Birthday Greetings # 62

Wouldn't it be great to be emperor?  Let me clarify that.  Wouldn't it be great to be emperor if all you had to do all day was lounge around being dissolute while somebody else did all the work?  Lissome, smooth skinned women, and handsome, well sculpted young men would be yours for the having if you could spare the time from drinking, gambling, eating, sleeping or collecting stamps (some emperors get a little weird) and all you had to do in return was pose for the occasional coin.  Is being emperor starting to sound a little more attractive now?  Hells yeah!

Well you know where this is going.  Happy birthday to Lucius Aurelius Verus Augustus, Roman emperor.  We know him as Lucius Verus and when I say "we" I mean whoever Wikipedia cribbed the information from.  I've commented in the past on the Roman habit of creating descendents for themselves by the simple expedient of grabbing the nearest male in the vicinity and adopting them.  Following this method the emperor Hadrian adopted Lucius' father.  However the father died before Hadrian leaving the emperor no choice but to start again.  His eye was on a capable young lad named Marcus (I'll bet it was) but he also had a soft spot for the son of his first choice.  So he adopted an elderly senator named Antoninus Pius on condition that he in turn adopted both Marcus and Lucius.

At this point its starting to sound like the plot of a daytime soap opera but it all worked as planned.  Hadrian died and Antoninus Pius took over.  Then Antoninus Pius died and Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus took over.  Mind you the Senate would have been very happy to just take Marcus but he insisted that Lucius come along for the ride.

With Antoninus Pius safely among the gods Marcus settled down to rule the empire and Lucius settled down to provide an interesting contrast.  At first things went pretty well with both men in Rome dealing with floods, poor harvests and all the things emperors are supposed to deal with.  Unfortunately one of the things that Roman emperors had to deal with was the Parthians.  They invaded Armenia (a location that both Rome and Persia considered worth fighting over for reasons that are beyond me) and beat up the local Roman troops.  Then they beat up some less local Roman troops and when rumours started to spread of a revolt in Syria as well (I could just be getting this stuff from the news) it was decided (by Marcus) that the presence of an emperor (Lucius) was required.

Its unlikely that the presence of an emperor was required.  I say that because Lucius took about a year to get to the warzone (or more accurately, adjacent to the warzone) largely due to his habit of stopping off for long parties along the way.  Once there he busied himself finding a mistress while his commanders won the war.  That's the official story anyway.  On the other hand if you're a commander in chief with absolutely zero experience and a clutch of obviously talented subordinates then keeping out of their way is probably the best military decision you can make.  Lucius made the troops know that the emperor's eye was on them (a bloodshot eye with a dilated pupil but on them nonetheless) and reassured them of how seriously the state took this campaign.

With victory gained Lucius returned to Rome where Marcus gave him a triumph.  Lucius settled back down in Rome hanging out with actors, turning his home into a bar and going nuts over the chariot races.  So far so normal.  Whether it was deliberate or not Lucius probably did quite a bit to help his imperial collaborator.  Marcus could run the empire better than anybody (and certainly better than Lucius) and didn't need any help in that regard.  But a stoic, dutybound workaholic wasn't any better thought of in those days than it is now.  Marcus gave the Romans good administration, Lucius kept them entertained.  Those of you in England think about Princes William and Harry.  I'm sure William is terribly nice but lets face it, he's about as interesting as a bowl of tapioca pudding.  Enter Prince Harry to distract the crowd while William does the boring important bits.

Unfortunately for Lucius the good times were coming to an end.  Now that the Parthians were beaten the Germanic Marcomanni tribe (who had been patiently waiting their turn) went to war with the empire and both Marcus and Lucius headed north to sort them out.  For Lucius it was the last foray.  The war was less than a year old when he came down with what was diagnosed as food poisoning (but is now suspected to be smallpox, an interesting commentary on the state of medical science at the time) and died shortly afterwards.  Marcus seems to have been genuinely upset which indicates that possibly Lucius was a little more important to him than people realised at the time.  Games were held in his honour and naturally he was deified.  By this time there were so many Roman emperors among the gods that the originals were probably feeling a little outnumbered.