John the Apostle and Evangelist would agree, as he was immersed in a tub of boiling oil in AD 95 at the explicit command of this emperor. He saw the formation of his dynasty, whose main legacy was the lunatic Domitian.Īlmost every major writer of the time from Pliny to Suetonius claims that Domitian, who wound up ruling longer than almost any other Roman ruler in that period, was a tyrant. Vespasian was unique in that he’d been a senator and a soldier, so perhaps it’s no surprise he was Machiavellian before there was a term for it. His decade-long rule saw Rome plant boots (or at least footprints) in both Bavaria and Britain. However, as Socialists like to find nice things to say about mass-murdering maniacs like Stalin (e.g., that he “industrialized the Soviet Union”), it has been attributed to Trajan that “Nero’s rule excelled all other emperors.” While it is true that Nero’s reign began well enough and he did get a lot of building done, he also commenced the full-blown slaughters of believers in Christ, and carried out atrocities that even our jaded post-modern sensibilities cringe at.Īnother emperor whose legacy included not only the persecution of Christians but the demolition of the beloved Temple of Jerusalem in AD 70. His story and legend is so well-known that there’s no need to repeat it here, save that he began a blanket persecution of Christians.
The first, worst and best-known of the psychopathic Caesars, it didn’t hurt his successors that he’d committed such atrocities, as it made them easier to re-institute, or simply to continue with the carnage. For another: if the rulers are also murderers, it makes elimination of their enemies much easier on their non-existent conscience.īut who were these lunatic leaders? Here are 11 of the worst: Well, for one thing it’s always good for a single-party demagogue to have a scapegoat when things go wrong, and traditionally the Jewish people have had that role thrust on them. However, as we all know, it didn’t take long for the leaders of Rome to go from looking askance at these new Jewish “converts” to Christianity to murdering them wholesale. Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar suggested, not without historical proof, that the early Christians were considered dangerous to the Roman Empire - which was on its last legs without even realizing it - and thus they were persecuted since “right from the beginning Christianity was seen as a total, highly dangerous revolution.” Part of this comes from the fact that the Roman hierarchy considered its Greek-imported polytheistic panoply of gods as necessary to maintaining public order.