Was there any Roman Emperor who was a good and honorable leader who was rejected by the people because the society was...

None of them. Even before the fall, Roman society still had decent values.

The closest to what you want would be not a Roman Emperor, but a Byzantine one. Emperor Maurice.

I generally used Maximinus as a persecutor of Christians, so he'd no doubt've supported Julian.

Not formalising the persecutions of galileans into law and combating their disgusting death-cult as soon as it started evangelising to gentiles was the single biggest mistake of the Empire and ultimately resulted in its end in 363.

No because that's a meme of a paradigm

I can practically hear that Israeli in the front with the green belt "Oy vey"ing from here.

>What is the Diocletian Persecution

>Nero
>Hadrian (towards Jews at least)
>Decius
>Diocletian and Galerius

Nerva has to count, and probably Pertinax.

>Nerva
>died peacefully before what is commonly accepted as the golden age of the empire

All inconsistently applied, lacking in scale and lacking ... completeness.

The people rejected him, though, specifically his financial reforms.

>Not formalising the persecutions of galileans into law and combating their disgusting death-cult as soon as it started evangelising to gentiles
Except it was illegal, why do you think early Christians had so many secret churches? They were actively hunted as dangerous cultists.

Nero's brutal persecution of Christians after the fire in Rome (which he blamed on them with no evidence) created a backlash of sympathy for the christians, because many in Rome felt it was a bald effort to distract people from Nero's poor handling of that disaster. That was one of the contributions to his mounting unpopularity in Rome.

Sounds like Pagans were just really fucking shitty at persecuting, then, Constantius II and Theodosius absolutely assravaged pagans all by themselves.

Majorian is a truly tragic figure.

The murders of Stilicho, Aetius and Majorian were all the last nails in the coffin of the western empire.

I would even argue that if Majorian had not been murdered, the Gothic occupation of Italy would have been averted, and when Justinian rolls around he could have helped avert a Longobardian occupation and reunifying the empire, which woudn't have just included Italy but also southern Gaul like in pic related.

It's arguably possible that the WRE could have survived as a rump state in Italy and Dalmatia in the way the byzantines survived as an Anatolian empire for centuries if they had had a stronger emperor than augustulus

I imagine they'd be reincorporated into the East sooner or later. Without the western territories there'd be no need for a double power center, and as the East got its footing and started flexing their power they'd probably want to centralize the empire again. A sort of Justinian's reconquest, but with a lot less blood.

Or a lot more blood, potentially.

I'm kinda disappointed that we never got a true East/West war desu, it would have been really interesting

roman society as a whole was never degenerate, just its leaders. dignitas was a big thing in the upper middle class, and they had the power

Majorian = Trump

Pertinax

An old, capable administrator nominated by the senate to do something about the dire mess that Commodus had left the empire in, but was brutally murdered by the praetorian guard because he wouldn't increase their already bloated salaries.

They then auctioned off the empire to the highest bidder, prompting the regular army to impose its own emperor when violence had become an established prescedent in nominating new emperors. These emperors didn't even pretend to care about anyone but the soldiers and treated them as a privileged class

This is a pattern that repeats itself in the West and is what ultimately dooms it. The East survived because they managed to maintain imperial authority and establish a semi-regular transfer of power between emperors.

Nah, the chance had long passed. There was no coming back after Stilicho.

>Was there any Roman Emperor who was a good and honorable leader who was rejected by the people because the society was so degenerate it was too late to save it.

Donaldus.

every "the last of the romans"

No amount of sucking Julian's cock will change the fact that the Pagans lost and Julian was a bad emperor.

the empire was lost with it. But what is dead may never die, and no church has wormed its way into the true legacy and remnants of Rome.

Julian literally appointed a Germanic barbarian to be consul.

>no church has wormed its way into the true legacy and remnants of Rome.

user...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Council_of_Nicaea

Germans and chistians are all dead user. Their Gods too, but Great Hektor remains to slay men across the sands in Iraq to this day. For the glory of Rome.

Julian the Divine was the heroic last breath of the Roman Empire.
He was the personification of the empire itself, with the wisdom of Marcus Aurelius and the piety of Augustus.
The world has never recovered from the horrid 1654 year interregnum that his unfortunate death has resulted in.

>1654 year interregnum
What sort of shit unRoman calendar are you using there?

I consider 363 to be the last time that the Roman Empire had a legitimate government.
As the last legitimate government did not formally dissolve the empire, I consider us to be in an interregnum period, between legitimate Imperial governments.

Also, 2017 - 363 = 1654.
Thus this current, prolonged interregnum period has lasted 1654 years so far.
One can only hope that it ends sooner rather then later.

>with the wisdom of Marcus Aurelius

Marcus Aurelius remembered to put his armour on before going into battle

Fedoras don;t know that "Paganism" is still a religion, with gods and stuff.

There were loads of civil wars that were practically just that user. What about them doesn't scratch your itch?

>what is dead may never die
what the fuck does this mean

>Domician

Julian was a pretty bad emperor, I'm not sure how you could consider his reign to be the last legitimate government. He was succeeded by an actual competent emperor Valentinian.

Paganism isn't paganism.

>Except it was illegal

Sometimes, in some places. The persecutions were pretty on-again-off-again affairs.

And largely counter-productive.

The thing about roman emperors was that the people didn't have that much say in the matter of who ruled. Throughout most of the empire it was the army that made and mantained the emperor. It eventually got so bad that the emperor was basically the hostage of the military.

