So who would you nerds say was possibly the most damaging emperor to the Roman Empire?

>the Tretarchy was working out really well for the empire

Why bother? You already posted him

...

Augustus

It's weird how Constantine has always been celebrated as one of the most capable generals and statesmen Rome had ever seen and some people choose to ignore all that because he converted to Christianity on his deathbed.

I'd say it's more than just conversion, he openly supported the Church, subsidised it and even gave bishops a lot of judicial power in court. Of course this is assuming that it has more to do than just his conversion of Christianity and Edict of Milan.

Honorius (or maybe Phokas). It isn't even disputable. The sheer amount of retardation that occurred during their reigns is absolutely staggering. Staggering.

Wikipedia>roach

Byzantines were not Roman. Try harder.

Note that I asked which emperor did the most damage, not which was the worst or most incompetent.

Get out Turk.

gonna go with commodus
the only reason why roman empire didnt collapse under that shitter is because the five good emperors had set him a comfy and stable state to rule as a useless manchild

>Overstretched the empire's borders, leaving them in an undefensible position
>Was inept at diplomacy,had to fight a fuckton of civil wars which further ruptured relations amongst the aristocracy and drained the empire's resources
>Lost thousands of soldiers enforcing his control over Bulgaria and gained next to nothing for it

The roaches should name this guy a national hero,he basically set the stage for the collapse of the empire.

Commodus didn't really do any lasting damage to the empire. People single him out because "muh gewd adopted emperers" but his effects very mostly undone by Severus and none of the major issues that tore Rome apart for the next century were his fault.

Shitposting

>Did the most damage to the Empire
Valentinian III
>Stupidest
Honorius
>Most morally bankrupt
Commodus or Caracalla
>Most pathetic
Anthemius

Ya gotta go to the late Empire to get the extremes

augustus. failed to take germania and rome paid the price centuries later when the germanic tribes began migrating.

But I mean, who are we to say what is REALLY the Roman Empire.

Fuck off Veeky Forums
Constantine is one of the best emperors that rome had. He improved the reforms thats Diocletian did, but also solved the religious problem & also fucked off his child for being an idiot.

I only know Commodus

Pls explain why the other guys were so bad

What's wrong with Anthemius? From what I've understood he was doing pretty decent until he got assassinated.

This is probably the correct answer. Commodus by being god damned incompetent as fuck to the point of getting murdered by the senate without an heir, and Honorius for being incompetent as fuck while ruling over a massive bureaucracy that really, really needed someone competent to run it to keep the empire strong.

I'll also add Caracalla for starting the soldier bonus system that so fucked over the economy during the crisis of the third century, but he couldn't really have known how that would go.

Jovian. That humiliating treaty with the Sassanids directly led to a lot of the issues of the 4th and 5th Centuries.

The only Rome was the monarchy and the republic.

The reason why the reign of the Five Good Emperors is considered "good" it because with their passing there wasn't any real civil strife. Even Aurelius leaving the purple to Commodus was a peaceful transition.

Constantine's transition was not peaceful and only ended with Julian's ascension. Choosing a suitable heir which both the aristocracy and the masses can accept is an important part of being a good monarch. On this point Constantine fucked up.

Thats why rule should have reverted to the senate upon the death of an emperor.

And because that didn't happen than there were no good emperors.

I mean....I like him but yeah. Although I think at that point the Republic was already screwed thanks to Marius and Sulla (and by extension Cato the Elder).

Really wasn't his fault though. If Julian was smart enough to put his armour on during battle he wouldn't have died fighting the Persians then Jovian wouldn't have needed to do any of that.

He was just Majorian but massively less successful.

Don't be contraian for the sake of being contraian.

Justinian

Came to post this.

How dare he not predict that plague.

>>Be Justinian
>I will retake North Africa and Italy
>Bulgars and Sklavinoi assravaging the Balkans
>Better build some fancy buildings, muh glory
>Oh yeah I'll build some forts in the balkans, but won't commit a lot of garrisons cause muh RECONQUEST
>Also I'll spend more money on making barbarians fight one another and stretch my empire's fiscal capacity further
>East and West split regards to religion
>Decide to persecute Eastern heretic sect
>Somehow fails
>Decide to renounce one of the sects to comply to the Eastern Monophysites
>Demand Latin Pope to sign the denouncement of 3 authors, refuses
>Put him under house arrest until he complies and signs the treaty
>Piss off the Western Latins for leaning too much to the Eastern side and force my shitty dogma on them
>Get so confused by Christ's nature I make a statement that contradicts the following I associate myself with
>Basically become a heretic
>Plague comes in
>Sassanids also attacking us
>Still need those Italian lands mofugga
>Slavs break through my frontier after 5 years of peace.
>Eventually Barbarian superstate forms that wants to conquer our land
>wtf why is West and East still split and angry

Not even that. Julian's entire campaign had been a complete fuckup from the start. If he'd set himself realistic objectives when going into Mesopotamia instead of trying to LARP as Alexander and getting himself into the exact kind of mess Trajan found himself in then he wouldn't have had to flee with his tail between his legs in the first place. The only reason anybody remembers him fondly is because he was the last pagan emperor. In reality as a ruler he was painfully mediocre.

>Cato the Elder
>Foresaw the problems of horrific government corruption being let slide because of military prowess
>Foresaw that as degenerate Greek culture became fashionable in the upper class, the Roman elite would grow farther and farther apart from the general masses with which they ruled which would lead to horrific class struggles.
>Attempted to stop this

The only thing Cato did wrong was fail convict Scipio and preserve the Roman way of life.

I'd say the biggest thing wrong he did was say greek replacing latin was a bad thing, latin was a shit language

My impression is that Honorious was more like a symptom than a disease by himself.

You dont get credit for seeing a downfall that happens 700 years in the future when the system you propose most likely.would have failed around 100 to 50 bc.

>You dont get credit for seeing a downfall that happens 700 years in the future when the system you propose most likely.would have failed around 100 to 50 bc.

Except the downfall of the Republic occurred only about a century after his death? And Cato proposed no new systems?

Justinian.

>shit language
You haven’t read Vergil have you

THIS

Julian was a pretty competent administrator, and was a good enough politician that he went from Constantius' puppet to his rival and finally his designated heir. Had he not been such a paganboo and spent energy trying to do the pointless and impossible, he would likely have been a pretty effective emperor.

I'd say one could blame Julian for Christianity's dominance being solidified. You could say he left an impression that "Hey, these Christian Emperors gave us pretty stable situations, but here's this pagan who tried to fuck shit up and died young, perhaps Christianity is the right religoin?" That's my take on it but I would say the coincidence between Roman Christian Emperors and the stability helped strengthen Christianity in the Empire.

Napoleon

Constantine's dynasty was anything but stable. Their constant back(and front)stabbing was likely part of what drove Julian back to paganism.

Apart from Constantine himself Julian probably had the firmest grip on power of any of his cousins.

I guess I was more of talking about the aftermath of the 3rd crisis century, which could've left the impression of Christianity bringing stability, my bad.

That may have some merit. One of Julian's problems in rolling back the clocks back two centuries is that he tried to emulate the principate emperors, whereas his subjects were expecting a dominate one. Acting like the first man of a vaguely republican state just wasn't cutting it anymore.

>Most Pathetic

I can't find his name but most pathetic definitely goes to the Roman Emperor that hung himself because of having no authority.

Valentinian II?

Tiberius - he was the beginning of the end.

If not for Cato the elder then we would not have had young Cato who drove the Republic into the Imperial era because he took his name too seriously.

Yep that's him. Shit is sad to read.