Explanation and Warning

It was recently brought to my attention that since 2010 I have written profiles on all the rulers of the original Julio-Claudian dynasty of the Roman Empire except for one. I have covered Julius Caesar, Emperor Augustus, Emperor Tiberius, Emperor Claudius and even Emperor Nero. Readers will probably notice what name is conspicuously absent from that list. The person who pointed this out to me also noted that I had tried to be positive in my coverage of even notorious emperors such as Tiberius and Nero. I will stop there to add that I do not share the opinion of most people regarding Emperor Tiberius. Yes, he went a little off the deep end toward the end of his life but I maintain that if one looks at the bare facts and not the salacious gossip he was a pretty good, strong and stable emperor.

However, I think it is no secret that when it comes to these monarch profiles I am coming from a sympathetic point of view and try to emphasize the good since there is certainly no shortage of people willing to emphasize the bad. However, I try to be as fair as possible and I have covered controversial monarchs in the past. In the case of Emperor Nero, I don’t think I was being favorable at all but simply fair. In any event, the person who brought this up was making the argument that it seemed I was purposely omitting that one member of the Julio-Claudian dynasty because there was simply no way I could put a positive “spin” on the guy and so was trying to sweep him under the rug (so to speak).

I can assure everyone that that was certainly never my intention. I honestly did not realize that I had not written a profile about the emperor in question, perhaps because I had written a very extensive piece on him many years ago. His name, of course, came up when I was writing my “Emperor’s Library” series but, by pure chance, he was not included in that and I do recall thinking at the time that his story would be rather difficult to write about simply because there is so much to his story that is not proper for polite conversation. Believe it or not, I really had no intention of purposely ignoring this monarch simply because it is an unpleasant subject for someone of my point of view. Personally, I have no problem with it, his short hold on power in no way effects my beliefs and opinions. Still, I am sure some will not like it and I cannot help that. Because so much requires explanation, it will be a rather lengthy piece but I am determined to post it all at once rather than in 2 or 3 parts simply because I would prefer not to linger on this particular subject.

Something else I want to make clear is that I do not write on subjects in response to someone daring me to do so. I would never write something just because someone complained that I had not, just out of principle and also because I would never be finished with all of them. I did have to take notice that I had written a profile for every monarch of the original Roman Imperial Family save one and that is the only reason that I have decided to go ahead with this. I wanted everyone to know the back story here, to know why I am doing this and to be warned in case any would prefer to skip it (certainly understandable). There will be some extremely scandalous and despicable behavior being talked about so I am warning you all now. I don’t want to get any angry comments from people in Kansas saying that I ruined the lives of their children who were reading my blog. Everyone is on notice, the subject of the next monarch profile will be the (notorious) Emperor Gaius “Caligula”.