Who's the most overrated Roman Emperor? Who's the most underrated Roman Emperor?

Who's the most overrated Roman Emperor? Who's the most underrated Roman Emperor?

>the most overrated Roman Emperor
Julius Caesar
>most underrated Roman Emperor
Mehmed II

Overrated: Marcus Aurelius
Underrated: Septimius Severus

Marcus Aurelius and Tiberius respectively.
Tho it's pretty hard to gauge underratedness, cause most later emperors are downright unknown rather than improperly rated. I picked Tiberius because I've often seen him considered "barely better than Caligula" tier, which is really inappropriate, Sejanus' years notwithstanding.

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First Post Best Post

Most overrated: Hadrian
Most underrated: Theodossias

Most overrated: Marcus Aurelius
Most underrated: Basil II

Except Julius Caesar wasn't ever an Emperor you fucking brainlet normie.

Overrated: Marcus Aurelius -- spent most of his reign in a war camp on the frontier, repelling endless hordes of migrating Germanics, which is probably the reason why he found time to sit down and write philosophy. Stood by helplessly while the Antonine Plague ravaged and permanently crippled his country

Underrated: Vespasian -- emerged victorious from the year of 4 emperors, put down the Jewish revolt, driving them from their ancestral homeland. Had a vigorous, ambitious domestic policy, including reforming state finances, starting construction on the Colosseum, and reforming the disciplinary system for the legions. Was the first emperor to be directly succeeded by his own son.

A good emperor IMO is one who faced a crisis and pulled Rome out of it more or less single handedly. The overrated emperors are the ones who ruled during periods of stability and everyone goes "oh he was such a great emperor, look how peaceful everything was during his reign"

Neither was Mehmed.

Does socks tan lines.

this
Basil II was one of the best emperors in roman history, and is ignored.

Julius Caesar was never emperor.

>Overrated
Marcus Aurelius
>Underrated
Majorian

Depends on what you mean by "Emperor".
>The title of imperator was given in 90 BC to Lucius Julius Caesar, in 84 BC to Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, in 60 BC to Gaius Julius Caesar

Most overrated: Marcus Aurelius. If he had spent a little less time focused on philosophy and a bit more on making sure the heir to the Roman Empire wasn't a worthless hedonist, well, who knows what might have happened.

Most underrated: Domitian. He was pragmatic enough to see that the Senate had been reduced to nothing more than an honorary rubber stamp for the emperor, but just for pointing it out, he was assassinated and his memory condemned, even though he helped the Roman economy hold on for a bit longer.

Leave Marcus Aurelius alone you fucks

>*reforms your thread*

>overrated
Marcus Aurelius
>underrated
Domitian

I like how every text book on the late empire spends so much time explaining his great administrative reform designed to bring stability to the empire for centuries only to admit it failed almost immediately after his resignation. It's almost as if it was a naive wishful thinking and not a great reform after all.

He was the only emperor that tried. That's what made him so great. No other emperor even gave a single fuck about economic reforms to fix a system that had grown so broken that it was literally falling apart at the seams.

With no knowledge of economic theory, shit, without even a word for it in the Latin language, Diocletian single handedly tried to stop peasants being starved in the streets by price gouging by merchants. Just because many of his things fell apart doesn't mean he should be commended.

Plus, the actual administrative reform (the creation of the dioceses and the divisions of the provinces) were a complete success in the medium term and probably led to the empire surviving a century longer in the west than it otherwise would have. Diocletian had just lived through a period where governors had the manpower to single handedly launch a one man usurpation using their legions. By dividing the provinces he made the 4th century (compared to the 3rd) far more peaceful since usurpers needed to gather together a larger group of conspirators to make a bid for the throne.

Diocletian shouldn't be consigned to a textbook. The shit he did really needs to be looked at in depth to see what he was doing through the eyes of a man that had lived through the Crisis of the Third Century and managed to stabilise it and reign for an almost unprecedent 20 years, oh, and to be the first Roman emperor to willingly abdicate at the end of it.

You're right ofc, but I still can't believe he really thought his scheme of power division is gonna work. Then again, it kinda worked 100 years later.

The actual Tetrarchy itself was a grand idea.

The only problem is that Roman society geared up young men to be disgustingly competitive and ambitious, and despite modern belief to the contrary, Romans were not exactly patriotic. They would willingly rip their own people apart and smash the empire to bits if it meant that they had a shot to wear that purple cloak.

