The Worse Roman Emperor?

[cacian]

according to you..

caligula because of his erratic sexual deviations...how he lasted is anyone's guess.

[TheFifthElement]

Of course this question has already been addressed by the Horrible Histories crew
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-Nh-zSMzqo

[cacian]

Of course this question has already been addressed by the Horrible Histories crew
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-Nh-zSMzqo

hehe....I am enjoying this The FifthElement this is just abfab...heheh... thank you

[Des Essientes]

Tiberius, Caligulla, and Nero were very bad, but in my opinion the worst crime committed by any of the Roman emperors was perpetrated by Justinian when he closed down the Athenian schools of philosophy.

[cafolini]

Caesar. "To Caesar what belongs to Caesar."

[cacian]

Tiberius, Caligulla, and Nero were very bad, but in my opinion the worst crime committed by any of the Roman emperors was perpetrated by Justinian when he closed down the Athenian schools of philosophy.

what were the reasons behind the closing of the Athenian Schools of Philosophy?

[Des Essientes]

Justinian closed the Athenian schools of philosophy beause he deemed them uneccessary remnants of the pagan past's search for truth which had been superceded by what he considered the one and only truth- Christianity. The schools had been supported by the secular aristocracy of the empire much of whose power had been taken away Christian clergymen.

[BienvenuJDC]

Tiberius, Caligulla, and Nero were very bad, but in my opinion the worst crime committed by any of the Roman emperors was perpetrated by Justinian when he closed down the Athenian schools of philosophy.

I'm sorry, but you consider closing the schools of philosophy as being worse than murdering thousands of people and burning down Rome? I don't get it.

[YesNo]

Of course this question has already been addressed by the Horrible Histories crew
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-Nh-zSMzqo

That video set me straight.

Nero was the "worstest" after all and luckily for me one of the few whose name I remembered.

[Climacus]

Diocletian was pretty nasty at times. But why is this thread in the philosophy forum?

[Darcy88]

Some sources say Nero killed his own mother. Its hard to top the evil of that. He also used Christians for candles, burning them slowly alive. I may be a staunch atheist but I'd never go that far.

[OrphanPip]

You have to be careful in believing everything the Romans wrote about the emperors, because much of the history was political propaganda, or often hearsay written down centuries later.

[Des Essientes]

I'm sorry, but you consider closing the schools of philosophy as being worse than murdering thousands of people and burning down Rome? I don't get it.

Nero's crimes were indeed terrible, but the people he murdered and the property he damaged were replaced and rebuilt in good time. Justinian's worst crime was the destruction of the venerable schools of the highest learning whose knowledge, and methods would be lost in Europe for over one-thousand ignorant and superstitious years. Condemning the contintent to an aeon of darkness would alone put Justinian in the running for worst emperor ever, but beyond this he mismanaged the empire by fighting to retake North Africa and other far flung lands, while in his own environs Slavic raiders and other barbarians were depopulating the country by tens of thousands of citizens a year in their annual raids. If Procopius is to be believed Justinian was a sort of devil that never slept, seldom ate even a few bites of food, and instead spent all of his time in evil scheming and evil actions that were every bit as malicious as those of Nero or "Little Boots."

[Climacus]

. . . the worst crime committed by any of the Roman emperors was perpetrated by Justinian when he closed down the Athenian schools of philosophy

. . . Justinian's worst crime was the destruction of the venerable schools of the highest learning whose knowledge, and methods would be lost in Europe for over one-thousand ignorant and superstitious years

We might find the closing of the schools intellectually reprehensible. But such actions are just not comparable to the egregious moral atrocities of a Nero or a Diocletian.

Moreover, Damascius, the last head of the Athenian school and teacher to Simplicius, was a superstitionist in excelsis, a proponent of both mysticism and theosophy. And the neo-Platonist knowledge and methods of the Athenian school weren't lost by any means; they were thoroughly assimilated. The sort of anti-scholasticism you're putting forward here just isn't tenable anymore, given what we now know of the enormous complexity and logical rigour of medieval philosophy.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

That one guy who killed Russel Crowe's family and then fought him after stabbing him in the side like a coward. He was the worst.