Well you read all these horrible things about all the roman emperors but those accounts were all written long after the fact by people in new administrations. Also many of the things written there could be just the worst rumors of the time created by the emperors political enemies. Makes you wonder if some of the emperors were as bad as they said in those historic gossip books like Seutonius' Twelve Caesars.

 

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You don't want to read what Ben Klassen writes about the subject

 

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Romans were decent by those days standards.

I bet 2000 years from now people will read about our way of life and consider us barbarians

 

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I'm not a historian but I really have trouble now believing the Roman Emperors were that bad especially the Claudians. The rumors written long after their deaths which we read today are really suspect. At that time of course you couldnt write anything negative about the current emperor and with some times you couldnt even write it during the reign of the next emperor or two because they were related.

And if anything both Augustus and Julius Caesar were most likely worse than we read about. The truth is somewhere in the middle I bet

 

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Most emperors had armies of politicians, governors, commanders, nobles, senators etc run day to day things for them.

 

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I consider us barbarians right now.

 

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You have hit on the problem Bonk. Several were not very bad at all but the next guy hated him. We often all we get is a view from their worse political enemies. As with everything you have to dig deeper.

It helps to have the ability to control the press. When there was religious strife between Protestant and Catholic the Protestant’s had the printing press. The Catholic burnt a few hundred people in Spain and everyone knows about it. The Protestant’s burnt thousands of "witches" and there is hardly a word.

In the late 1800's there was a "good government" movement in the US. Those that tried to stop reform were known as the "stallworths". Those for reform were known as the "goo-goos". Press is important.

It is why the majority of conservatives have a hard time defeating a minority of liberals. During elections the press will not even use the world "liberal". The term "far-right" is far more common.

As long as you remember that Hollywood version of events is just a story you'll be fine. Sadly this twisted view of the world is all some people get; liberals good -- conservatives bad, end of story.

 

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And the Romans were a very conservative anal uptight people compared to their rivals the Greeks, Egyptians and others. I really would like to believe the scandals but in reality what they really did in their personal lives would probably make us laugh.

In a police state also even official records cant really be trusted. In Eygpt even if they lost a battle they would spin it so it looks like they won. This happened and its documented with a Pyraroh. He lost the battle, his historians made it look like he won, but the truth was determined by looking at the records of the other side plus archeological data

Also things like Caesars war in gaul and other writings are political documents and probably full of lies and exaggerations and not the truth at all.

 

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We kicked their ass in the year 9.

 

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Have you read Gibbons' account?

Roman history isn't simply drawn from writings of politicians. They have two full cities entirely covered by a volcano which erupted at the time of the peak of the Roman Empire in order to glean information from. Not only the writings of the citizens, but grafitti, art, business, etc.

Our knowledge of Rome comes from many sources, not simply the victor.

 

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