Explanation: Antoninus Pius is one of the “Five Good Emperors”, a series of five Emperors in a row who were well-regarded by history. Antoninus Pius got his name (‘Pius’) because he was a good and loyal son to his (sometimes mercurial) adoptive father, the Emperor Hadrian. He proceeded to embark on no major military campaigns, and spent the next two decades of rule investing in public roads, bridges, aqueducts and other systems for publicly available water, and welfare measures for the poor, including for orphans (not an actual orphanage; the original pic is a little inaccurate but they’ve got the spirit). He reduced taxes on areas experiencing hardship, funded the arts, medicine, and philosophy, and still managed to have a massive budget surplus by the end of his reign.
He brought to the Empire extensive legal reform in all areas, increasing the rights of slaves against mistreatment or murder at their masters’ hands and ensuring that when a man’s status as a slave was in doubt, one was to err on the side of freedom, not slavery. He also significantly reduced the use of torture in the Empire (reduced, not eliminated, because ultimately, as with slavery, the past is still a really shitty place). He had a warm relationship with the Jews of the Empire after his predecessor, Hadrian, quite famously… did not… and put Christians under his personal protection as Emperor (a state of affairs which sadly would fade after a few Emperors).
Not only that, but his two adoptive sons who became Emperor after him both remembered him very fondly after his death as a man of good humor and great patience, who enjoyed fishing and watching comedic plays and boxing matches. Man was probably one of the most wholesome human beings to ever become the most powerful man in the world.
when a man’s status as a slave was in doubt, one was to err on the side of freedom, not slavery
i have a new hero, that's awesome.. what an Eternal Dude this guy was.. a real example to follow, and there must be a long list of kings and so forth who genuinely measured themselves against him..
Unfortunately, while he is remembered as a wise and fair Emperor, he is generally overshadowed by his more militarily active predecessors, Hadrian and Trajan, or by his adoptive son, the Philosopher-Emperor Marcus Aurelius.
sorry to double reply, but i really wanted to make this other point because it bugs the hell out of me personally..
he is generally overshadowed
it's great that you chose those words.. it's true, he is eclipsed by them in history texts, written by historians.. this is obviously due to the fact that historians are obsessed with conflict.. there is nothing interesting to talk about when everyone is living a nice, peaceful life.. especially if it lasts a long time..
Tolkien explains this concept incredibly well in the foreword to the Hobbit, i think.. he says something like, "good days are nice to live, but nobody wants to hear you talk about them.. whereas everyone wants to hear a scary story.." historians like to talk about dragons..
as you are demonstrating here, thank you.. perhaps i should have said that Tolkien suggests it's hard to get a hobbit to listen, unless there's a dragon..
There are some really fascinating fields that have emerged since the revival of history as an academic discipline in the 19th century, and especially since the second half of the 20th century. Some really great work on the social fabric of past societies, rather than war, politics, and tabloid gossip that usually gets recorded.
Not that any of that is necessarily bad, I love reading about that too, lmao, but it's nice to have a wider view of things!
great work on the social fabric of past societies,
yeah, this is what i'm talking about, and how that social fabric has progressed, and is still progressing as a thing unto itself.. specifically in spite of war, which hates civilization..
thank you for adding that further context
that's why i loved this post right away.. it's about one of the guys whose life was totally committed to that fabric, and we still owe this guy today in a way we don't understand well..
thanks for adding that BRUTAL Roman context lol.. but i also want to make sure to shout the guy out for this one as well..
He reduced taxes on areas experiencing hardship, funded the arts, medicine, and philosophy, and still managed to have a massive budget surplus by the end of his reign.
this is what people need to understand.. most other Roman administrations were nothing but sieves because of their more typical behavior..
