Favourite Roman Leader

Who is your favourite Roman leader and why?

Mine is pic related.

The guy with the trained ravens. He had it all figured out.

>Always read about great people like Napoleon and Alexander
>Comfort myself by saying that they were born in royalty and it's not my position to be like them
>Learn that a fucking mule breeder and salesman became the emperor and prolonged Rome for another 400 years
What the fuck am I doing with my life?

LVCIVS DOMITIVS AVRELIANVS, BECAUSE HE WAS THE NOBLEST ROMAN EMPEROR.

There was also a Roman general who was originally brought into the city as a slave during Triumph. He worked his way up through the city, all the way from the absolute bottom, and eventually had a Triumph of his own.

The model Roman citizen.

He's overrated and kept the commoner down in favor of the elitist patrician aristocracy (back when being a patrician actually meant something.)

That's how I feel when I read about Hitler too.

Thats how i feel when i see NBA players born in 1997 scoring 20 points at a professional level

Augustus.
Basically, he was so full of potential that Julius Caesar, my second-favorite, picked him of all people to succeed him. He was never hedonistic like Antony, he understood the importance of infrastructure, and he carefully consolidated power over the course of his life rather than try declaring absolute authority outright. He was a smart, cunning, and capable man and what he lacked, he made sure to surround himself with trusted and capable advisers like Agrippa.
There will never be men of power quite like those who ruled in Rome between Marius and Marcus Aurelius. A few bad eggs like Caligula and Nero, and a few incidents like the Year of the Four Emperors, but for around 200 years this was the high point of civilization and I'm not sure we've reached it since.

But Vespasian is even better than Hitler. He managed to save his country AND crush the Jews. None of us will ever amount to these epic feats.

Yeah but are you trying? Do you strive to play basketball professionally or enter politics?
I look at guys like Napoleon, Caesar, Alexander, Cyrus, and I'm awed but I was never going to do anything like that myself, I was born in middle America during a time of prosperity, prosperity historically does not breed great men.
Just enjoy it while it lasts, boys.

Recently, there was been a push among historians to rehabilitate the images of Caligula and Nero, or at least put to rest some of the crazy and (probably) false stories about them. It's worth noting that both men were murdered in office, and in both cases, the next emperor had plenty of incentive to demonize their predecessor to legitimize their usurpation of the title. There is also evidence that neither man was as reviled among common people of Rome as was previously believed.

>Napoleon
>born into royalty
Minor noble house maybe but hardly royalty.

I mean, desu, I don't think it's revisionism run rampant that their images are being rehabilitated.

People are just starting to ask some questions about the stories we get from Suetonius. Nobody questioned them because Church Fathers pushed his stories into historical orthodoxy. Not because of some conspiracy against dead emperors, just because they believed Suetonius.
Suetonius just wrote those things because all he cared about was tabloid garbage.

Suetonius was absolute shit. Read Livy and then read Suetonius and tell me he's not absolute shit. Livy is my historyfu.

Imagine completely turning around the fortunes of a dying Empire only to be laid low by G*rmanic trickery

Nowhere in my post did I imply that it was a bad thing. I'm in the camp that says revisionism is a good thing so long as you're sticking to the facts and not making things up. The best sort of revisionism brings us closer to the truth. I feel pretty confident in saying that neither Caligula nor Nero were as outrageous as they've been made out to be. Caligula never made horse a consul, nor did he have sex with his sister and mother simultaneously, and Nero did not burn down Rome just to make room for a palace expansion.

Yeah but anons, this will never not be funny

why do you want to destroy your country?

meme answer? elagabolus
non meme answer is OP

Is Vespasian in the top 5 hated people of all times of the Jew?

I know Hadrian is up there, they still curse his name today.