Co-emperors worked when they actually had an interest in working together.

Idunno, when judging Tiberius, you're essentially dealing with two men, the young and the old.
Old Tiberius was shit tier even if he technically did leave Rome richer. Young Tiberius, on the other hand, was a fucking baller.

Overrated Constantine
Underrated Domitian

Doesn't this mean the Tetrarchy was actually a bad idea since it failed to account for the psychology of the ruling class and the inevitable power struggle? It would've been better if he had established a strong, centralized dynasty instead.

>Who's the most overrated Roman Emperor?
Trajan. Huge pointless expansions that he could barely hold on to that were immediately abandoned when he died.

>Who's the most underrated Roman Emperor?
Claudius. Managed to stabilise the empire and make it properous after Caligula.

Seconding Domitian. His ego tripping and general cuntiness obfuscated the big picture of what he did and lead to a lot of slander. I think it should be the six good emperors, but I do understand how he turns people off. He certainly wasn't wise like his successors, but there's more than that.

>it failed to account for the psychology of the ruling class and the inevitable power struggle?

I think he was naive enough to believe that a love of Rome might be enough. It worked for a time.

>It would've been better if he had established a strong, centralized dynasty instead.

Rome was just too big and too unwieldly by this point. Even in ages of peace Roman "dynasties" were basically horseshit. The imperial institution was never solid enough for something similar to the All Under Heaven mantra to take root. Roman emperors were men, and men could be killed and replaced by any one of their lieutenants if they ceased to be considered useful.

Diocletian at least managed to succeed in making it harder for emperors to couped by massively changing courtly practice and making the emperor far more sacrosanct. A visitor would have to go through layers of bureaucracy, bullshit and court etiquette to get close, whereas previously an emperor would typically get shanked in the back while he was pissing outside his tent.

>Huge pointless expansions that he could barely hold on to that were immediately abandoned when he died.
The Dacian province made Rome sick with wealth from the silver and gold mines, it wasn't abandoned for a few centuries. The Parthian conquests were returned because the Romans BTFO the horseniggers, but the Euphrates formed a better natural border that was easier to control. Trajan is pretty overrated though compared to Augustus or Majoran.

I dont know about overrated, but underrated 100% goes to Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus.

Twice given dictaorship of rome in dire circumstances both time he quickly quelled the problems and retired from dictator giving up the most powerful position in the known world to retire to his farm, twice.

I don't think you get what underrated means.
Cincinnatus is a legend. First and foremost.

>Stood by helplessly while the Antonine Plague ravaged and permanently crippled his country

Could he really have done anything about this?

>Roman legend

>implying you had heard of him until reading that wiki page

;^)

he should have put more money into research for a vaccine

WE

That was a high quality post, colleague.

>Basil II
Seconding this. Could make the top 10 imo.

You don't wanna address what I said?

Also I like how you immediately assume I read wikipedia because the article calls him what he is.
How the fuck is he underrated?

maybe if they had guns they could of defended themselves

food for thought, right?

I love everything about this post.

>Overrated
Justinian. Normies praise him but he overextended and crippled the Empire to satisfy his own vanity.

>Underrated
Majorian

I'm actually going to be possibly slightly controversial here and say that Majorian was one of the greatest emperors in the history of Rome.

The fact that he was able to essentially start with nothing and then make a genuine attempt at rejuvenating the Empire, reforming the law, winning victory after victory, preserving the legacy of the Roman past while looking to the future, only to meet a tragic end, betrayed by his own countrymen, it makes him quite a romantic figure in my mind.

Marcus Aurelius for being overrated and Aurelian for being underrated.

Aurelius did protect the borders but his failure of raising Commodus tarnishes him. Normies only like him for the philosophy garbage anyway.

Aurelian defeated two upstart breakaway empires in record time while reforming administration and punishing corruption. He should have invested in foreign bodyguards however.

>Justinian. Normies praise him but he overextended and crippled the Empire to satisfy his own vanity.
What crippled Justinian's vision for a reunited Roman world was the Justinian Plague, which struck his empire down right as he was on the verge of total victory, leaving him with a fraction of his tax base and manpower reserves at the worst possible moment. It was one of the most devastating epidemics until the Black Death, and totally fucked his empire's ability to project force, hitting the east disproportionately hard because that's where all the major metropolitan areas still were in what remained of classical era Europe.

