FinermanWorks

September 11, 1649:  Oliver Cromwell never lost a battle.  His honor is another matter. 

Today is the anniversary of his most notorious campaign: the sack of Drogheda. The Irish remember it as a massacre while the English describe it as a siege: they are both right. Drogheda was an Irish town with Royalist sympathies and a backwater garrison whose heroism far surpassed common sense. The town’s 3000 militia and volunteers faced Cromwell’s 12,000 man “model army” and defied the English demand to surrender. What was that garrison thinking? Were there rumors of Cromwell’s affable nature or his military ineptitude? Had the garrison seen visions of St. Patrick doing a jig on the battlements? The punters in Dublin wouldn’t have given Drogheda good odds.

Now, the terms of a surrender should not be confused with a retirement package. The yielding garrison would have an indefinite term of imprisonment; however, it would be spared massacre or slavery–the very fate guaranteed if the garrison refused to surrender. Furthermore, the choice of surrender or death was not even Cromwellian. It was the standard etiquette of siege warfare–and dated back to Troy and Jericho.

Perhaps it was prospect of English food or mandatory bible classes, but Drogheda preferred to die. And it did. Cromwell’s army stormed the town, massacring the garrison and much of the civilian population. Some desperate souls sought sanctuary in the town’s Catholic churches; could you imagine a worse place to avoid the fury of Puritans? Even by the fairly lax standards of massacres, setting afire a crowded church was unusually odious.

The Irish have not forgotten Drogheda or Cromwell.

September 10, 210 B.C.:  The Emperor Qin Shi Huang died…but for how long?

How would you react if I said that George Washington was a vampire, Charlemagne a demon and  Peter the Great an extra-terrestrial?  You would think that I was joking or psychotic (although the two are not mutually exclusive).  But what if I made all those aspersions against Qin Shi Huang, the first Emperor of China?  You could say, “Yes, I saw that in a movie.”  He has been a featured villain in “My Date With a Vampire” and “Stargate.”  A  computer-animated version of him recently threatened mankind in “The Mummy:  Tomb of the Dragon Emperor.”  Don’t worry, Brendan Fraser saved you.

So why does Hollywood and the West so hate this Chinese leader who forged feuding states into a great empire, unified his realm with a common language, and built the Great Wall as well as that fabulous tomb with a life-sized terra cotta army to guard him in the afterlife?  Actually, we don’t.  From our perspective, he was so cool that we named the country for him.  Yes, the western pronunciation (equal parts error and arrogance) used to say “Chin” instead of the correct Qin.  We now know better although we have to yet call the country Qina.

He was born in 259 BC and with the less exalted name of Ying Zheng; Qin Shi Huang was a title he would bestow upon himself .  At the time, there was no China but rather seven vying kingdoms.   Qin was one of these kingdoms, and considered a rather backward state.  If dismissed as a barbarian, Ying Zheng embraced the role.  Ascending at the age of 13 to the throne, Zheng made war his study and policy.  His army was better-armed and trained than his rivals, and he eschewed the etiquette that had governed warfare among the kingdoms.  Traditional war had been waged as a ritualized mass duel.  Zheng did not believe in a fair fight; he preferred to be a victorious barbarian than a dead gentleman.  In 221 B.C., by the time he was 38, he had conquered the other six kingdoms.  With no modesty but complete accuracy, he proclaimed himself the First Emperor of Qin:  Qin Shi Huang.

There had been Chinese emperors before him, but they were kings with more pretense than power, asserting a degree of precedence over the other rulers.  But Qin Shi Huang was the real–and unrivaled–sovereign of an empire, and he was going to rule every bit of it.  To govern over this large and diverse realm, he established a centralized bureaucracy.  The empire was divided into provinces, the provinces into prefectures; the corps of administrators had limited powers, sufficient to do the emperor’s will but not challenge it.   The former kingdoms were to be integrated into one.  Where there had seven different systems of weights and measures, there now would only be one uniform system.  Where there had been seven different dialects, now there would be just one  language unifying the educated of China.  Of course, the peasants could maintain their idiomatic garble, so long as they obeyed commands in the official Chinese.  In fact, Qin Shi Huang  had a project for them.  In the north, nomadic tribes threatened China, and the Emperor did not like any barbarians but himself.  He assigned 300,000 laborers to build a wall along the northern border.  I don’t think that particular wall needs a formal introduction.

