Oh yeah, America is so like Rome... Fucking douches.

^Upvoted^

I still think his uncle (Caligula) was No.1 "Nuttier than a ton of squirrel shit" Roman Emperor though.

Gasp! He was a crossdresser! What a monster.

>> ^direpickle:

Gasp! He was a crossdresser! What a monster.


Me thinks it was killing mommy and wifey...

>> ^Lawdeedaw:

>> ^direpickle:
Gasp! He was a crossdresser! What a monster.

Me thinks it was killing mommy and wifey...


Still. It's a funny thing to stick alongside genocide, matricide, general homicide, and the decline of an entire empire.

Moving this video to Lawdeedaw's personal queue. It failed to receive enough votes to get sifted up to the front page within 2 days.

Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpjW3JzCpew&feature=related
Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_yV2SN_9HA&feature=related

Really enjoy this series, I'm going to have to watch the Caligula one next, if @Barseps seems to think he was "nuttier"!

*promote

Promoting this video and sending it back into the queue for one more try; last queued - promote requested by alien_concept.

Hehe. Reminds me of a lecture I once attended, roughly translated: "Never trust a book about Nero: Ancient propaganda."
Edit: Not even Tacitus is a credible source, he used hearsay, had an own agenda, emphasised and left out facts.


@ lawdeedaw: I looked up the book on amazon, and I tend to trust the bad reviews there because they are the least likely to be written by a publicist or the author; according to the bad review, the book is not accurate. Of course this mustn't be true.

>> ^DerHasisttot:

Hehe. Reminds me of a lecture I once attended, roughly translated: "Never trust a book about Nero: Ancient propaganda."
Edit: Not even Tacitus is a credible source, he used hearsay, had an own agenda, emphasised and left out facts.

@ lawdeedaw: I looked up the book on amazon, and I tend to trust the bad reviews there because they are the least likely to be written by a publicist or the author; according to the bad review, the book is not accurate. Of course this mustn't be true.


I guess most ancient history can never be truly accurate. Historians surely would gather every source they could and puzzle it together. I wonder what is accurate and how that guy on amazon knows for a fact, haha

@DerHasisttot too

The book is repetitious (Annoying filler) and also speculates every now and again--however, that speculation is clearly an educated guess. Take Caligula's death. Everyone knows he was assassinated. However, the author speculates that he had himself killed.

First, Caligula thought himself a god, so death wasn't really bad--in fact it was the next step since he was pretty much at the top. Hard to do more than become a god. So, his list was done, and it was all downhill.

Second, he had a wicked going away party. A boat decked out with gold floorboards, a week long orgy, then the final day. That day he got in front of everyone in the arena, had his favorite gladiator bugger his ass and then had that irreplaceable stud executed during climax.

Third, he had placed an incompetent man to replace him--of course it was speculated that the man just played the retard so he would survive. For Caligula it was hard to look bad when you had a stuttering fool replacing you.

This timeline was very convincing to the author so he noted what he thought. But he noted it may not have been the case because, as we have noted, the past was tainted by people who hated those emperors and by time itself. In fact, the author notes their tainted testimony multiple times. What more can the author do besides that?

Of course people don't care about those notes, do they?

Oh, and watching the History Channel version--there is not much of a difference... In fact, I think he cheated and took material from that rendition.

>> ^alien_concept:

>> ^DerHasisttot:
Hehe. Reminds me of a lecture I once attended, roughly translated: "Never trust a book about Nero: Ancient propaganda."
Edit: Not even Tacitus is a credible source, he used hearsay, had an own agenda, emphasised and left out facts.

@ lawdeedaw: I looked up the book on amazon, and I tend to trust the bad reviews there because they are the least likely to be written by a publicist or the author; according to the bad review, the book is not accurate. Of course this mustn't be true.

I guess most ancient history can never be truly accurate. Historians surely would gather every source they could and puzzle it together. I wonder what is accurate and how that guy on amazon knows for a fact, haha

I'm currently reading a book on the Roman conquest of Italy, i.e. several hundred years prior to the events of this video. Quite a lot of the book is concerned with the accuracy, or not, of the sources. I would expect that any serious book on the subject would be similar, since it is quite hard to make a credible claim of exact knowledge of events 2000 years ago when all the remaining sources were written either by enemies of the subject, or a very long time after the fact.

ISBN 9781844159376, Roman conquests: Italy, by Ross Cowan, and it's quite good.
>> ^alien_concept:

>> ^DerHasisttot:
Hehe. Reminds me of a lecture I once attended, roughly translated: "Never trust a book about Nero: Ancient propaganda."
Edit: Not even Tacitus is a credible source, he used hearsay, had an own agenda, emphasised and left out facts.

@ lawdeedaw: I looked up the book on amazon, and I tend to trust the bad reviews there because they are the least likely to be written by a publicist or the author; according to the bad review, the book is not accurate. Of course this mustn't be true.

I guess most ancient history can never be truly accurate. Historians surely would gather every source they could and puzzle it together. I wonder what is accurate and how that guy on amazon knows for a fact, haha