The Spam Thread: Channel Your Need to Spam Here Only

[Marie Monday]

More like an off-brand Daniel Craig ripoff

[The Batlord]

And Commodus looks like such a fuckboy.

[Marie Monday]

Originally Posted by The Batlord

And Commodus looks like such a fuckboy.

yeah if I remember correctly he only became emperor because Macus Aurelius was in love with him and adopted him as his son and then he turned out to be a second Caligula
corrective edit: apparently he was Marcus Aurelius' biological son, I did not expect that

[SGR]

Originally Posted by Marie Monday

yeah if I remember correctly he only became emperor because Macus Aurelius was in love with him and adopted him as his son and then he turned out to be a second Caligula
corrective edit: apparently he was Marcus Aurelius' biological son, I did not expect that

Caligula was misunderstood.

[The Batlord]

The Roman Senate did tend to smear its enemies pretty flagrantly. It's amazing just how many wives of disgraced men just so happened to be complete whores.

[SGR]

Originally Posted by The Batlord

The Roman Senate did tend to smear its enemies pretty flagrantly. It's amazing just how many wives of disgraced men just so happened to be complete whores.

I think Caligula quite disliked the Senate and viewed them pretty poorly. Which is why, if the accounts are to be believed, Caligula wanted to make his horse a consul in an effort to degrade and insult them.

[The Batlord]

I hear it may just have been a joke. As in he was so exasperated with them that he just said "****ing hell I'll just make my horse god damn consul" and then the Senate pretended to take it seriously when denouncing him. Which of course doesn't sound at all like the kind of petty, dumb **** that drives politics to this day.

[SGR]

Originally Posted by The Batlord

I hear it may just have been a joke. As in he was so exasperated with them that he just said "****ing hell I'll just make my horse god damn consul" and then the Senate pretended to take it seriously when denouncing him. Which of course doesn't sound at all like the kind of petty, dumb **** that drives politics to this day.

He never actually did it and we don't know if he was serious - probably was a joke. Yeah, we haven't evolved much in 2000 years unfortunately.

The problem with historical accounts, when we go as far back as Caligula, is that the original sources are only a handful, and it's difficult to know how much of what you read was influenced by the biases of the historian.

I tend to think that many of the claims about Caligula are highly exaggerated and have been overblown throughout the years. Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't it Caligula that ordered the first large scale aqueducts project in Rome?

[Frownland]

Also, much of what has entered the public consciousness about ancient history is more directly related to ancient historical fiction that corroborates original sources rather than the origins themselves.

[OccultHawk]

Originally Posted by Frownland

Also, much of what has entered the public consciousness about ancient history is more directly related to ancient historical fiction that corroborates original sources rather than the origins themselves.

Yes. I tried to make that point frequently when I taught history. It’s largely mythology. A simple exercise for advanced junior high schoolers was read this account and this account and Venn diagram the two accounts. I also had them do that with my lectures vs the textbook. And I also had a full class set of American history textbooks from the early seventies.