Show notes
In our latest special episode, we welcomed the talented LJ Trafford to the show to discuss her latest book, Ancient Rome’s Worst Emperors (2023).Special Episode – Ancient Rome's Worst EmperorsYou may very well have encountered some of LJ’s wonderful earlier works, including her historical novel series: The Four Emperors. These books cover a turbulent time in the early imperial period with Nero’s fall from power (and life) in 68 CE and the subsequent chaos that followed in the year 69. She has also published nonfiction works on ancient Rome including How to Survive in Ancient Rome (2020) and Sex and Sexuality in Ancient Rome (2021). And just in case that didn’t keep her busy, LJ is a contributor to The History Girls blog, writing about all sorts of fascinating subjects involving the ancient world from Pliny the Elder’s concerns about the dangers of sponges to handy tips to avoid assassination as a Roman emperor.Our conversation allowed us to talk about the qualities that define ‘good’ and ‘bad’ emperors. And yes, Augustus and Tiberius were mentioned, but we kept it civil! LJ then took us through some of the characters who qualified as one of the WORST emperors, including Caligula, Didius Julianus, Silbannacus, and Petronius Maximus.Image of Caligula, courtesy of Carole Raddato on Flickr. Things to Look Out For: Cat armiesShadow emperorsTips on shaking up your next meetingDrunken late-night shopping (Roman style)You will definitely want to grab a copy of LJ’s book to hear about all the other terrible emperors of Rome after this episode. You should be able to pick up a copy at your local independent bookstore, as well as the usual corporate giants. Sound CreditsOur music was composed by Bettina Joy de Guzman.Automated TranscriptDr Rad 0:15Music. Welcome to the partial historians.Dr G 0:18We explore all the details of ancient Rome,Dr Rad 0:23everything from political scandals, the love affairs, the battled wage and when citizens turn against each other. I'm Dr Rad andDr G 0:33I'm Dr G, we consider Rome as the Romans saw it, by reading different authors from the ancient past and comparing their stories.Dr Rad 0:44Join us as we trace the journey of Rome from the founding of the city.Dr G 0:55Hello and welcome to a brand new episode of the partial historians I am Dr GDr Rad 1:03and I am Dr Rad,Dr G 1:05and we are thrilled today to be sitting down and chatting with LJ Trafford. Now you may have heard of this author before. LJ Trafford studied ancient history at the University of Reading and is famous for her historical novel series the four emperors. These books cover a turbulent time in the early imperial period with Nero's fall from power and from life in 68 CE and the subsequent chaos that followed in the year 69 LJ is also a contributor to the history girls blog, writing about all sorts of fascinating subjects involving the ancient world, from Pliny the elders' concerns about the dangers of sponges to handy tips to avoid assassination as a Roman emperor, a goal to which maybe none of us aspire these days, but you never know, those of you out There, there are hints and tips for how to do it. In addition to this, LJ has published three accessible and immensely readable non fiction works on ancient Rome. How to survive in ancient Rome from 2020 sex and sexuality in ancient Rome, 2021, and most recently, ancient Rome's worst emperors in 2023 and it is this latest work on those troublesome emperors that we'll be discussing today. Thank you so much for joining us. LJ,LJ Trafford 2:32thank you so I'm delighted to be here. Huzzah. Huzzah,Dr G 2:35we're very excited. This is a great topic, and I think there's going to be some nice surprises in here for people as well. Oh, that's good. So before we delve into some of the gruesome details, we'd like to start with your perspective on what makes people in power so fascinating. So some of these stories are told, and they're retold many times, and yet we continue to return to them. And I'm interested in what makes them compelling. From your perspective,LJ Trafford 3:05I think from our perspective, I think our kind of politicians look slightly kind of impotent in comparison to kind of Roman emperors. You know, if you've got a parliamentary system, our kind of politicians are kind of curtailed, aren't they, by kind of law, international laws and regulations, and used to be in Britain, certainly UK, European laws and regulations. And they're also constrained by, you know, having an opposition party who might block everything they want to do. So you kind of vote for some your party, and they don't fulfil their potential because they're forever blocked and they and, you know, I think in most societies, there's these kind of big, looming issues that nobody seems to want to deal with that just get kicked down the road as a can down the road for somebody else to pick up later. So I think kind of in comparison looking at Roman emperors, where somebody can just walk in and go, Hey, let's just call September Germanicus, and then it's done. And everybody does. I think there's something quite compelling about somebody who can come in and just make a change