Kusaimamekirai’s Reviews > The Romans: A 2,000-Year History > Status Update

“Theoderic personally slaughtered Odoacer at a dinner party held in the Italian capital of Ravenna to celebrate the agreement”
Honestly, from what I’ve read so far, this is one of the more pleasant ways close to like 97% of the emperors end up dying. Wanting to be emperor seems to have been a literal death wish.

Several things are really striking about the early Roman Empire to me.
When it did transition from a republic to a dictatorship, it kept a lot of the facade of a republic like voting, and a senate. It also was a remarkably diverse empire that at least early on encouraged immigration and incentivized people in its outposts to become Roman citizens, recognizing the advantages of doing so.

“Nero’s palace did not go over well with the Roman public….The imperial residence had become a Roman version of the White House that served as both the emperor’s home and a secure site where he could govern and hold audiences with senators and foreign dignitaries. Nero, however, went far beyond what other Romans thought necessary in an official residence at a time when many others were suffering”

“But perhaps the greatest indictment of the system came from the fact that the Senate, the army, and the provincial governors all understood Caligula’s manifest unfitness for office—and yet the fate of Rome turned on the personal grievance of a prickly soldier.”

Marc Antony deciding he’d rather chill in Egypt with Cleopatra than get himself killed in a stupid war. Relatable

“Caesar effectively controlled Rome, but he did so under the legal framework of the Republic. He was, then, not a tyrant but a legal ruler—and yet his regime seemed to distort the liberty that the Republic protected.”

“His dictatorship became permanent in early 44, and he marked this step by breaking with a Roman precedent by placing his own face on denarii, an honor not previously granted living people. The coins identified him as Caesar, Dictator in Perpetuity.”

“[We may] retain the name Republic,” Cicero wrote, “but we have long since lost the actual thing.” “Lawlessness” and violence were changing their system of government “from one of justice to one of force.”