Emperors of Pax Romana

as we saw in the last several videos the Roman Republic that was established in 509 BCE it finally met its end with the rule of Julius Caesar we talk about Julius Caesar crossing the Rubicon becoming dictator for life and then he is assassinated because of the power he was able to accumulate in 44 BCE on March 15 the Ides of March that throws Rome into a civil war eventually it becomes a battle between Augustus or at the time Octavian vs Mark Antony and Cleopatra Octavian is able to be victorious and on 27 BCE he is declared or this is the date that historians often use is the beginning of him officially being Emperor and this period from 27 BCE with Augustus being Emperor all the way to 180 C so this roughly 200 year period this is a relatively good time for the Roman Empire as we will see there is still a lot of conflict there's still a lot of bloodshed but it is a relatively stable period and so it is often referred to as Pax Romana or the Roman peace and who what we see picture here these are most of the Emperor's of that roughly 200 year period Augustus proves to be a relatively good administrator he lays a good foundation for the next several hundred years of the Empire the Roman Empire officially being ruled by an emperor it's eventually going to meet his demise of the Western Empire at least in 476 C II so it's going to go for roughly 500 years and Augustus lays a strong foundation for it he's viewed as a strong administrator he really builds a lot of institutions from a historical perspective it's it's worth noting that Jesus was born under Augustus his rule and most historical views are Jesus was born in some place between four BCE and BCE now augustus was followed by Tiberius and Tiberius here was both Augustus 'iz stepson and he married a Gustus his daughter so he was a stepson and son-in-law and he also proved to be a relatively capable Emperor you can see Augustus had a fairly long rule he took power in his 30s and he his power ended in his 70s and Tiberius too had a fairly long rule from a historical point of view or even a biblical point of view it's worth noting that Jesus would have been crucified under Tiberius his rule the roman emperor referred to in the new testament is Tiberius it would have been his governor Pontius Pilate who orders the crucifixion of Jesus now after Tiberius you have his great nephews and so you are his great-great nephew you can see they're all not directly related but they're all kind of family and his great-great nephew is Caligula and Caligula that's his nickname is a bit of an infamous figure one of the infamous figures in history amongst the Roman Emperor emperors because he's really viewed as a sadist as a pervert he's known to for killing people just for fun and he is quickly assassinated his term only or his power only lasts for several years and then in his place is put his uncle Claudius after Claudius comes another infamous figure of history and that is Nero Nero he's known for the route of Phi Rome had a significant fire in 64 AD many of the Roman citizens believed that Nero did it intentionally to clear out space for a palace significant number of Romans died in that fire he killed a ton of people including his mother he's maybe most famous for persecuting Christians there are some accounts that he would dip them in oil and set them on fire in his garden and it just as a source of light so these people you notice to say that they were insane or demented or sick you know normally I try to avoid making any judgment on some of these historical figures but both Caligula and Nero if we we believe the accounts that we get from that period and that shortly after that period were not by any stretch of the imagination good people Nero eventually does commit suicide and with the with Nero's end you actually have the end of the Giulio Claudian dynasty write that down Giulio Giulio Claudian Claudian dynasty and the reason why it's called the Giulio Claudio dynasty is that all of these characters so let me let me circle or more underlined them so all all of me all of these characters right over here are essentially from the same family that are their descendant from both the Julian line Julius Caesar and the Claudian family so that's why it's called the Giulio Claudian dynasty now at the end of the Giulio Claudian dynasty you have a new dynasty of estación there's a short Civil War so the Pax Romana is not without some war and bloodshed in fact this whole time there's a lot of relatives being killed people who might threaten the emperor being killed and that's just talking about the Romans themselves they're constantly fighting the dramatic tribes and trend groups in the Middle East and taking more and more and more territory these extremely bloody thing they're constantly enslaving people the Roman Empire sometimes and these looks like this neat clean idealistic thing but there was a lot of enslaving of people destroying of towns killing people out of paranoia or really just out of the joy of killing if you take the case of Caligula or Nero so that you have the Flavian dynasty I don't have the three Flavian Emperor's depicted right over here you have this you have this basin you have Titus and you have the mission of note the Colosseum the famous calcium in Rome was built during their time they're also known for the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem and then after that you have what historians and especially niccolò machiavelli so this is many centuries later called the good emperors and the good emperors are these characters let me let me square them off right over here and these are really the last five emperors of the Pax Romana and we should even use the term good maybe in quotation marks because for Rome's enemies for the slaves of Rome for the for the the people who were thrown into the Colosseum just because they were a prisoner of war or they committed some simple crime the Roman Empire didn't seem good but the reason why they reviewed good is they were viewed as able administrators they continued to expand the Roman Empire Trajan in particulars the peak of the Roman Empire comes in terms of geography comes under Trajan's rule that's this map right over here this is the largest geographic extent that the Roman Empire takes on Trajan is succeeded by Hadrian most known for Hadrian's Wall here the upper bound of the Roman Empire and then the Pax Romana ends with Marcus Aurelius who is viewed as a he's actually wrote meditations he's a philosopher Emperor he's a face he's viewed as one of the last great stoic philosophers and so with that you have the end of this period of Pax Romana and as we'll see in the next few videos we then start really getting into the decline of at least the Western Roman Empire's will see the Eastern Roman Empire outlives the west by a good thousand years