- This semester I really liked,
well, last semester,
it started because I had a dream about my Humanities class.
And we were reading about ancient Rome
and I got to learn a bit about all the emperors.
And this awesome guy named Suetonius here,
he wrote a book called The Twelve Caesars.
And it catalogs the biographies of Augustus to Domitian
which is a giant span of time cause he's a crazy writer.
And then, I wanna do an honors program
learning more about these historical characters,
or people, more like.
Suetonius, as he was writing,
his work comes off a lot like he's a gossip.
Like the National Enquirer of ancient Rome, you know.
Oh, guess who's sleepin' with who, and this is goin' on.
And then I found another person named Tacitus,
who wrote primarily about Tiberius and Claudius and Nero.
Who we will get to learn later on in this presentation.
He is a bit of a grump.
Tacitus is grumpy, I'm assuming,
because he survived the age of Domitian
in which a lot of senators got killed,
and he was one of rhe senators.
So, anyone who survived that kind of stuff
is probably really grumpy and it shows in his work.
But he's probably fun anyway.
So, onto the first emperor of Rome.
Here we have Augustus Octavian Caesar,
he was known for his air of peace.
By the time he was through with his reign,
due to the fact that he died.
Thankfully, it was a peaceful death.
The Germans, according to Tacitus,
were the only people at war with the Romans.
So, he also, he kept,
he made a lot of reforms that were really good.
He...
made a law saying that the men of Rome
shouldn't get married to little children,
just to avoid being a father.
And he made a lot of other good things,
he built a lot of architecture.
And Augustus used to boast that he found the Rome,
a city of brick,
and left it clothed in marble.
So, he's one of the more famous Roman emperors.
and I personally love him
because he is one of the few that actually brought peace
and managed to bring the good
and balance the bad between societies.
And I just think, overall, he's a really good person.
And he portrayed in a lot of different media,
first being the HBO show, Rome.
And he is portrayed as a very strong person
because his character comes into the Roman
politics right after Julius Caesar dies.
And he takes over the empire for himself,
getting rid of Mark Antony, Brutus,
Cassius and all other opposition.
And he's just awesome.
And in I, Claudius, written,
in the book written by Robert Graves,
Augustus is not portrayed as strong as in Rome.
Because in I, Claudius,
Augustus is being controlled by his wife,
Livia, who wants her son, Tiberius, on the throne.
So, she's manipulating him and it's a disaster.
And he just comes across as more weak.
And then, of course, we have Night at the Museum.
Officially, I don't know if Octavius
is a mix of Julius Caesar and Augustus.
But Octavius is the little miniature guy in the museum
that Larry Daley runs into.
And he's a really fun character.
And the writers also put in,
in Night at the Museum,
that Octavius is probably gay or at least bi,
which is actually historically true.
Because people like Mark Antony accused
Augustus of sleeping with Julius Caesar to gain power.
And that's just one of many rumors Suetonius dug up.
Augustus's wife, Livia,
is of much debate because a lot of people didn't like her.
And in I, Claudius,
she is said to have poisoned him.
And a lot of other sources tend to say that she might have.
But knowing Suetonius, he didn't mention anything.
So, I personally think
that she was just more of a plot device for writers.
Augustus died in 41 BC and his adopted son,
Tiberius took over the empire.
Now, adoption in ancient Rome is a lot different
because you could adopt someone
who is already like, 35, you know.
So, and then, Tiberius, he became the next emperor.
He was rather crazy.
He actually started out really nice.
He was very humble and he was like,
you know guys, I don't really want the empire.
I mean, you guys can give it to me.
and maybe when I don't need it anymore,
I will give it back.
But he didn't, of course.
And he was a disaster
because he was not only a sadistic freak
but, no you guys, I mean, seriously,
he threw people off cliffs.
And he was also perverted in which he was a Pedophile.
And that didn't go well for anybody.
And eventually, Tiberius died of illness.
Or he was murdered by Caligula,
who Suetonius mentions,
might have killed Tiberius
as revenge for killing all of Caligula's family,
which Tiberius did.
And Caligula was nicknamed, Caligula,
because it means little boots.
And he grew up in Roman army and his name was Gaius Caesar.