It is fun for you guys to make something out of Julian, I get that. But when you look at the first steps he was taking in reviving paganism, I don;t think you'd have liked what he was going to establish as the new "Pagan Church," with all the same hierarchies and compulsions as were present in the Christian Church of his day.

Not sure Veeky Forums is the board for you, friend.

BTFO!

It means is more culturally literate than you, I guess.

His not!church was pretty lame alright.

What Julian was attempting was not a return to the Paganism that he never knew, it was the rise of a new organized centralized Paganism that would look an awful lot like the Church, until, I guess, the moment you died and either went to Hell or didnn't, depending on who was right.

Fedoras tend to assume that Julian was Their Guy because he did not like the Christians. But what he DID like would surprise a lot of his fanbois.

>hey guys lets march on Persia for no reason
>alright so I'm gonna burn all the supplies so the Persians can't get them
>let's besiege Ctesiphon
>oh wait I destroyed all the siege engines with the supplies
>well let's besiege it anyway
>this isn't working
>I don't really have a plan
>let's get out of here
>oh I'm dead

He was succeeded by Jovian actually who was hated for buying safe passage from the Sassanids though of course he was only in that position because of Julian being a retard.

Paganism (capital P) didn't exist back then. It's a modern phenomena. Hence the 'Paganism is not paganism.

Also, Julianus had personal experience with paganism. He was initiated in the Eleusinian Mysteries and met with pagan priests and philosophers.

Jovian reigned for 8 months and was basically forced to clean up the giant military mess that Julian the Apostate left behind. His death went uninvestigated, meaning that he was most likely killed in a cover up.

Valentinian the wrathful had a highly successful reign and there's a good argument to make that he was "the last great Roman Emperor"

Majorian wouldn't count. Because he wasn't killed or assassinated for being radical, popular, or hated, he was killed by a certain Ricimer for undermining his position and his unlucky stroke of his fleet being destroyed by tipped off Germanic agents who warned his enemy of his plans of invasion was all the pretext Ricimer needed to kill him. He was more or less supported by the Roman army, between both native Italics/Latins/Romans and Germanic support and mercenaries.

>implying romans weren't massive prudes which is why their scandals were such big news

[spoiler]Julian[/spoiler]

>I'm not sure how you could consider his reign to be the last legitimate government
I would have thought that the reasons would be rather obvious.
The simple fact of the matter is that Julian's government was the last legitimate government of the Empire, we have been in an interregnum ever since.

>But when you look at the first steps he was taking in reviving paganism, I don;t think you'd have liked what he was going to establish
I certainly cannot speak for all of Julian the Divines admirers, however I'm personally quite familiar with his centralisation plans and have an extremely positive view of them.

A major religious reform of the old collection of cults was simply required and Julian the Divine was more then capable of the task.

>Simple fact
Who is Valentinian?
Who is Theodosius?

Literally nobody argues your point except pagan LARPers

>he had plans, guys!
Everybody has a plan, ideas are cheap. the fact remains that he blew his chances waging military adventures which ended in such spectacular failure that it caused his dynasty to collapse.

>reform the old cults
In the span of a few decades Christianity went from being around 10% of the population to virtually all of it, you know, once the government stopped feeding them to lions or burning them alive. It was spreading like wildfire particularly in the impoverished rural areas and nothing Julian could have done would have changed that. All he did was make life legal hell for urban Christians.

He even went on tour of the empire trying to figure out why this was the case, and it was a simple material truth that where ever Christians went they built churches, orphanages, hospitals, and offered poor and desperate people hope where pagans simply ignored them. Julian tried shoehorning this kind of religious reformation into the pagan tradition but pagans weren't having it: charity simply wasn't one of their core tenets, nor was doctrinal unification under a single canon. Christians had the advantage of using books to distribute literature while pagan religions were oral traditions passed down secretly from one generation of priests to the next, and once that line was severed it was lost forever

>Implying the Roman polytheists lost
>Implying the Catholic Church isn’t just a continuation of Roman religion
>Implying Christianity in its purest form isn’t cucked

>polytheists lost
Blood sport was banned, temples were looted without legal consequence, holidays were banned unless they rebranded themselves as Christian. They were routed, only a few aristocratic hold outs remained by 400 AD
>Catholic Church
Trinitarianism is he belief that one transcendent being is best described as the function of a relationship between three entities which are each their own manifestation of the same thing. The saints and the Virgin Mary are all prayed too as a conduit to this one divine will, not as separate entities.

Pretty different from worshipping each new ruler as their own god-incarnate, or maybe worshipping your ruler's dead gay boy-lover.

>cucked
There is literally nothing wrong with adopting and raising another man's child.

>Who is Valentinian?
>Who is Theodosius?
Disgusting Galileans with no more claim to legitimacy then a common rat or cockroach.

Julian the Divine was the last true emperor.

>Everybody has a plan
I disagree.
Even then, few have the ability to make such plans a reality.
Julian the Divine certainly would have been able to, had things worked out differently with the Persians.

>There is literally nothing wrong with adopting and raising another man's child.
Uh, context makes it a issue.

>Can't discuss Byzantine Empire because of constant "It's Rome/Not Rome" arguing/shitposting
>Can't discuss Late Antiquity Rome properly because of Julianposting now
I just wanna argue about Peter Brown's ideas of Late Antiquity Rome.