Roman Emperors

arah Kloster
Professor Swanson
History of Western Civilization
October 10, 2016
The Roman Empire Roman Emperors- are they all alike or different in their ideals, culture, and their influences. This paper will look into four great empires of the Roman world. It will discuss their ideals and cultures of their day. Were these four emperors a culture influence in their day? The four emperors of Rome, Augustus, Nero, Domitian, and Marcus Aurelius, had good and bad ideals, shaped, and influenced the culture in many ways. Augustus had many ideals including being a kind man and a military leader. “as victor I spared all the citizens who sought pardon.…...I preferred to preserve than to destroy.” (The Deeds of the Divine Augustus,
Nero enjoyed music therefore, he added a music contest at the Olympia. He altered how the music contests ran. “The cites in which it was custom to hold contests in music had adopted the rule of sending all the lyric prizes to him.” (Suetonius: De Vita Caesarum—Nero, paragraph XXII). He corrupted the morals of the time, “He castrated the boy Sporus and actually tried to make a woman of him…….and treated him as his wife.” (Suetonius: De Vita Caesarum—Nero, paragraph XXVIII). Nero responded to culture in few ways. Nero liked to be popular “He had a longing for immortality and undying fame……. he took their former appellations from many things and numerous places and gave them new ones from his own name.” (Suetonius: De Vita Caesarum—Nero, paragraph LV). Nero thought that only the Greeks had good taste for music. “he declared that ‘the Greeks were the only ones who had an ear for music and that they alone were worthy of his efforts.’” (Suetonius: De Vita Caesarum—Nero, paragraph
I felt this culture was not good with their political ideas as the emperors were not elected, but instead were picked by the emperors before them. From a Christian prospective, I would not want to live in this culture as it was a pagan religion based on many false gods. In addition, I felt the culture was a secular/murderous culture with two cruel emperors, Nero and Domitian. I thought that Augustus was a good emperor as he was kind and cared about his citizens. The people of Rome liked him. Nero, on the other hand, was a vain, messed up, and selfish emperor. I thought he was vain as he had statues of himself in his bed chamber. I thought he was messed up as he was a homosexual with a boy and a man, but at the same time, he was married to a woman. He was also messed up as he murdered people, and even tried to murder his own mother. He was selfish as he did not really care about what happened to his citizens. I thought Domitian was like Nero, but not as cruel as him. He was not that wise as he did not know how to run an empire without stealing money. I thought it was interesting that it was after the civil war, Domitian became crueler. I thought Marcus Aurelius did well for an emperor as he was a nice man. However, he didn't really do anything except add philosophy to his empire. Marcus was good in the way that he was open to learning more