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 casesars 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.
3 comments:
"He was most kindly by nature, and whereas in accordance with a custom established by Tiberius, all the Caesars who followed him refused to regard favors granted by previous emperors as valid, unless they had themselves conferred the same ones on the same individuals, Titus was the first to ratify them all in a single edict, without allowing himself to be asked."
I admire Titus for following a trend with the other other emperors for not granting all of these favors from previous emperors wishes. The previous emperor could easily have been a very corrupt and evil emperor like Caligula, thus if the next emperor carried out some of the same policies, he could become just as corrupt as the previous emperor. To compare it to more modern times, it was like the emperors were not carrying out some patronage favors in order to make the Romans know that the new leader was independent and not just a sheep of the previous leader. Alex Mason
Vespasian was able to do some things very similar to Augustus. He unfortunatley was involved in a civil war much like Augustus which was probably not the way Augustus envisioned his reforms working. However Vespasian was able to give a lot back to the people of Rome. As in the Res Gestae Vespasian gave numerous large amounts of money to the people of Rome. It is this idea that the Emperor should be more than just a legislative figurehead and actually care about his constituents.
I think that passage 7 in the Titus passage displys how the principate can be a good thing. The lineage or history that comes from being part of the principate make it a great tool. He was thought as being as close to as cruel as Nero, so he could use it to his advantage to keep up obedience thru out the empire. He also could use it to set up how extreme is too extreme , thus keeping the people obedient. But this is also a bad thing for the simple fact that what good does this do for the people. How long can they stir with an empire that does no good for the people.
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