Who is your Favourite Roman Emperor?

I would have to say Marcus Aurelius, Hadrian, and Trajan. An interesting thing I learned about Marcus Aurelius is, one of his goals was to expand the empire in one place (I believe it was Dacia not sure) to a more easily defensible border, but was constantly set back by barbarian incursions into the empire. Then he died before he had the time to accomplish his goal. I wonder what would have happened if he did expand Rome's frontiers to more easily defensable positions.

Julius caesar can not in anyway be called a mass murderer. You can not apply todays moral standards and rules to something that happened 2000 years ago. He was playing by a totally different rulebook, and came from a culture that was vastly different from any of ours.

And most of his "murdering" was killing Gallic Inserections.

He was a mass murderer by today's standards.

No he was not, almost all of the poeple he "killed", where gallic warriors fighting in battle. This is not murder, this is war. Did inncents die, sure in what war has that not happened. But he did not go around rounding up children and slaughtering them on mass. Once again you can't judge him with our set of morals when he was living by a totally different set.

I hope military tactics are considered military.

Most of them were killed in war.

Due to war.

Are you seriously gonna use slavery as an argument against Julius Caesar? I mean come on. You cant judge him by modern standards on slavery.

Well no shit, this was common practice among the Romans.

Sure he's a mass murderer just like everyone else. That's humanity for you.

People die in war. Killing people in war does not make you a mass murderer.

By TODAY"S standards. Stop judging people by the standards of today.

^look above.

Well, for one, you guys seem to be obsessed with Josef Stalin, you know, the #1 mass murderer. I doubt that you can just dismiss all of his immense accomplishments based on the fact that he was a mass murderer.

No just no. Yes people died by his hand, yes he sold people into slavery, but guess what that was the norm back then. It was universially excepted that if you conquered your enemies, you where allowed to takes slaves, the guals themselves did the same thing, so no you can't not judge him for that for doing what was considered normal and fair. As for him killing a million people, once again this was war, the vast majority of the deaths where gallic warriors in battle, while women and children did die in his campaign, he never went out of his way to slughter them, unlike someone like hitler. And yes conquest was considered to be honorable and filled with glory. The romans believed that, the gauls believed that, pretty much everyone back then viewed it as such. He cannot be compared to people like Hitler and Slobadan Milosevic because they just killed civilians, defensless innocents, while most of the people caesar killed where warriors in battle, can you not see a difference between this? If you judge caesar by these standards, then you must judge every successful general a history to be a mass murderer.

ha funny. By the way, weren't you the guy who was defending the soviets and their rapefest to germany in ww2, in the Greates military leader thread I believe?

I believe he said the Germans had it coming.