And, yeah, he ruled pretty well
for a few months until he fell ill.
And then, Suetonius says that after he fell ill,
his personality went down the drain.
Because I don't know what happened, no one does.
But here, he's portrayed very differently in the media.
We have The Robe, here, played by Jay Robinson.
And in The Robe,
Caligula is played as somewhat of a stereotypical bad guy.
He is somewhat insane 'cause Caligula,
not only in real-life was disastrous,
he also suffered from mood-swings
which just randomly killed people because he got upset.
You know, like, he was very unstable.
And in The Robe,
he's just played as this somewhat crazy person.
But not like,
not like in the movie Caligula played by Malcolm McDowell,
who is completely insane.
But I personally think,
that I, Claudius, played by John Hurt here,
he has struck the balance
between human and...
insane quite well,
you know what I mean.
Like, Malcolm McDowell,
he is played as, from the trailer I saw anyway,
he is played like just someone
who is just completely off their rocker.
Caligula, in real life, had more sense.
But the reason that I, Claudius,
feels like a better portrayal is that Caligula is seen
as still a person but he's not completely gone.
One of the best thing in I, Claudius is,
in real-life, Caligula would dress up
in like women's clothes and other stuff.
He just dressed how he wanted.
Conventions of clothing and gender didn't matter to him.
And he dressed up as Venus in I, Claudius,
and did this crazy dance that was like,
scandalous and he was a scantily clad Venus
and it was the greatest thing ever.
The other thing, too,
the I, Claudius, Caligula also was also completely nuts
because he, not only as it says here,
he slept with his sisters.
And in I, Claudius,
Drusilla got pregnant and then he decided
to kill her by cutting out the child and then eating it.
But that comes from the reason being in I, Claudius,
because Caligula, in real-life,
decided he wanted to be a God,
a living God.
So, he had everyone
treating him as such and built himself a temple.
And in this show, in I, Claudius, he thinks he is Jove.
And so, he thinks that his children are gonna overthrow him.
Like the Greeks did Zeus and whatnot.
So, that is what happened.
And sadly and most fortunately actually,
Caligula's reign was very, very short.
It was only like, a little under four years,
because he got assassinated.
(laughs)
And that left the empire to his uncle, Claudius,
who...
stammers and is kind of bumbling
and Suetonius said he would hobble a lot.
And he managed to live through Tiberius and Caligula,
and somehow managed to get the throne all by accident.
Because the people in the show, I, Claudius, here,
he was hiding behind these drapes
when the assassins who killed Caligula came in.
And they were like,
oh, is that you Claudius?
And he was like, oh my god, don't kill me.
And then, they're like, oh, we won't kill you,
we'll make you emperor.
Because it'll be a funny joke to everybody else
because everybody knows you're stupid.
(laughs)
No, like, in real life,
he, Claudius wasn't a very loved person by the nobles
such as...
Livia and Augustus and people.
But in The Robe,
he's played a lot like the caring uncle
who wants good things to happen.
And the thing with Claudius in the media,
I always feel like they use him to wrap things up
in a nice little bow.
The bow from Caligula's crazy reign,
to having it be,
oh, Caligula's dead, oh my gosh, look,
hail Claudius, guys, he's our new emperor.
Everything is peachy clean now.
And Claudius is in the background of a lot of movies.
The road to Nero, the Nero, The Road to Tyranny,
he kind of plays a central character.
Claudius is the other Roman emperor
who's beloved by the Roman people.
He also married Agrippina and Messalina
who used him to get what they wanted,
which sadly, which is sad 'cause he was a good person.
And then after Claudius's death,
Agrippina's son, Nero,
took the throne and that went disastrous.
Because he burned down the city and everything else.
And finally, this man named Galba came in.
And was like, Nero, you're messing stuff up.
I'm gonna have to take over the empire.
You are now an enemy of the state.
And so, Nero had no choice
but to go kill himself, unfortunately.
But then, the Roman empire went on.
And even though all of these people
were sometimes historically crazy or don't do good things,
I think, the reason why they've lived
on is because they just,
they show human nature and they just,
they show people what it's like to be in power.
And some of them are good and some of them are bad.
And that's just the way the world worked
because everybody uses power differently.
Thank you.