Week 5: Daily Blog Day 6 – Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Daily Blog Day 6 – Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Question: Were the Julio-Claudians really as bad as they seem?

            Julio-Claudians is the nickname that has been given to the first five Roman emperors. This includes Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero. This nickname in part also relates to the families that these emperors came from. Most of these emperors had unique and scandalous story of their reign portrayed when you read the ancient Romans’ writings. They were said to have performed gruesome executions and were said to be full of hatred. In fact, some people even considered them to be mad or have at least gone crazy at some point during their reign. For the western civilization video project, I worked on the emperor Caligula. In doing so, I learned a lot about him and his ruthlessness. He was an ambitions military leader, and eventually he was assassinated for his believed insanity; although, attempts on his life were made many times. Some of the reasons this may have happened is due to the fact that Caligula executed many people during his reign and often for stupid reasons. Also, he had an affair with his one sister until she died. It seemed he was never the same again after that happened, and people said he was triggered into insanity. When I learned about all the things Caligula did in my project, I found that what the emperors of that time did could be truly horrible. After I stepped back and looked at this in a different perspective, I think they may not be as bad as we seem. Sure, they had their problems, and death, especially the kinds these emperors were giving, were not right by any means, you must remember what we learned earlier in the year. Power, quite simply, corrupts. Also, if you add in the fact that these men could and probably quite possibly had server mental disorders, you may not be able to hold them fully accountable for their actions. Often times, they may not have had much control over what they were doing. Sadly, though, we cannot know for sure if these emperors had what we would consider a true mental disorder in today’s day and age. Some people still may side that this is all one bug excuse. You, as well as them, are entitled to your opinion, but I believe that the Julio-Claudians did some pretty horrible and gruesome things, but if you look at more than just the act itself you may say that it’s not quite as bad as it seems, or that at least they are not quite as responsible.