and just say, I've decided today we're going to do this, and it happens. And I think it kind of plays into that kind of childhood game of, what would I do if I ruled the world, kind of thing, that kind of imagining how you generally imagine that you'd be the benevolent dictator. You know, you never think you're going to go the full Caligula, do you? But so I think in comparison, it kind of appeals for that. And I think also the stories that Roman historians have collected for us on the Emperors is what makes them so compelling, because they can collect all the worst bits and all the most kind of gruesome bits and all the most kind of sexy bits. So they they've created really the compelling story for us. It's, you know, it's not, it's not a tale of kind of laws being passed and kind of dreary business. It's all you know, who's sleeping of who, who's done the most outrageous thing, who's decided, you know, to call every month after themselves, who's built a, you know, 60 foot gold statue of themselves. So I think it's that, I think that's what compels us, just the the power, the ability of one man to decide so much and for people to to act on that. I think, I think we'd all like a kind of a horn to people around us. Just act on every whim, wherever that may be. I think that. I think that's what makes them so attractive and makes us, yeah, I think it makes this question, what would we do if we had that power? Would we have a 60 foot gold statue of ourselves created?Dr G 5:11Definitely, theLJ Trafford 5:13answer is yes, of course. Why wouldn't you? I know, why wouldn't you name every month after yourself? Because you know you can, IDr Rad 5:22must admit, I'm really enjoying the idea of you saying to someone like Donald Trump that he is impotent.LJ Trafford 5:30Oh, yes, I'd like to see his reaction toDr Rad 5:33that. You feel impotent. Yes, exactly.Dr G 5:38I think he has aspirations in the Imperial sense, though, if he could be a Roman Emperor, I think he definitely would try. I think heLJ Trafford 5:45talks like one a lot, doesn't he? He comes in as I'm a lot of his rhetoric on the previous election was, I'm the guy who can change this. It's the eye. It's not the we, the Republican Party, can come in and change Americans. I Donald Trump, I alone can clean out the swamp. I alone can do this. So he talks a bit like a Roman emperor, because it's a it's about him. It's not about, you know, the kind of administration and their aims. It's all about him. So, yeah, I can, I can see there's a comparison there.Dr Rad 6:11Well, I think, I kind of think that's why we are so intrigued by these sorts of figures, because we, in some ways, they seem so alien and different to us for exactly the reasons that you've outlined. But then when you look at some of the political figures of the 20th and 21st century that still loom very large, you can kind of see how they would enjoy that level of absolute power. And I thinkLJ Trafford 6:34there's a kind of fascination, isn't there, a bit recently, with kind of Putin and his kind of power, and lots of people in, kind of in America, which, you know, given that American Russians history, kind of admiring Putin, because he kind of does stuff as such. So whereas, opposed to their political system has maybe got a bit kind of paralysed in recent years, so there's still this fascination of one man with with absolute power, I think. And I think, yeah, I think we look at our own times, and we forever looking back and comparing, aren't we generally wrongly? It'sDr G 7:03one of those dangers of the attraction of the strong man, isn't it? It's sense that it's aligned with a kind of efficiency of purpose and outcomes which you just can't get in the bureaucratic grind of day to day government.LJ Trafford 7:17Yeah, the danger of the strong man is when they stay too long, isn't it, and then people forget what it was like before there was the strong man, and then they start to not appreciate the strong man. And then it all goes horribly wrong, the kind of thing. ButDr Rad 7:28yes, we're not advocating dictatorship on those podcasts.LJ Trafford 7:31She just doesn't like that. Not advocating dictation, not advocating, not advocating anything like that. WeDr Rad 7:37always have to make that very clear, you know, as Roman historians, because sometimes it sounds like we actually are getting swept up in Roman values.LJ Trafford 7:46I do not share any values of ancient Roman I can't think of itDr Rad 7:50exactly yes. So let's talk about your book a little bit. You take the reader through the imperial period in the Roman West, and you provide examples from the first century all the way down to the fifth century, which means there's a huge amount of ground to cover in your book, and it means that you have to be a bit selective about which emperors you focused on, but it is also an opportunity to draw attention to some emperors that are less well known, perhaps to general readership. So what kinds of qualities or defects were you keen to include that maybe helped you decide who you were going to focus on?LJ Trafford 8:24Yeah, kind of first of all, I probably naively didn't realise what a