Which is a real shame, because if it hadn't been for the plague Justinian would rank up there with Julius Caesar, Scipio Africanus, and Constantine as some of the greatest and most important Romans to ever live. His legal reforms would live on for over a millennia and are an important reason why the Byzantine Empire lasted as long as it did.

...

Damn, I was going to post this. I just got through from Antoninus Pious to Elagobalus in the History of Rome podcast today and was left with the distinct impression that Severus wasn't that bad and Marcus wasn't that good.

Underrated: Antoninus Pious. Left Rome in a surplus, improved infrastructure, had a solid disaster relief policy, and held the Empire at peace for most of his reign. I know he's considered one of the Five Good Emperors, but I rarely hear anything said about him at all, most people hop on Augustus, Aurellius, Hadrian, Titus, Vespasian, and Trajan's dicks when it comes to talking about good emperors.
Overrated: Caligula, in that he wasn't nearly as bad as Nero, Commodus, Caracalla, or Elagobalus. His depravity and controversy are a little overrated. After all, Xerxes attacked the sea once, the horse thing was a political point, and...fucking his sister I can't defend, but he didn't have any of the kinks Elagobalus had or pull the bullshit Commodus did, or murder his brother like Caracalla, or use people as torches like Nero; Caligula was just a dickhead with mental health issues.

Cincinnatus didn't do jack shit that wasn't expected of him in the first place - almost every Roman nominated to the dictatorship gave it back with a few notable exceptions.

>belt doesn't match shoes

you had one job lucky

Underrated Romanos Lekapenos
Overrated Marcus Aurelius

>After Romans BTFO the horseniggers
Not really, the retreat of the Roman legions from the Iranian boarders with their heartlands embolden stiffer resistance and the loss of more Roman soldiers to essentially hit-and-run and ambush attacks which the Parthians started to become more effective at using.

The scenario ended up becoming a short lived Roman equivalent to Vietnam. And face it, due to Trajan's decision to try and annex all of Parthia, Rome would NEVER again go on an offensive war of conquest and territorial expansion because that's how badly the war drained their manpower.

>I rarely hear anything said about him at all
because he's the one of the five good emperors that's least known about.

Nero was a golden boy compared to Caligula or Commodus.

Seconded. I'm pretty sure he gets a worse reputation than he reserves because of his treatment of Christians.

Leave Marky Mark alone you jackasses

Overrated Constantine
Underrated Aurelian

I think it's more along the lines of everyone talking about his reforms so much because that kind of marks the end of the old system and starts the new system of a divided Rome that only briefly was united under Constantine.

>he fell for it

>overrated
Traianus
>underrated
Aleksandr I Romanov

>overrated
augustus

>underrated
vespasian

Not only Caligula, but all the shifty corruption of the later years of Tiberius

Underrated: Vespasian

Overrated: Marcus Aurelius
Underrated: Vespastian

>overrated
Theodosius I

>underrated
Constantius II

Severus couldn't properly raise his kids and if Marcus gets points off for Commodus then he sure as shit gets points off for Caracalla. Not to mention Severus was a treacherous, backstabbing bastard. The empire would've been better off if he just co-ruled with Clodius Albinus or made him his heir or whatever instead of betraying him to take the whole thing for himself.

Theodosius is fucking garbage. Imagine if he had just left Arbogast alone instead of weakening the empire with another civil war? That likely means his awful son Honorius never takes over as emperor of the west either. The Theodosian dynasty is the worst imperial dynasty short of the Angeloi since at least the Theodosians had Aelia Pulcheria in the East.

But literally everything that Diocletin did was a failure. The only thing successful in his reign was the amount of political dick succ he got for being an emperor and retiring. After having did everything wrong, his successors actually got around to modernizing the economy but it was far too late in the west since border fortifications are decades behind similar ones in the east.
Power was too centralized in the highest office and there was a further centralizing of political power in aristocratic class at the time. Roman society functioned best when it was broadly decentralized aside and the free-men were supported by a robust economy. The tetrarchy heralded back to the idea of co-emperors of the republic, but the provinces themselves held far too much political power through usurper legions.

