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Time Traveler's Guide to Becoming Roman Emperor
🕑 Added 2024-09-06 12:21:38 +0000 UTCImagine you were beamed right now back in time 2,000 years to the Roman Empire. Now, imagine you were the enterprising sort of individual and wished to become none other than Caesar Augustus, the Emperor of Rome. How would you do it? How did people become the emperor of Rome?
Well, this is What Why How, and that’s what the video’s about. If you like this sort of thing, don’t forget to like and subscribe.
Ok. It’s a warm autumn day sometime many centuries ago. You’re surrounded by the bustling streets of the thrumming heart of the world’s greatest empire.
It smells terrible and everyone stares at you.
First, you’re going to be in a foreign environment. Unless you speak classical Latin, Greek, or another language of the day, you’re going to have to learn it. Since your iPhone’s going to run out of battery soon, you can’t use Duolingo. You’d have to find a tutor to teach you the language and tutors cost money. And it’s pretty hard to make money when you don’t know the language. But lucky for you, you’re watching this video with some sort of electronic device. Your only legitimate path to not become a homeless person or slave in ancient Rome is to sell your phone or laptop to a merchant for a hefty bag of denarii. Hopefully your phone’s not across the room right now, because then you’re doomed.
Actually, wait a second. You’re probably not wearing a tunic right now. Together with your phone, you can probably sell your services as some sort of magician from a foreign land. But unlike other magicians in Rome, you actually do have the power of magic—your phone. Instead of pawning it off for some gold, you should demand an audience with the Emperor to anyone who will listen. They might think you’re crazy, but it might just work.
Ok, with a bit of luck, and assuming someone doesn’t just put a knife in your belly and mug you, you may just gain an audience with some high official in Rome, perhaps the praefectus vigilum—the commander of the city guards. He might just interpret your barbaric babbling as some sort of strange wisdom and bring you up to the Praetorian Guard. Then, from there, you might just get an audience with someone close to the emperor if your phone had enough charge when you got teleported off your couch.
The officials of Rome, hardly dullards, would be very interested in what you have to say. So, you won’t have to pay for a tutor to teach you Latin, they’ll do it for you. While the tutor has no idea what language you speak, Latin isn’t especially hard to learn. I hear the conjugations are frustrating, though.
But eventually you gain the ability to explain that you come from the future and have great knowledge about the course of Rome. Finally, they understand what you are: an oracle sent by the god Apollo. You at last gain an audience with the Emperor, who interrogates you for a prolonged period but is ultimately displeased by your lack of specific knowledge of his day. While he hopefully doesn’t throw you into the gladiator pit, maybe he keeps you around as a sort of court jester. Better hope you don’t sneeze on him, because you might just wipe out the entirety of Europe.
Ok, from there you can take many different paths. So let’s put a pause on the sci fi and look to see how people actually became Roman emperor.
The first emperor of Rome, Octavian, was the grandnephew of Julius Caesar and won power after beating rivals in a civil war. Tiberius, his successor, was another well-placed nobleman who gained glory in battle. In fact, the first 5 emperors, including infamous men like Caligula and Nero, were all members of the Julio-Claudian Dynasty. So, your mission to become emperor is doomed if you get teleported back in time between 27 BC and AD 68.
But, the Julio-Claudian Dynasty soon exploded apart: Nero was toppled, then succeeded by the noble governor Galba; who was murdered by the noble governor Otho; who stabbed himself after losing a battle and was followed by the noble governor Vitellius; who was murdered and succeeded by Vespasian. While the previous emperors were patricians, Vespasian was an equestrian—one rank below—and a successful general. Vespasian was then followed by his two sons.
I think you get the point, right? To be the emperor of Rome during its rise, you need to be born into a noble family and preferably be a governor of a province and a commander of soldiers who love you so much they’d proclaim you emperor and kill anyone who disagrees.
But, as the empire’s history progresses, chaos provides opportunity for men outside the royal families of Rome.
One was Pertinax, who started his reign on the first of January AD 193. After being born to a freed slave, Pertinax won glory in battle and climbed up the ranks of the military. Next, he became a governor and soon a proconsul too. When Emperor Commodus was assassinated—unlike in the movie, he was strangled in a bathtub—the Praetorian Guard proclaimed Pertinax the new emperor. But Pertinax didn’t play the game. He actually tried to be an effective leader of his empire instead of just bribing the Praetorian Guard. In revenge, they murdered him after only 87 days in power. Afterward, the guards literally auctioned off the title of emperor.
Now, a few later emperors have similar stories—rising up from undistinguished or even non-Roman families thanks to success in battle or literally just having enough gold to bribe the right people. Emperor Maximinus Thrax, who ruled from AD 235 to 238, was a middle-class Thracian. He was the first in a series of “barracks emperors”—soldiers turned Caesar. While this marked a chaotic time in Roman history, it was also a time of opportunity for ambitious people of non-Roman origin. One such man was Diocletian.
Born to a relatively unimportant family in modern-day Croatia, Diocletian rose up through the Roman army until becoming a cavalry commander. When the reigning emperor died, soldiers proclaimed Diocletian the next one in AD 284. Unlike Pertinax, Diocletian made a lasting impact on the history of Rome: he promoted wise men to his government, crushed enemies in battle, and organized the Tetrarchy. Clearly, the empire was too vast to be governed efficiently by one man, so Diocletian split power between four rulers. He also saw a danger in the rising religion of Christianity, and launched the Great Persecution. Now, these efforts didn’t create a utopia—in fact, to be fair, they led to a lot of suffering—but most credit Diocletian with ending the so-called Crisis of the Third Century. Rome lasted for another 200 years.
Ok, that’s your history. Now, as a time traveler, let’s say you were dropped in Rome sometime in the AD 200’s. Clearly, after gaining an audience of the emperor, your best course of action if you want to take his purple robes is to leverage whatever knowledge and cleverness you have to secure yourself a good position in the Roman army. From there, if you demonstrate courage and skill, you might just rise up through the ranks of the military and eventually command troops of your own in a decade or two. With the chaos in Rome, your men may just proclaim you emperor. From there, you should probably try to save Rome from all its civil wars by implementing drastic reforms. Don’t forget to bribe the men with the swords.
What would you do as Roman emperor? How would you save Rome?
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