Rough Roman Memes

556 readers

31 users here now

A place to meme about the glorious ROMAN EMPIRE (and Roman Republic, and Roman Kingdom)! Byzantines tolerated! The HRE is not.

RULES:

No racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, bigotry, etc. The past may be bigoted, but we are not.
Memes must be Rome-related, not just the title. It can be about Rome, or using Roman aesthetics, or both, but the meme itself needs to have Roman themes.
Follow Lemmy.world rules.

Not sure where to start on Roman history?

A quick memetic primer on Republican Rome

A quick memetic primer on Imperial Rome

founded 8 months ago

MODERATORS

PugJesus

THE EMPIRE IS STILL A REPUBLIC WE SWEAR (lemmy.world)

submitted 4 months ago by PugJesus to c/roughromanmemes

8 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago (1 children)

And Roman succession was quite often (mostly?) by inheritance. The "five good emperors" were the big exception, but even they had a habit of adopting their successors.

[–] PugJesus 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I think it would be better to see it as a form of nepotism than monarchy in the cases of the Principate, especially considering the ideological considerations of adoption in Roman society. The Senate could (and in the case of Lucius Verus, did, or tried to until Marcus Aurelius threatened to resign) credibly refuse to appoint an Emperor to the position on the grounds that they did not approve of him. They have a very magisterial process of the exercise of Imperial power, even if it is, effectively, autocratic.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, it still doesn't read as a straight monarchy, exactly, which is a one part of why I think it's cool. My impression is that it got there eventually in the Byzantine period. Is that correct?

[–] PugJesus 3 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Yeah, they outright began using the term 'basileus' and even the dreaded Latin 'rex', with emphasis on Emperors who were biological children of the previous Emperors.

Still a lot of civil wars and coups though. No amount of monarchy can erase THAT particular Roman tradition.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Still a lot of civil wars and coups though. No amount of monarchy can erase THAT particular ~~Roman~~ tradition.

I think all of agricultural humanity has to own that one collectively. Not that one family which reigns unopposed forever would be better.