Augustus is probably closer to a competent Putin than to Bush.

Yeah, come to think of it the Bush analogy doesn't hold up well. I guess I was thinking of the combination of authoritarianism and religious moralism. But then, Augustus ruled during a period of (superficial) peace and prosperity. I guess he'd be more of a Reagan, if anything.

iirc, Nero won the Olympic competition for playing the lyre and reciting poetry. All the other competitors insisted that he win. Then everyone fawned over him for a while. Then he had his statues crowned with laurel. Fresh. Daily.

It's stuff like that shows his attention to detail.

Heliogabalus, as imagined by Artaud.

surely caesar can't take sole blame for destroying the republic -- more antony and octavian's doing, though my memories of suetonius are fading.

It was Marius and Sulla who really got things started. Caesar only followed the path they laid to do what he did.

I was actually going to do a T/S on Marius vs. Sulla, but, thank god, sanity prevailed.

Oh it was the Gracchi who started it and you know it.

one of my teachers claimed Domitian was the worst one

Domitian was the worst one

Judging purely on looks, otm.

Julian!