POLL: Pick the Next Extra History Series! "Rome: Emperors & Empires" (Patreon)

A classic amongst classics, here are the topics of one of the largest and well-known empires in the world.

 Caligula: Mad Emperor or Bad Emperor?

It is written that the first six months of Caligula's reign were stable and promising. Then... well... there was the whole thing with making his horse a consul. Or going around playing dress-up with Alexander the Great's armor and calling himself a god. Or that time he got bored at the games and had a portion of the audience thrown to wild beasts. But did any of that actually happen, is this or a smear job? Was Caligula a sadist born, or one forged through violence when the Emperor Tiberius executed the rest of his family? Whether madman, statesman, or consummate actor, his reputation for erratic behavior lives on into our own world.

Diocletian: Ending the Crisis of the Third Century

For half a century, the Roman Empire had teetered on the brink of collapse. Barbarian raids, peasant revolts, and leadership schisms have torn it in three pieces. Twenty-six different men have been declared emperor. The Emperor Aurelian had managed to patch things back together, but when Diocletian defeated the Emperor Carinus and began wearing the purple, he inherited a crumbling state. But in a series of deft administrative reforms and military campaigns, including a division of imperial power, Diocletian managed to pull the empire back from the brink—though in doing so, he took on more autocratic powers.

Nero: What an Artist Dies in Me

Nero didn't fiddle when Rome burned, but he may have pulled on a stage costume and sung poems as he watched. Other accounts say he wasn't even in Rome, and rushed back to organize a relief effort, even opening the palace as a shelter for the newly homeless. (He did, though, use the newly-cleared land to build his great Domus Aurea, or "Golden House.") Reviled by historians, occasionally labeled as the Antichrist by Christians, and accused of trying to have his mother killed with a booby-trapped yacht, it might have been better if this wannabe poet had just been allowed to act. (Oh, and have you heard about the time he competed in the Olympics? He won. Everything.)

 Julius Caesar: Road to the Rubicon

Julius Caesar is one of the most famous people in history, a man whose life marks a turning point between Republic and Empire, and whose death became a subject for theatrical tragedies almost as soon as it occurred. Scion of a powerful family, Caesar grew up amidst conflict—a priest by the age of 16, he was stripped of his rank and inheritance after winding up on the wrong side of a civil war, but spared his life. He took to the military for advancement, distinguishing himself in battle and leading a series of successful campaigns—all with an eye to gaining wealth and political office. Gaining a consulship, he began a series of populist reforms that relied as heavily on street violence as political persuasion, frequently avoiding prosecution by fleeing Rome on new military ventures. Likely these will be Episodes 1-5 of a ten part series, leading either up to the Great Roman Civil War or the crossing of the Rubicon—we'll see how far we get. 

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