How in the hell did someone as bright as Marcus Aurelius raise such a fucking retard like Commodus?

That's basically what Nerva and Hadrian did. Arguably what Trajan and Antoninus Pius did too.
For all his posturing as a philosopher, Aurelius was easily the least rational of the adoptive emperors in many ways.

You still didn't address my point, though. If the others had no sons to appoint, it's not exactly the case that they were "better" people. They simply had to pick, and ended up choosing well.

I'm not saying that Aurelius was correct in doing what he did, but it's disingenuous to present it as if the others adopted people over their own sons when they had none.

Yeah well I quite doubt they would have passed over their kids too. My point was more about them being strangers: Nerva chose Trajan because of his career, they weren't personally close.
That said, Aurelius kinda get a harsher judgement because he can't both be heralded as the illuminated philosopher king and at the same time be the same base man as everyone else. It's a bit of a knee-jerk reaction to a somewhat overrated emperor.

>illuminated
Fuck me, I meant enlightened. I thought there was something wrong with the word while I was writing it. It's the same fucknig word for both meanings in my own language.

as every "great" emperor or leader, when they leave they leave behind every unsolved problem

a decade of wars weakened the empire, despite being successfull or not and when an inexperienced youngling gets into power, hearing nothing but how great his father was he is prone to be consumed by his ego and the need to prove himself instead of consolidating the mess that is left behind for him

Commodus was always destined to become Emperor just because of his heritage.
He was son of Marcus Aurelius and grandson of Antoninus Pius, breaking "adopted heir" lineage and starting new dynastic one.
Even tho Commodus wasn't the first choice (the first choice was his brother who died, Marcus Annius Verus Caesar)

It wasn't Commodus fault for being such a shite emperor but his Father who didn't teach him shit and raised him to be naive normie.

He was a rheumatic sophist whose accomplishments were almost solely in the field of military, perhaps not all that suprising for a man who ruled a tent city in Vienna for most of his reign.

Monarchists always tell me how good it would be for the realm that rulers get raised in the consciousness that they will rule, but I think that there's not a single case in the entire history of Western Rome where that consciousness actually lead to good things, rather than rulers becoming arrogant, incompetent and placated.

Mine too, user. The Enlightenment is called Iluminism.

Anyway, I get what you're saying, but I seriously doubt they just picked the others only because of their skills. Clearly, they were playing the political game, it just happened that they supported the right people.

I mean, it's not like they were walking down the streets of Rome, saw some Christian beggar that displayed great intelligence and martial skill, and decided to make him emperor. There's a real possibility that the people they adopted would've stepped into the role once they were dead anyway; or, worse, take it by force.

I dunno, I really see nothing special about the way they did it, and I see no reason to heap moral value upon them. I very much doubt we would've made such a big deal about if the Julio-Claudians hadn't been such total fuck-ups.

I can't say I see anything inherently wrong with passing on the reins to your son. I think about it from Marcus Aurelius' perspective... He probably did as much as he could to try and teach Commodus about philosophy and statecraft. And if you're sure that your son knows the same information as you do, because you've taught him, that might make you biased to think he would pretty much fill your shoes and keep things stable.

People that attack Marcus Aurelius for this are totally hypocritical, in my opinion. I'm sure that when they're on their deathbeds, they take it for granted that their sons will inherit whatever they've left behind, and not the person that's "most worthy."

They seem to have chosen dudes with no kids, who were competent leaders. That's a plus. At the very least it leads to those dudes not taking power by force, causing a civil war, and the next leader at least being competent. Instead of rolling the dice with children as they're often screw ups.

They get raised unintentionally in a way that turns them into narsistic idiots, and they succeed even if they're bad at what they do. So it's not a good system.

>They seem to have chosen dudes with no kids, who were competent leaders. That's a plus. At the very least it leads to those dudes not taking power by force, causing a civil war, and the next leader at least being competent. Instead of rolling the dice with children as they're often screw ups.

The question is whether they chose them purposefully because they had no children, or if they would've chosen them either way, and it just turned out like this.

You clearly want to ascribe some statal wisdom to them; but I prefer to remain pragmatic. Greater coincidences have taken place in history than a few guys in a row not having children.

First of all Commodus wasn't even 20 years old when he became the sole ruler of the Empire. Such a tremendeous burden should never be carried by a person of so immature age and inexperience.
Secondly, Commodus was born in the fucking purple which fucks up the best of men.
Thirdly, one can hardly blame someone for not achieving the level of competence inhabited in some of the greatest rulers of all time. As such he would always be covered in the shade of his predecessors.
Fourthly, weird people should never be allowed to rule. Especially fucking cosplayers.

