Cripple. History Major. Irritable and in constant pain. Vaguely Left-Wing.

  • 308 Posts
  • 355 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: July 21st, 2023

help-circle




  • PugJesus@lemmy.worldto196@lemmy.blahaj.zoneGeorge Rule
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    4
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    3 days ago

    There was also a lot of nasty work inbetween. The US was a supporter of decolonization of European empires in the 1940s and 1950s, which put us in conflict with France; De Gaulle was a horrifically small-minded nationalist who took special delight in being obstinate and sabotaging all attempts at cooperation with countries outside of France; and France resented the US taking the pre-eminent position in Europe despite not being European (or French).























  • Was he even as bad as they say?

    Commodus was likely as bad as they say. Emperor Septimius Severus is said to have decried Marcus Aurelius for not strangling the kid when he had the chance. Of course, Septimius Severus’s kid would turn out to be a gruesome fellow like Commodus, so he doesn’t actually have much room to throw stones.

    I mean, probably, absolute power and all that, but from what I hear the madness of Caligula is severely overblown since the main sources we have on him are the Roman versions of tabloids, so maybe it’s similar with Commodus.

    Caligula revisionism is… very problematic. The most I would say there is that some of the pop culture interpretations of him are false, and some of the incidents mentioned as rumors by Roman historians are likely exaggerated. He was pretty unambiguously a tyrant and extremely arbitrary in his rule. If you take ‘madness’ as ‘detached from reality’, Caligula probably wasn’t mad. If you take ‘madness’ as ‘sociopathic and impulsive’, then Caligula was almost certainly mad.