huge task this was when I agreed to write this book. Because generally I get given a book title and a book brief, like, kind of sex and sexuality, and I get like the chapters, and they say, write a chapter on contraception, write a chapter on marriage, write a chapter on this. And I did the brief for this, and I kind of randomly said, Oh, I'm going to write about, you know, worst emperors, you know, over 500 years. And and then when I went to research it, I realised what a huge task is, how much reading there is. And then I thought, well, maybe I could do it by dynasty, and I'll just pick, like, the worst one from each dynasty. And then I looked at, and there's loads of dynasties, just like, far too much, you know. And I got a kind of, I got a work count of, like, 85,000 words. And there was no way I could pick an emperor from each dynasty and write about them in depth. And I wanted to go in depth on some and kind of pull them apart. So I had to kind of go back to drawing board and go, Okay, how am I going to choose these worst emperors? And I kind of took a few things into consider. I took Augustus' Res Gestae, the kind of story of his life, because it's quite a good blueprint for what a good emperor should be, because it's all about I'm brilliant. This is what I did. This is what makes me brilliant. So I kind of took that, because he would talk about, I built this temple, I built this. I defeated this enemy. I did this. I brought in these laws. I gave this money to these soldiers. I gave so much to the people. So it gave me kind of blueprint of what a good emperor should be. And I took kind of Suetonius 12 Caesars as well to help a bit, because he he does a biography of the first 12 emperors. Well, the first 11 and Julius Caesar, we don't count but, but he splits his biographies into they. Deeds and their bad deeds, which again, gave me a bit of a basis to have a look at what a good emperor should be doing and what a bad Emperor did. So I kind of used them vaguely as my kind of back blueprint for picking them. And then really, I chose ones that I thought were quite interesting as well, kind of randomly, but I wanted to show right across those 500 years show kind of how the role of Emperor changes and the kind of people holding it change as well. And I wanted to do, I wanted to look at some more unfamiliar ones, because it's very easy to go, okay, worst emperors, and we just go, okay, Nero, Commodus, Elagabalus, and the kind of the usual people. And I wanted to, kind of, I wanted to find out some more about some different ways in which you could be a worst emperor that didn't necessarily involve kind of sexual depravity and kind of spending lots of money and excess. Because, you know, that I thought as a book, it would get a bit samey, if that's like every chapter, oh yeah, and they bankrupted the Treasury. Next chapter, oh yes, and he bankrupted the Treasury. Next Oh yes. Incest with who, you know, Mother, incest, sister, you know, I thought it'd be a bit samey, so I wanted to pull out some kind of alternative ways where people could be worst. And I found, you know, numerous ones where they, you know, they didn't have these kind of big personalities, like the kind of colleagues and the Neros of the world, but actually, they got the top job, and they just, they just weren't very good at it, and they just weren't up to it, you know. And there's a series of people who kind of become emperor, and at the first sign, the first kind of, kind of barrier, they first the first problem they face, they just completely fold, which I thought was quite interesting. So it was a whole series of people who kind of got the job and then realised they weren't good enough, which is that, you know, I think must be a terrible realisation that you're like, I'm emperor, wow, and everybody's praising you, and you suddenly realise I'm not good enough. I can't cope with this. And there's no kind of like, no resign, and there's no like, handing in your month's notice again, sorry, chaps, not the job I thought it was going to be, you know, I'll let somebody else do it. You know, that's not how you stop being an emperor. You stop being an emperor because somebody kills you, basically, or you die naturally. So there's no resigning. So yeah, I was looking for kind of people like that, people other reasons why you might be worse. And I think, yeah, not having the qualities you need to be an emperor is certainly one. Being weak is certainly one, not being the kind of strong one. And, yeah, just being kind of ineffectual, being promoted above your kind of ability level and and I thought that was a more interesting way to pull people out. And it pulled out some emperors that I hadn't, didn't really know much about, apart from just their names, people like kind of Valentinian the second and kind of Gordian. It pulled out some more interesting people I wanted to have a look at and explore a bit further in detail. But yes, I mean, it's a bit it's a book to for people to debate. And I was thinking that I was going to get a lot of a lot of them shouting at me for including…
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