Emperors stayed honest because nearly half were overthrown

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

1. 32:50

   it is that there is no right to the throne. And this is a function of the Roman matrix of politics here. In other words, so here's a bit of a paradox. What we call the Roman Republic was the most imperialistic phase of Roman history. This is when the Romans did most of their conquering. What we call the empire is much less imperialistic in this way. That's much more defensive in its approach, right?

2. 33:18

   And yet our terms are a little mismatched in that way. The empire is more a function of that it has an emperor rather than it is engaged in imperialism. And that emperor emerged out of the republic, but emerged out of the republic in a very strange way. In other words, not as a dynasty that created the state. So, for example, if you think of the Ottoman Empire, many other empires, the whole thing existed because this dynasty engaged in conquest and was successful in creating the state.

3. 33:55

   And so the dynasty was like at the heart of the state. But that's not at all the case in the Roman Empire. The emperor is a figure who emerged within a republic. And in order to create peace after the civil wars, those emperors had to, for a long time, kind of pretend that they were not what they really were. by basically, you know, continuing to flatter the idea of a republic that is, you know, that has a first citizen, maybe.

4. 34:24

   Oh, no, no, I'm not a king. I'm just, I have this office and that office and that office, whatever the Senate has given me. Now, we understand that's a facade, but the fact that they had to create this facade at all is very important. Can we actually just linger on that? I mean, how much of this, because you said they had to create this facade. Yeah. Did Augustus, who started the whole thing of the first emperor of Rome, did he have to act that way? Because he kept acting like he's not an absolute monarch. And he could have gone hardcore, destroy the Senate, just full hardcore rule dictatorship.

5. 35:05

   How does he govern then? So he wants to be an effective governor and he also wants to not be overthrown. Exactly. Because, you know, just because you ended one civil war doesn't mean that there's not going to be another. You have to create a consensus such that people don't want to have another civil war. If he did what you said, which he in theory could have done, but that would have just led to more wars.

6. 35:28

   Right. So the problem is that the emperors, even those who come to power through violence, they can't prevent other people from trying to come to power through violence because, like I said, no one has a right to the throne. We should also say one more thing where, did I carefully say this, but it seems like riots and civil wars is a feature, not a bug of the system. Yes. This is a different thing that we have to the modern day.

7. 35:59

   It's because the threat of a civil war, a violent civil war where you overthrow the government and there's just a lot of death and struggle for power is always a threat. That's another incentive, I guess the stick, not the carrot, but the stick for the emperor to behave. Yes, it's the main one. In other words, just take the thousand years that I study. There's something like 120 civil wars. Now, these are usually very swift. They're over quickly and they're never about ideology. So they're not like modern civil wars. Right. It's about slavery or the rights of kings or whatever. No, no, no. They're solely about who has the power. All sides have the same ideology. They talk about, you know, the responsibility of government in the same way. Right. They're just competing over who's the best man to do the job. Right.

8. 36:53

   And so once you have that situation, and it might not be a civil war, it could be a palace coup, it could be a kind of fighting in the capital, something like that. Once everyone's taken their side and you have a winner, that's the emperor. And you often overthrow the previous regime. I'll give you some statistics. Something like 46 percent of the emperors of Constantinople are overthrown through violence. 46 percent. That's almost half. Right.

9. 37:22

   Right. So that's a huge that's a huge number, which means that every emperor is vulnerable and insecure and they know it. Right. So what they have to do is make sure that that doesn't happen to them. And the way to do that is not by arresting and executing everybody you think might be a threat or just generally behaving like, you know, a Caligula or Nero that will just get you killed like they know this.

10. 37:45

    So the best way to avoid that fate is to actually do the things that will make people happy so that they don't support a rebel if a rebel decides to appear. And sometimes rebels would appear. There's a kind of convention in Constantinople. Sometimes you think, hmm, that emperor is pretty unpopular and I think I can overthrow him.