Most overrated Roman Emperors

Pic related. This cunt was literally "Kicking the can down the road: the Emperor". Then when the issues snowball into a big crisis it all gets heaped onto an unfortunate Marcus Aurelius who definitely didn't deserve the shit reign he got.

All of the "Five good emperors"

This and specifically Trajan

Hadrian and M. Aurelius were good though.

not an arguement, they could still be overrated

True but Hadrian isn't overrated imo. Trajan definitely is because >muh greatest territorial expansion!!11
Hadrian actually had some foresight, unlike 95% of emperors.

julius caesar

>Doesn't even do a full fucking conquest
What the fuck was he thinking? The Carpathians should've at least been the new borders, my autism demands it.

This triggers my autism more than is healthy. He could have at the very least conquered the land between Roman Dacia and the fucking Danube. That alone would have reduced the length of the frontier by hundreds of miles and made the upcoming Marcomannic Wars less shit for Rome. What a cunt.

Trajan was voted Imperator Optimex for more reasons than simply his military conquests, but also for his laissez-faire domestic policies which left the experts in charge of a fiscally prudent government while provincial governors were given a great deal of autonomy in dealing with their subjects. It was precisely this domestic tranquility which allowed him to turn his attention to beyond Rome's borders

The irony is that his successor, Hadrian, was the exact opposite: a know-it-all who meddled in every fucking little piece of business that he could inject himself into
>What the fuck was he thinking?
Roman Danube had highly lucrative gold mines which made its conquest profitable. None of those other areas were really worth the effort to conquer, and that's half the reason why Germania was never conquered: why spend all that blood and treasure on forest apes who can't into even a modestly sized civilization and have nothing worth pillaging?

>Caesar
>Emperor

Expanding the frontier to incorporate Wallachia and the Carpthians would've been a worth investment. The mountains make a good border and the plains have a decent climate and many rivers suitable for farming.

I mean, wasn't there a reason he only conquered that? Did they have the resources to properly settle it and protect the rest of their borders?

Gold. And the red frontier is slightly shorter and more defendable than the Danube frontier. If they bothered to fortify and expand towards the Sahara in 203, almost 100 years after Trajan, then sure as hell they could build a couple settlements and fortifications along the second longest mountain range in Europe.

To me Hadrian has a big red mark for how he handled the issue of Jewish nationalism. I think a peaceful resolution was possible.

The second Jewish Roman war was started when Hadrian announced plans to build a temple to Jupiter on the site of the Jerusalem temple ruins. This was obviously viewed as an atrocity by Jewish Romans, as it triggered a massive uprising that was insanely expensive to put down in terms of human lives needlessly ended (on both sides), treasure expended, and economic opportunity lost. Imagine if instead he had announced plans to rebuild the jewish temple as a gesture of good will and cooperation. How much cheaper would that have been than spending years fighting an uprising on such a scale that it required 8 legions to put down?

Conflict as a means to an end is a ridiculous concept. It is by nature destructive, destroying what was to be obtained, as futile as it is wasteful. A shame that Hadrian saw the Jewish problem as just another nail to hammer down.

His only mistake was not going far enough.

Justify this statement.

Jews were no different than other populations like the Egyptians whose religious practices were subservient to the whims of the Romans. There were other revolts prior to the First Jewish-Roman War and that meant they were an unreliable tribe that needed to be put down.

Can you be overrated if barely anyone knows who you are?

This is a completely unfair critique. All of the "Five Good Emperors" were as good as you could expect from a Roman Emperor. Many Emperors were in fact, idiots, and caused so many problems. These Emperors avoided all of that, and they defended their realms in time of conflict. They easily could have turned into another Nero, Commodus, or Caligula.

Because the Jews were wholly incompatible with Rome and the shit they got up to with the constant revolts and the Kotis War deserved a righteous smiting in every sense of the word. They should have gone the way of Carthage.

>they were an unreliable tribe that needed to be put down.
Self fulfilling prophecy, Herod knew how to keep the zealots in line by using the wealth brought into the province from trade to fund conspicuous building projects in Jerusalem, and building a consensus with the former hasmonean elite. Have you ever heard the expression that if your only tool is a hammer everything looks like a nail? After the client kingdoms were abolished and there was nothing keeping the corruption of Roman officers in line, things got worse. The Roman procurators cared little for consensus building and so the zealots argument that Rome was an enemy rather than an opportunity became more persuasive by the day. It was a crisis that did not need to happen, and Hadrian directly caused it.

All that violence and human suffering to cling to power, and yet Rome still fell. Tell me was it worth it all?

Augustus

I always wonder why the Romans didn't expand into Africa like that earlier on. As I understand it 2 thousand years ago it was more fertile than it is today, and expanding to the Atlas mountains at least in Mauretania would have been a good idea. It's not like they would have ever faced large scale threats from further south, so they could have afforded to expand on this frontier rather than clinging to the coast.

I'm pretty sure they collected tribute from the Berber tribes south of the border. The parts they conquered were simply the richest and the fact they never had massive fortifications in the area suggests there wasn't a military threat in the area.

I also would like a source on North Africa (north of Atlas anyway) being more fertile than it today. It has a Mediterranean climate, with forests and many rivers flowing from the highlands but also more arid parts. Kinda like Spain in a way.