Overrated: Justinian
Underrated: Basil II

>an user that couldn't be further wrong
Theodosius managed to the do the one thing that Diocletin never managed to do: Actually unite the empire. He was also brutally schooling the new class of roman citizens, the barbarians hordes that were on the border through trial by swords to get them into military shape but there were far too many of them to integrate into roman society. He seriously just could not pick any good help early on. Arbogast suicided a roman emperor which Theo was friendly enough with and an ally and put a puppet in his place which is something that cannot and should not ever be stood for. Arbogast was given a position for his military expertise not to wield political power since he was a German and therefore not a roman yet. It would have been fine, and the empire would have recovered just fine after his reign if Honorius didn't kill Stilcho, and stilcho didn't allow a faggot with a chicken to kill him, which caused a genocide of German servants across the empire which would piss off the Germans who were beginning to settle down causing them to march to Rome to demand compensation and apologize for the behavior which Honorius then forbade as the Senate was offering compensation which led to Rome being put to sack.

>Caligula
Interesting point: G.R.R Martin specifically researched Caligula as inspiration for his character "King Joffrey" for A Song of Ice and Fire.

he was more or less just a spoiled little boy with a sadistic streak and unlimited authority to indulge it

Nero gets a bad reputation for a variety of reasons, but primarily because the senate hated him, and that's who wrote stuff down back then. He had a habit of forcing them to come to his concerts and listen to him play shitty music for hours on end. His threat to nominate his horse to the senate was his way of trolling them by pointing out how irrelevant they had become. When a city-wide fire burned down the most valuable and prized real estate in the empire, the senators were pissed that's where Nero decided he was going to put his giant, opulent palace. His attempts to deflect criticism by scapegoating Christians was opaquely self-serving even by the standards of the day. Studies of numismatics suggest that Nero also probably had the wholly unpleasant job of trying to fight economic deflation.

>Commodus
imagine if Donald Trump was everything that that liberals say he was: a brazenly shameless showboater who loves the spectacle and opulence of the public stage while disdaining the drudgery of every day ruling, for which he has no real talent. He was more at home winning rigged gladiator fights or trying to rename Rome after himself than he was at addressing the multitude of problems facing Rome in the aftermath of the Antonine plague.

Of the three he is probably the worst: right at the moment Rome needed a strong leader, it got an extremely weak one, and he more or less made the crisis of the third century inevitable

Okay, now let's talk about Roman Emperors.

>Interesting point: G.R.R Martin specifically researched Caligula as inspiration for his character "King Joffrey" for A Song of Ice and Fire.
And then they even cast a lookalike for the show.

you're the normie
YOU FELL FOR A MEME

Underrated: Aurelian
Overrated: Diocletian

>overrated
Diocletian, just because the tetrarchy didn't last at all
>underrated
as an emperor, Tiberius
as a man, Otho

Caligula nominated incitatus retard

whoops, I got my stories mixed up.

Why would Mehmed not be considered one? Ottomans were unironically the successors of Rome.

Overrated: Augustus. He was an insecure tyrant who let his lieutenants (Agrippa, basically) do a lot of the heavy lifting and taking credit. He established tyranny as an acceptable form of government, and let his wife, who didn't have the best interests of the empire anywhere close to the top of her priority list, essentially determine his succession. This created the most disastrous dynasty in roman history, producing Caligula and Nero.

Underrated: Would normally say Aurelian, but he's been brought up a lot here, so I'll go with Claudius Gothic us. According to Gibbon, Claudius prevented a gigantic Gothic Invasion of the empire from succeeding. Also, simply put, no Claudius Gothicus, no Aurelian.

Theodosius also gets props for ensuring the endurance of the Eastern empire, even while the Western Empire was going down.

>He established tyranny as an acceptable form of government, and let his wife, who didn't have the best interests of the empire anywhere close to the top of her priority list, essentially determine his succession.
To be fair, the guy tried everything he could to get someone who wasn't Tiberius to succeed him, but they all died. Livia probably poisoned them.
Should have picked Germanicus at the end, even if he was only 17, and had Tiberius killed alongside Agrippa Posthumous.

>his successors actually got around to modernizing the economy

Nonsense. 80% of the shit people have ascribed to Constantine was actually Diocletian's doing, and most of the emperors after Constantine were far too incompetent to do fuck all about the economy. Pathetic edicts by emperors like Theodosius II make clear how ineffectual any of their attempts were.

>border fortifications are decades behind similar ones in the east.

What the hell has that got to do with anything? The Western Roman Empire was compromised due to internal conflict, not external invasion.