Explanation: This is a marked difference in stylization that occurred during and in part because of Christianity's rise. You see some of the warning signs, however, with Diocletian, the pagan Emperor just before Constantine, the first unambiguously Christian Emperor. Diocletian had an early form of the trend because he harkened more to an eastern style of divinely-ordained despotism and a stronger emphasis on the 'right' kind of beliefs to hold (in Diocletian's case, paganism; in the later Emperors, Christianity)
There was a general trend, in the Late Roman Empire, of portraying the Emperor as more monarchial and unimpeachable, unlike the earlier, more dedicatedly nominally republican Principate/Early Empire, and the sculpture style is an outgrowth of that. As Christianity demanded orthodoxy (believing the correct thing) and not just orthopraxy (doing the correct thing), the Emperor who (effectively) decided what was and was not heresy had to be portrayed as ideal himself, at least during his reign, lest some poor souls listen to his doubters and damn themselves into unorthodox belief!
The faces become smoother and more inhuman; something more approaching the ideal and the divine. And the big, icon-like eyes. This is in stark contrast to the preferred style of the Pagan Republic and Principate eras, where the style of 'Verism' was dominant in busts, in which facial flaws were portrayed in full or even emphasized.
You can see there Julian the Apostate, at the bottom right of the Pagan Emperors, who resembles, well, the other pagans, despite the fact that Julian (who was a pagan) reigned in the middle of the era of Christianity's ascendence. This isn't completely due to religion, but because Julian was, in general, a huge throwback who idealized the Principate of the past. However, at a closer look, there is still a much smoother, more 'idealized' face; even moreso than his fellow pagan Augustus, the first Emperor of Rome, who was a propagandist par excellence and unafraid of depicting himself as near-divine.
Caracalla (Pagan, Crisis of the Third Century, ~210 AD)
Decius (Pagan, Crisis of the Third Century, ~250 AD - note that, despite being only ~35 years away from Diocletian, the facial features here are very rough and 'realistic')
Diocletian (Pagan, Late Empire, ~284 AD - note the departure in style - smooth face, large eyes)
Constantine (Christian, Late Empire, ~320 AD - very idealized, almost wiped clean of features)
Valentinian III (Christian, Late Empire, ~455 AD - idealized into abstractness, the 'idea' of the man who is Emperor)
Oh, and one for the road - a portrait of a NON-Emperor, 5th century AD - note that though the style has hints of the Christian Emperors, it has far 'rougher' (and IMO, more beautiful) detailed features - because it's not trying to be the 'idea' of the Divinely Ordained Leader. It wasn't a loss of talent (that doesn't come 'til later, when the entire Empire collapses in on itself) - it was a weird stylistic choice.
Explanation: One of the skills that the Romans legions practiced religiously was the swift construction of field fortifications, such as fortified camps. This practice saved the Romans in the aftermath of several defeats or near-defeats, such as the aftermath of the Battle of Trebia, where a defeated Roman army was still established in a defensible enough position that the survivors could avoid annihilation, or during the Siege of Alesia, when Roman forces led by Julius Caesar constructed one set of walls around their camp to keep the Gallic army out, and another set of walls to keep the Gauls in Alesia in.
See it’s a thought process like this that terminates in you standing around like a fool in 1 billion BCE, trying to quash all those pesky proto-gametes.
Explanation: The national mythology of Russia in the modern day is very heavily based around how they 'defeated the fascists' in the Great Patriotic War (WW2).
Of course, one shouldn't look too deeply into how eager and helpful they were to the fascists before Nazi Germany invaded them...
Explanation: At the Battle of Cynoscephalae, a Roman tribune, a mid-level officer, demonstrated the flexibility and responsiveness of the Roman military system by wheeling around some 2,500 men, pursuing fleeing skirmishers, to hit the rear of the opposing Macedonian phalanx, which had fought the other part of the Roman force to a standstill. As the Macedonians could not effectively turn their formation of long pikes, they were utterly overrun, turning what seemed to be a hard-fought draw or near-win for the Romans into a total and devastating victory.
I have some cousins from South Carolina and Georgia.
It’s so frustrating to talk anything tangentially related to the American Civil War with them, and they ALWAYS wheel out the War of Northern Aggression bit.
FUN FACT: one of the many offenses which caused the great 16th century Japanese warlord Oda Nobunaga's assassination was Nobunaga drunkenly playing a tune on his vassal's bald head with a fan, and throwing that same vassal's tableware into a pond. Supposedly.
Saltier than Carthage (if it had been salted)
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