this post was submitted on 21 Mar 2026
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RoughRomanMemes

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A place to meme about the glorious ROMAN EMPIRE (and Roman Republic, and Roman Kingdom)! Byzantines tolerated! The HRE is not.

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[–] PugJesus@piefed.social 6 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Explanation: Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, usually known in English simply as Marcus Aurelius, was an Emperor of Rome who is generally well-regarded for his personal restraint, his attentiveness to government affairs, and his interest in Stoic philosophy. His work on Stoicism, Aurelius's Meditations, were only published posthumously, but remain highly regarded even today.

... however, it was a practice of upstart Roman Emperors who took the throne by force to adopt the name of previous Emperors as a form of continuity, in the same way that a monarch named Tim might opt to be known as John VI when he takes the throne. It's a name with more legitimacy. Unfortunately for Marcus Aurelius, two other figures adopted the name Marcus Aurelius Antoninus after him - the Emperors better known in the modern day as Caracalla and Elagabalus. He was not actually related to either of them (though his own son, Commodus, was not exactly a pride of the Empire), but it feels better if the Imperial family all seems like one line of succession, with respect for past Emperors as a son respects his father and ancestors!

... Caracalla was a bloodthirsty animal who never met anyone who he didn't want to kill, except maybe his mother, Julia Domna. He attempted to assassinate his father, assassinated his brother, executed Senators on a whim, and butchered the entire town of Alexandria in Egypt for making fun of him - normally an act tolerated by Emperors, who preferred to uphold the idea of living in a republic rather than a brutal autocracy. He was assassinated by his own bodyguard while taking a piss.

Elagabalus was... a horny teenager who was a cultural outsider with an ambiguous gender identity given ultimate autocratic power over a very chauvinistic and traditionalist polity. It went about as well as one might imagine. Hell, arguably, it went better than one might imagine, considering Elagabalus managed to hold onto power for several years before being couped. But their reign was one long string of scandals, including the religious obsession of Elagabalus with the Syrian sun god (by whose name we know them, and a rock they moved to Rome, which Elagabalus is hugging in the background, which was considered a sacred object of the Syrian Sun God), a notable marriage with a chariot driver who beat Elagabalus whenever he found them cheating (which was apparently often), and violation of innumerable cultural, religious, and government taboos. Some of them are probably exaggerated, but in general terms, it is accepted that Elagabalus was certainly at the very least bizarre to Roman eyes and uninterested in adopting a cultural 'compromise' position with the polity they ruled over.

[–] TRBoom@lemmy.zip 3 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Is Elagabalus the one in the comic driving a chariot pulled by women?

[–] PugJesus@piefed.social 3 points 2 weeks ago

Yep! Same Emperor. A, uh... controversial individual.