>Power was too centralized in the highest office

Total opposite. The Roman state went from essentially being run by a few governors and their household slaves to hundreds of civil and military leaders and a far more vast bureaucratic system.

>provinces themselves held far too much political power through usurper legions.

The provinces didn't hold the reins of power over the legions. They were commanded by legates, and later duces and comes, appointed by the state.

>Theodosius managed to the do the one thing that Diocletin never managed to do: Actually unite the empire

Diocletian held the empire together for decades. It would never be so peaceful again. Theodosius had to fight an absolute fuck ton of civil wars and allowing usurpers to reign undisturbed for years in the west.

Theodosius was mostly pretty mediocre, and never deserved the title of "great". He pissed off the Goths greatly by using them as fodder in the battle of the Frigidus River thereby permanently earning the enmity of the one group in the Roman Empire that could fuck it up badly (aside from the Romans themselves).

Overrated - Justinian I.
Overextended the empire, leaving it much more vulnerable to attack, and then got rekt by the Justinian plague (not really his fault but oh well).
Underrated - Alexios I Komnenos. Absolute God tier emperor. Beset on all sides by enemies - Norman's from the west, turks from the east, and pechenegs from the south. Turned them all back with a combo of diplomacy, cunning and pure military skill. Set economic reforms to stablize a crumbling empire, and created the last great Roman dynasty.
Other option for underrated - Michael VIII Palaiologos - first emperor to hold Constantinople after the 4th Crusade. He pushed turks away while fighting off Charles of Naples, one of the greatest men of the age.

>The status of being imperator is equivable with being emperor.
Surely your joking?
Just because a word is derived from another doesn't that they are the same thing.

>Marcus Aurelius
>Not going against a genetic ingrained desire to not fuck over his own offspring makes him overrated.
You can't negate the greatness of a man by appealing to a default human disposition he had. You might aswell have said that he is overrated since he had smelly farts.

>Domitian
My nigga.

He wasn't an emperor and is thus irrelevant to the thread.

Actually being emperor is a social construct so there is no way you can say that he couldn't be emperor either.

>Vespasian

>most overrated
Diocletian
>most underrated
Marcus Aurelius

>Economy
He reformed a system of taxes, which was great in and if itself but then proceeded to undermine it by tackling inflation and doing the worst possible thing imaginable: ending the commoners faith in the currency. Commoners stop using coins in trade and revert to bartering in kind = drastically slowed regional economy.
>Fortifications
The West was doomed to fall since the border fortifications we're never finished. Without control over the borders, there is no way to have control over the empire. So anything Diocletian did, did nothing to solve the issue of neighbors rising in power and prominence. This is compared to Theo who was at the borders clashing with the Germanic tribes thinning their numbers and getting them battle-hardened to serve as the border guards.
>Power centralization
That vast political bureaucracy you seem to imply existed was just not even close to true. Power still resided in the commander of legions: see every motherfucker with a hint of wanting to be emperor kicking off their rebellion in Britannia because of York.
>Uniting the empire
i wasn't simply implying they were physically held together. I mean he truly united the empire through Christianity which would unite the former Roman lands and even expand through the years as Christendom headed by the church.

>doing the worst possible thing imaginable: ending the commoners faith in the currency

Nobody had any faith in the currency. That was entirely the problem and the reason he even bothered to reform it in the first place. After centuries of dumbfuck emperors debasing it the denarius was basically worthless shit.

>revert to bartering in kind = drastically slowed regional economy.

Actually the movement away from currency is usually greatly overstated. What really happened was merely that some army groups were able to be paid in kind and some groups of peasants were allowed to pay in kind to save the unnecessary bureaucratic burden. It didn't have the effect of damaging the provinces since it meant trade was less geared purely around the army on the frontiers as virtually the sole source of coinage which meant interior provinces of the empire became more prosperous.

Your stuff about the border frontier makes absolutely no sense. The fortifications were completely fine and Diocletian even straight up overhauled them. On the Danubian frontier he beat the shit out of the Sarmatians and built an entirely new series of defences. Under Diocletian the Saxon pirates that had been troubling Britain and the Gallic provinces for decades had their wings clipped.

>vast political bureaucracy you seem to imply existed was just not even close to true

You have no idea what you're talking about. Even the Notitia Dignitatum, which depicts only a small part of the Roman state's administration, suggests that the size of the state was made huge as a result of the reforms. It's levied at him by multiple sources including Zosimus, Lactantius and others.