>He broke tradition.
Marcus Aurelius was the only one of the five good emperors that, IIRC, actually had a biological son to leave the empire to. Granted as a philosopher-king he should have raised himself above the sentimental weakness of nepotism.

He didn't.

was watching a documentary exactly about this
i guess father love blinded him

Commodus was genuinely insane. It's not like Aurelius just neglected to give him a proper education.

Gladiator isn't a documentary

topkek.

Daily Remined: The praetorian guard fucked up the empire and launched it to the III century crysis.

>learing your history from hollywood movie
i hope your an american.

*you're

Humans are not infallible.
Aurelius was an incredible specimen of humanity, but he made mistakes like everyone else, and teaching is MUCH different than autodidacticism and personal growth.

No matter how great Aurelius was, that does not mean he was a good teacher or always made the right choices.

That said, the importance of his meditations is obvious and shown by history's treatment.

>I seriously doubt they just picked the others only because of their skills. Clearly, they were playing the political game
Of fucking course they chose among politically influential people, that's a given. Political resources are every little bit as significant as smarts and administrative/military competence. Choosing the best man for the position obviously implies that they have the political clout to retain their position by themselves. A guy off the streets can't possibly be the best man for the position no matter how skilled he is (which he can't even be due to lacking experience in governing).

He was no Diocletian.

Idk man, at least he didn't try to annex Persia and leave the Empire "to the strongest " like Trajan. Pompeia Plotina forged documents saying Hadrian was heir and kept the whole 5 emperors meme rolling.

>Why they didn't go back to that system is beyond me.
They tried that user.

After Commodus was murdered the senate appointed an experienced, capable senator named Pertinax, who by every account was proving to be as fine an emperor as any of the Antoninids.

But Pertinax had the wholly unpleasant task of trying to stitch the empire back together after a pestilence devastated the population, and Commodus had squandered the state's rainy day funds on lavish spectacles in his own honor. The state's finances were in shambles, and when he refused to pay for a pay increase for the Praetorian Guard, they murdered him and auctioned off the throne to the highest bidder, which provoked an outright military take-over of the government under the leadership of the general Septimus Severus, whose dynasty can best be remembered for kicking the crisis can down the road for as long as they could.

tl;dr it's the praetorians' fault

How do modern states avoid the "bodyguards murder the one they're supposed to take care of" problem?

There are people who'll actually hold the bodyguards accountable. The bodyguards don't have the power to just trump everyone else.

Why couldn't Romans do that?

How in the hell did someone as bright as Septimus Severus raise such a fucking retard like Caracalla?

they don't give the leader political authority anymore. The praetorian prefect was second in command of the entire empire, modern bodyguards have no political influence so they have nothing to gain from murdering their boss.
People didn't want to cross a prefect because he had influence, but a modern bodyguard has no such influence.

Because they didn't know better and really loved the military. The Praetorians paid once things calmed down and the empire learned from it.

Diocletian is a meme
He stabilized the empire, to a small extent but he didn't fix of any of the shit thats broken. In fact, by splitting the empire he essentially gave all of the rowdy parts of the empire that had been neglected to one guy to run.

Are you shitting me? Diocletian completely reinvented how the position of emperor was seen. He took it from an elected office, to something divine and grand, something we'd recognize as all future monarchs using. That's an enormous contribution to world history.

Don't let individual power brokers within the government be allowed to maintain their own private armies

>Caracalla
>fucking retard
Que? Caracalla wasn't a great emperor, but he wasn't shit either.

Inbreeding.

He was a fucking terrible, incompetent emperor, and an even worse person.

Septimius Severus wasn't really that bright. He was just a good, strong commander.

Like most of Diocletian's achievements, this was actually almost entirely the work of his precedessor Aurelian, who is barely remembered any more but should honestly be regarded as among the greatest of all the Roman emperors. They even called his Restitutor Orbis - Restorer of the World - for single-handedly saving the empire from breaking apart.
Most of Diocletian's reforms completely failed, like his monetary reform, and the Tetrarchy completely collapsed within a few years. He was clearly visionary and had the potential to be great, but didn't manage to pull it off.

>Why they didn't go back to that system is beyond me.
Diocletian tried to recreate that system with his Tetrarchy, didn't he?

>He believe senator propaganda

it always happens like that.

great father, shit son.

edward the first, edward the second. its hard living in your fathers shadow i guess.

Even if two thirds of what's written about him is pure bullshit that still makes him one of the worst emperors in history.

What about Philip II and Alexander? If anything living in his father's shadow drove him to his obsessive pursuit of glory

The easiest and most common method throughout history was, if I'm not mistaken, to have the royal bodyguard composed of foreign mercenaries. That way, atleast in theory, they didn't have political influence and would be incapable of levering any power deals after an eventual assassination of their employer as they would then be a (small) foreign unit surrounded by angry natives which would quickly be dissolved and anhiliated. Basically, make sure that the bodyguards power is solely reliant on the grace of their employer. If he seizes to be so do they.

