The Roman Emperors: Everything You Wanted To Know | HistoryExtra Podcast - HistoryExtra
"‘How much should the scandalous stories about Emperors like Nero and Caligula a true and how much of it is spin from their enemies?’
‘Yeah, this is another really nice question because it also goes to, a bit like I was saying before, it goes to the idea of the sorts of sources that we're left with from antiquity. And Arista is absolutely right in pointing out the fact that our historical record does have some issues with it, because it is, largely speaking for Emperor's like Caligula Nero, it comes from people who wrote quite significantly after their reigns. A generation after in some cases, but but often more than that as well, farther removed than that. We do occasionally, we do have some contemporary sources, sources from Nero's reign, for example, the poetry or other types of writings, but we don't have those histories, those narrative historical accounts, those come from later. So from the early second century, when we talk about Tacitus and Suetonius, or in fact, from the late second century and early third century, when we talk about Cassius Dido. And so those scandalous stories, some of them, this is sort of the perils of being an ancient historian, really, you have to try and make lots of judgments as Arista is saying here.
I am sometimes a little bit skeptical about some of the more scandalous stories that are told. Particularly when you wonder, how does the historian you know, how does the later Roman historian or biographer know about these things? So there's some things that you can kind of think, okay, so that is in an imperial archive, that would be in the records of the Senate. That, you know, is traceable, also, through material evidence, we can see inscriptions that there are out there, so we can see other, other sources that are drawing on the same sorts of themes. But there are other times where you think, well, when you hear accounts of the private things that Nero supposedly did in his bedroom with the various people that he married and shouldn't, so the castrated Sporus, for example, you do wonder…
Suetonius also talks about graffiti that's still around in his time that, you know, talks about Nero in various different ways. So we sort of look out for those sorts of clues. Is this, you know, something that is backed up by other ai-, other sources? Is there evidence that can come from an archive or a collection of records from the Senate? Or is this probably more going to be something to do with the gossip going around the city, and we're quite lucky that sometimes the historians tell us that themselves. So for example, one of the most scandalous stories about Nero is that he apparently sung and played the lyre while Rome burned, so stood watching that event, and, and composing and singing. And Tacitus says, well, you know, that was a rumor… Actually, you know, he was trying to get people into into safety, he opened up his gardens. And Tacitus says, he was helping out as well’...
‘Why do we hear more about the earlier emperors such as Nero, Caligula, etc? Whereas later emperors like Caracalla, Elagabalus, Severus Alexander, etc, had some really interesting stuff going on.’
‘Yeah. Erm, Carmen's right. They did have some great stuff going on. Elagabalus, in fact, is one of my favorite emperors. I wrote my master's dissertation on Elagabalus. But Carmen’s right in saying that we do hear in popular culture, at least much more about those early emperors. And I think part of the reason for that, perhaps, is because our sources are a little bit more reliable for that period. So we have a Roman historian called Tacitus, who is a great historian he, you know, without his text, we would be certainly much worse off for that period. And he writes about, he actually wrote about Emperors right the way up to Domitian. But we don't have much of what he said from the beginning part of Vespasian onwards… because we have Tacitus as a source, we have a bit more information to go on. I say that because he really did take into account things like the records of the Senate, daily journals that were being written from Rome to the provinces, those sorts of things, which is brilliant source material, whereas when we get to the later period, so, as Carmen said, Emperor's like Caracalla, Elagabalus, Severus Alexander, and these are all Severan emperors of the early third century.
And these are, for this time period, we have less secure historical narrative at least. So we have a fragmentary version of the text of Cassius Dio, who was actually writing probably around the same period. So he's contemporary, which is great. He lived under these emperors, but his text is fragmentary. And then we also have another text, which is a collection of biographies known as the Historia Augusta or Augustan History, which are quite difficult to deal with because it, within the text, it claims to be written by six writers, but it's now been fairly conclusive, conclusively proven that it's only one. And there are parts of it, where it's easy to see that the writer is is lying, to be frank, and is making things up.
And so while his or he, he or she actually, we don't know who wrote it, but while there are accounts of the, of the Emperor's like Caracalla, Elagabalus and Severus Alexander, are a bit more reliable, because we've got a few other texts that we can go on as well. And also sorry, I should say, Greek writer named Herodian to for this period, but we don't have someone quite comparable to Tacitus to be able to get our information from so if that's the source material is a bit of an issue for these later periods. But there's also I think, something about the first dynasty, the Julio Claudian, so Nero, Caligula, those other Emperor's as well Claudius and Tiberius and Augustus, because it is a really fascinating time for thinking about the system of the government of the Principate. So looking at those emperors allows you to ask questions about how these different characters were negotiating the Principate in this early, in the earliest period of its, of its existence.’...
‘How many Roman emperors were assassinated?’
‘Ah, yes, um, I don't know. The answer to this question. So the reason why I say I don't know is because if you were to take all of the rumors and insinuations about when, about the Roman emperors who were assassinated, you would come to the conclusion that virtually all of them were assassinated’"
Some (presumed) anti-theist claimed that Tacitus was an unreliable source about Jesus because his source for Jesus must have been the Gospels. Great historiography. I guess he had no access to other sources, including Roman records.
Another claimed that since our earliest copy of Tacitus is from a Christian monastery, it must have been tampered with and is unreliable. Weird how the monks who tampered with it didn't rewrite it to be favorable to Christians