Stoics in charge of parenting

BY SOL THIS GREEK DEBAUCHERY WILL NOT STAND

I don’t think so, but honestly I don’t remember.

So you could be a lad lover.

>seeing someone repeat your own post in a related thread.

AMICE AVE ATQUE VALE

You wrote that? Could you expand on that a bit? What are your sources? Dio Cassidus?

>Could you expand on that a bit?
What do the following Emperors have in common: Caligula, Nero, Commodus, Caracalla, Elagabalus, Constantine II, Valentinian II, and Honorius have in common?

Two things: they were the shittiest emperors who ever reigned, and they were among the youngest.

How many rich people do you know with grown children who are total deadbeat playboys with no talent or ambition? Now imagine if that early 20-something playboy who never had any real responsibility in his life was suddenly thrust into the CEO chair of his father's powerful corporation. He's run it into the ground, right?

Seriously, the only good young leader Rome ever produced was Scipio Africanus

> What are your sources?
Cassius Dio is the main primary source that we have on the life and death of Commodus. Everything we know about Commodus comes from him.

The History of Rome podcast is excellent and a great resource on Roman history
thehistoryofrome.typepad.com/the_history_of_rome/2010/05/95-the-beginning-of-the-end.html

The Netflix docudrama "Roman Empire: Reign of Blood" wasn't perfect, and heaps on the blood and nudity, but if you can get past the sensationalism it's actually a pretty decent retelling of the life of Commodus
netflix.com/title/80096545

>>Also, he spent the first part of his reign fighting off conspiracies from Marcus' 13 other children. That by all accounts had a terrible effect on his psyche.

Weren't all but two of his children dead by the time Marcus was dead?

IIRC his choices were to do that or have an almost guaranteed civil war. The Emperors that picked an adopted successor all had a good reason to do so, and Marcus picking someone other than his son would have been a big fucking insult to Commodus and sure to piss off a lot of people.

His options were:

1. Don't have fucking kids ever and adopt an heir.

2. Have kids, and ensure they're good heirs.

Once he started popping kids out, it was inevitable. The only way to avoid this situation is to just not have children. Once you have Commodus, and it's clear he's too young and a dick, his only other option is to strangle the little shit. Can you really ask a father to kill his own son?

If Aurelius picked another heir, and was left alive, Commdous would be a liability, even if he didn't want to take over. A general could kidnap Commodus, and use him to gain power, all while claiming to give Commodus his birthright. The second the picked heir comes to power, Commodus would be sought after and killed on some trumped up charge. Too much of a risk. The only way for Aurelius to ensure his son lived was to make him Emperor.

He would have been gambling that as Co-Ruler, he could use his later years to train Commodus, and turn him into a good ruler. And maybe, if Aurelius had lived to say, 70, this might have happened. But instead he died young, leaving Commodus as the sole ruler.

The biggest failure of Marcus was not his horrid kid.
It was his failure to seize the perfect opportunity he had to make a number of necessary reforms to the imperial administration regarding the role, duties, selection etc of the emperor and the senate.

Commodus would never have even been emperor if a proper succession protocol had been implemented.
Hell, reform the senate into an imperial diet and ensure that its approval is a requirement for assuming legal Imperial office and you get rid of almost all of Romes latter terrible emperors and possibly even the decline and collapse of the empire altogether.

You can say Augustus had the same issue as well. He set up a strong system, sure, but the succession was always a major issue. Tiberius, Caligula, and Nero were terrible.

Oh I fully agree.
The relentless insistence by Augustus that he was not a monarch (and as such his failure to create the institutions and systems required for a monarchy to run smoothly) really did fuck up the empire.
But given the somewhat precarious situation he found himself in during his reign, I think his failure to formalise the monarchy is much more understandable then the failure of Marcus to do so.

By the time that Marcus took office, Rome was more or less comfortable with being ruled by an emperor.
Not to mention that it was at the very apex of its power.
I honestly do not see a single reason why as to why he would not do so, beyond a simple short sightedness developed from a lifetime of putting out brushfires along the borders of the empire.

If only Confucian philosophy had made its way over to Rome, maybe then they would have developed a competent imperial administration.

>trying to apply the same philosophy to everything in your life

If you aren't nimble in your thinking you will ultimately fail. There are no single remedies to everything.

Commodus obviously wasn't raised in stoic values. He probably just did whatever he wanted to do, so it went to his head and prevented him from being mature.