>Father's last words to his son were: Enrich the soldiers and scorn everyone else.
>Son takes his advice and rules by it.
>How in the hell did someone as bright as Septimus Severus raise such a fucking retard like Caracalla?

user, are you retarded?

You can't fault him for failing to reverse inflation -- something they had no concept of. I also believe his barter system was still being used up to the time of Justinian, or Justin I , which enabled them to sidestep some of the effects.
Aurelian has the benefit of martyrdom and the trauma which ensued after him. People could wistfully look and sigh "If only he had lived".

Who are you calling a failure, he invented pic related.

ceases*

Thanks.

>Such a tremendeous burden should never be carried by a person of so immature age and inexperience.
Alexander did alright.

This. Commodus as emperor was inevitable, or at least he would be an eternal claimant. If Aurelius had adopted the best men, Commodus (or people who were against Aurelius' choice) would have rise against and a Civil War would have broken.
So this is why I think he kept his son as bks heir, to avoid civil war.
Also he didn't expect to die even tough he was ill, did he?
What I would criticize of him is that he didn't seem to have surround Commodus with great men to help him ruling the Empire. His son as nominal emperor (head of state if you want) helped by capable and virtuous men should have been Aurelius' aim

The great irony here is that Caracalla wasn't 1/5th the total madman that septimius was, like when he ascended to emperor he told the senies that he wouldn't take revenge against them
Next week he hangs 40 of them, fucking unhinged
When he pursued Niger and crushed his forces he retreated to Byzantium, where he got stabbed in the back and given to Septimius, he still fucking besieged them for a year and bragged how by the end the biggest city in Anatolia was reduced to ashes and the people were starved so badly they were eating each other
Or how his buddy ran the preatorian guard like no fucking joke or exaggeration a literal mafia, taking cuts from smuggling, prostitution, mass exortion

Really Caracalla could have been a great ruler if he wasn't so justifiedly paranoid

>If Aurelius had adopted the best men, Commodus (or people who were against Aurelius' choice) would have rise against and a Civil War would have broken.

He didn't have to.

could you explain yourself?

No law of the uinverse saying a civil war would break out. Teach Commodus to be a humble person, and accept some other role in the empire and to be loyal to the new guy.

To be fair were are going straight to the field of suppositions here. Given the facts, Commodus isn'tsaid to be humble, loyal I don't really know, but he was a fucking hedonist so maybe you are right and he wouldn't have seek to be Emperor, but what about people who may have tried to use him as a tool to seize power? Of course this is going way too much into the what-ifs, but I still think Civil War could have been a likely outcome (or Commodus' death to prevent it)

Yeah, I think for that scenario to work, you'd have to go back a long ways to make sure commodus is raised right, so he has a totally different personality. Then just send if him off somewhere.

Even if you could teach someone born to the purple to be humble enough to forgo his effective birth-right, that still wouldn't stop other ambitious people from rallying around him and pushing a civil war on their own. And I'm sure Marcus would've been wary that his son would just be executed if he was left alive as a possible contender for the throne.

Marcus had three choices: kill his son, make him emperor, or risk civil war/having his son assassinated. The best choice would've probably been to just kill him, but what the fuck, how many children had Marcus and Faustina already lost?

Could a staged death have worked? He is officially killed in some pretext. In reality, he leaves and assumes a new identity. Some poor slave can be killed in his place to have a body if they need to.

Yes and a few other people such as Marcus Aurelius and Augusts. Outliers aren't the ones you should base your principles on however. Guns can jam when you shoot them. That doesn't mean that it's prudent to point a loaded one to your head and pull the trigger.

Marcus Aurelius, a great philosopher and thinker, was forced to spend his entire reign freezing to death in some army camp fighting barbarians for decades while his empire was ravaged by plague.

Commodus, a hedonistic waste of atoms, enjoyed a reign of almost total peace across all Rome's frontiers, no plague and no internal dissent, giving him the liberty to piss away the state's resources at will.

History really isn't fair.

No it wouldn't. Like 20 years or so after Nero was assassinated some random person claimed he was Nero coming back from hiding which resulted in a civil war/uprising.
Also, why the fuck would Commodus, a man born in the purple ever willingly choose anything but the imperial throne? To do otherwise would be extremely humiliating and would be an almost automatic death sentence, as the one that got the throne would consider him the biggest threat to his newly gained position.
How many people are you aware of that held all the rights to something so alluring, which they themselves wanted, choose to humiliate themselves by rejecting it and then never press their claim? That shit is is proper philosopher/saint levels of discipline.