>Power still resided in the commander of legions: see every motherfucker with a hint of wanting to be emperor kicking off their rebellion in Britannia because of York.

The point is that civil governors lost control of their troops to new military governors, who had far less troops individually. Their power was somewhat curbed.

Continued.

>I mean he truly united the empire through Christianity which would unite the former Roman lands and even expand through the years as Christendom headed by the church.

Nigga what. Theodosius' shit stirring inflamed pagan-Christian tensions to their highest point ever and the empire was torn apart with civil unrest, mad holy men burning temples and groves down, and autistic infighting between Christian factions. Theodosius permanently destroyed secular power over the Church by getting cucked by Ambrose. He wiped out a good 10-20% of the Roman army in his civil wars and spent most of his reign persecuting Arians and Donatists.

I would argue that Theodosius damaged the unifying fabric of the empire massively, and his incompetent long reigning songs allowed Theodosius' shitty influence to continue for decades until the average Roman provincial had come to loathe the pettiness of it all.

>Actually unite the empire.
He died a few months after this happened after constantly driving the Empire into civil war, weakening it militarily at a time where it needed all the manpower it could get. Immediately on his death it split back into East-West and each was largely separate despite Stillicho's best efforts to control both halves

In addition to this he also allowed the church to gain more autonomy by cucking out hard to Ambrose of Milan (an utterly detestable figure) as penance for the justified punishment of Thessalonica for killing imperial officials because their favorite chariot racer got arrested for being a homosexual rapist; any other emperor with any guts would've just marched troops in, arrested Ambrose and exiled him. Constantius II wouldn't have stood for that shit.

And how does he end the Gothic Wars? By cucking out hardcore to the invading barbarians, allowing them to settle without breaking them up or disarming them and allowing them to fight alongside the Roman military under their own leadership instead of Roman leadership meaning he is directly responsible for everything wrong in the 5th century. Fuck Theodosius; cucking out to the church and being a zealot regarding the persecution of pagans shouldn't be enough to qualify someone for the title "Great". He's possibly the single most undeserving person to have ever acquired that nickname.

>punishment of Thessalonica for killing imperial officials because their favorite chariot racer got arrested for being a homosexual rapist

>it's an easterners going full retard over chariot racing episode

I mean he did slaughter (supposedly) thousands of people, women and children included, but I think under the circumstances they're acceptable casualties. The thing is that Theodosius was kind of a dodo and genuinely religious man so Ambrose pounced on it for political purposes, basically doing 700 years earlier what would later be repeated by Henry IV and Gregory VII at Canossa. Ambrose is pure scum.

The historians alive during the Empire tend to count him as the first emperor, so it's not retarded to include him.

Me, I look at the Julio Claudians as beginning with the Dictator Caesar, and ending with Nero, and being a transitional dynaty where there was clearly no emperor when Caesar started his career, clearly was one as Nero died and Galba won the job off of him, and the transition in between being just that -- a transition, not a situation where it is needful or helpful to draw a hard line.

But maybe that's just me

Anyway...

Most overrated has got to be Marcus Aurelius. Even if you disregard that his "Meditations" is sophomore-level philosophy suited for cat posters, and just arbitrarily say it is all deep and profound and wonderful -- being the author of a collection of musings on philosophy has nothing to do with being an Emperor. The very fast that he left his idiot cretin of a son in place to be the next emperor, fucking things over and murdering his dynasty, should be sufficiently disqualifying. He was not an Evil Emperor, but he was An Emperor Who Was Not That Good At It.


Most under rated... Maybe Tiberius. (I'm excluding the ones who are under rated because nobody remembers them at all.) Yeah, he got a little off there at the end, and I won;t argue he was a Good Emperor -- but he did his duty to his Father and to Rome, though he'd have been happier going off and just living his life. He knocked off some number of Senators, but he didn't do much harm to the Empoire as a whole.

Yes, he too left a Bad Successor in place, but in Tiberius's day the fact that the Princeps's heir would be the next Princeps was not as set in stone (it had happened once) and he at least left his grandson in a position to step in as co-ruler down the road (which didn't happen, as Gaius was more murderous than Tiberius might have hoped. Again, I don;t list Tiberius as one of the greats, but I'd argue he does not belong as low in the rankings as he usually winds up.

>>most underrated
>Marcus Aurelius

Wat?