Words for Board: Nerva, Trajan, Pliny the Younger, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

Times are changing. The 5 good emperors run from 96-180 AD.

Domitian was assassinated cuz he was killing off everybody. The Praetorian Guard set up an old senator to be the next emperor -- Nerva from 96-98. (You don't need to know any of these dates -- it's just to give you an idea of the impact of the people.) He was in his 60's when he was emperor. He was mild-mannered and amiable and very weak. Things drifted under his reign. He was the 1st to try adoptive succession. He adopted a young general Trajan as his son and successor. Trajan was a good man. He had lots of difficulties that faced him as emperor. Things had drifted badly under Nerva. He found lots of public officials on the take. The public works buildings were falling apart cuz the builders had been cheating on the concrete formula. Trajan sent out some Nader's Raiders type of lawyers as trouble shooters throughout the empire. They found all kinds of corruption and reported it back. One of the Raiders was Pliny the Younger. He was off in the east somewhere and wrote back home to Trajan about how religion was going down the tubes. (That is the religion of the state.) He said people were going off to some strange religions (like Christianity, etc.). Christianity was illegal in the empire which was strange cuz Rome didn't persecute people for their religion -- not even the Jews. Romans thought Christians were digging up the dead and eating them cuz of one of their strange rituals and cuz they always met in cemeteries since they were illegal. But Christians weren't hunted very hard. Trajan told Pliny to punish them only if they came to his attention -- not to go looking for them.

Trajan was a soldier type general and had some wars in his reign. (That's what soldiers do best.) He beat the Dacians (N. of the Danube where Rumania is today). He got a good hunk of real estate with lots of gold. Rome doesn't need any more territory. In 113, he attacked the Parthians in the east and was having good success but in 117 he suffered a paralytic stroke and died on his way to Rome. He is said to have picked his next successor Hadrian on his deathbed which may or may not have been true but it puts more punch behind Hadrian if he was picked by the emperor personally. Hadrian was another general and ruled from 117-138. But he was a weird general type cuz he loved peace. He was Epicurean in philosophy. His favorite thing to do was tour the empire. Some of his tours took 5 years. He liked to show up in a city unannounced and ask to see the books. (Keeps people on their toes.) He got up to Britain and built a wall between Britain and Scotland to keep out the savage Picts (barbarians.) He liked to build neat things at the places he stopped and make miniatures of the things he saw to take back home as souvenirs. In 130, he was in Judea and saw Jerusalem that had been destroyed by Titus. He was going to found a new colony and build a temple to Jupiter on the old site of the temple to YHWH. The Jews got upset and revolted again, this time killing off 580,000 of them. That wiped out the population of Jews in the area. There were Jews in the cities throughout the world but no one in the homeland. Hadrian is to blame for today's Israel/Palestinian problem. The Jews were gone from the area, Rome eventually fell and the religion of Islam and the Arabs grew up in the area afterward. There were no Jews to keep up their religion in the area.

Things were so peaceful that there was a rise in roads, bridges and agriculture. The olive tree was introduced in N. Africa from Southern Italy. Soon the African olive oil was cheaper and ruining Italian olive farmers. And Rome planted grapes in Gaul (France) which made better, cheaper wine than Southern Italy. The farmers in Italy were getting the shaft again. In many ways it was better to be in a Roman province then in Italy under Roman control of the world, especially economically.

Hadrian died in 138 and adopted Antoninus Pius before he died. Antoninus was from 138-161. 23 years of peace and prosperity. That's all he did and his reign was boring. His successor was Marcus Aurelius from 161-180. Marcus was a stoic philosopher. Now we'll get to see how philosophers do as kings. He wrote a book called Meditations. It was a diary type of little book of "thoughty thoughts". He wanted to keep peace but all hell broke loose under him. The Parthians were revolting in the east and he had to beat them which he did. While Rome was fighting the Parthians, the German barbarians were raiding over the Rhine-Danube border. The Romans finished with the Parthians and headed for the Germans. But in the transfer, the soldiers picked up the plague (this one may have been smallpox) and passed it through the empire. It killed up to 1/3 of the population in the cities where the bright people were living. It didn't spread very well in the country. In 180, the plague killed Marcus. We have now seen that adoptive successions works!! The last 5 emperors used it. But Marcus chose his own son. Why?? Well, actually the other emperors didn't use adoptive succession cuz they thought it was a good idea. They used it cuz they had no sons of their own. But as soon as an emperor comes up with a son he passes on the throne which is what Marcus did. Adoptive only work when there's no natural heirs. The other things that Marcus did was persecute the Christians cuz they wouldn't join the army to fight the barbarians. It was against their beliefs but Marcus needed the people cuz the plague was killing off his soldiers.