The Emperor died in 210 B.C..   His tomb, surrounded  by 8000 terra cotta warriors, now commands the tribute of  the world’s tourists.  Unfortunately, the emperor’s  heirs seemed unnaturally eager for their own tombs.  They proceeded to kill off each other without gaining control of the empire.  The provinces revolted and China collapsed into 18 kingdoms.  The last of  Shi Huang’s dynasty abdicated in 207 B.C., hoping to avoid execution.  He only delayed it for a year, but his captor was to establish a dynasty that would last four centuries: the Han.  While  Qin rule may have lasted scarely 20 years, the example of Shi Huang has been followed for 2000 years.  The subsequent imperial dynasties would reestablish Shi Huang’s empire and most of his methods.

So how did Qin Shi Huang acquire the  diabolical  reputation that Hollywood loves to exploit?  However forceful and dynamic we might think him, the Chinese intellectuals hated him.  History, while often written by the victor, is always written by the literate.  These Chinese intellectuals condemn the Emperor for suppressing the teachings and writings of Confucius.  Shi Huang’s new empire had no place for the values and ideas of the old kingdoms; he regarded their contemplative nature and reverence for tradition as weaknesses.  The writings of Confucius were burned; on a number of occasions, so were Confucian scholars.  The suppression was so relentless that only incomplete works of Confucius now survive.  Of course, subsequent generations of Chinese scholars revered Confucius and so they reviled Shi Huang, condemning him for what he actually did as well anything they could imagine.

Their version of the Emperor was of shameful birth, the son of a pregnant concubine foisted upon a naive king.  And that duplicitous start was the portent of an evil life.  A demon in human form, he immersed himself in the black arts, aspiring to immortality.  (Given the quality of his heirs, an immortal emperor would have been preferable.)  According to one tale, Shi Huang took doses of mercury to attain eternal life.  Well, mercury certainly would stop him from getting any older.  He was all of 50 when he took up residence in his palatial tomb.

But could such a fiend stay dead?  He is still plotting crimes and avoiding assassination in Chinese films,  and Hollywood certainly keeps his supernational version vicariously alive.    But has China actually seen the return of the ruthless, dynamic, perhaps even charismatic tyrant?  Mao Zedong seems a likely reincarnation.

September 9, 9:  Three Legions March into a German Forest; You Might Still Find the Body Fragments

Rome presumed that it controlled Germany from the Rhine to the Elbe, but the Germans were unaware of it. Their response to Roman tax collectors was to murder them. In A.D. 9, Rome sent three legions to crush German resistance. The Roman commander was Quinctilius Varus, whose chief qualification was being Augustus’ grandnephew-in-law. Varus did have talent for suppression. While governor of Syria, he taught Roman etiquette in Galilee, crucifying 2,000 unappreciative Jews, none of whom became celebrities.

Perhaps Varus expected an equal demand for crucifixions in Germany and wanted an ample supply of wood. He marched his legions into the Teutoburg Forest. They never came out. Actually, Varus’ head did, a momento from the German leader to Augustus. Rome launched punitive expeditions under more of Augustus’ in-laws. Fortunately, they were better generals and averted annihilation. When the Romans came upon the battle site of the Teutoburg Forest, even hardened legionaires were amazed at German etiquette. The captured Romans had been burned alive.  Setting the decor standards for Biedermeier, Roman skulls were nailed to the trees.  However, the most impressive expression of the German personality was that the Roman horses had been hanged! Rome decided that the Rhine was a satisfactory border for the Empire.

So, the Romans did not subdue Germany. Otherwise, Munich now would be called Monaco, and Wagner’s operas would be three hours shorter and far more melodious.

p.s.  For more information on Germania–or whatever it is called:  https://finermanworks.com/your_rda_of_irony/2006/10/02/a-mystery-of-the-map/

p.p.s.  And if your memory is as bad as the Scottish army was in 1513, here is another anniversary: https://finermanworks.com/your_rda_of_irony/2008/09/09/on-this-day-in-1513/

September 7, 1533:  Anne Boleyn’s Labor Day

Her father declared her a bastard and beheaded her mother, her half-sister imprisoned her as a traitor and nearly ordered her execution.  Elizabeth I would seem entitled to a psychosis or two, but she regarded these “episodes” as part of her job description.

Aside from the obvious dysfunction, the Tudors were unique for royalty:  they were intelligent and hard-working.  The Tudors actually earned the throne.

After 85 years of civil war, the English throne had become quite democratic: anyone could seize it. Henry Tudor was a middle-class Welsh adventurer who even lacked the distinction of being legitimate. His claim to royal blood was as the half-second cousin, once-removed, of Henry VI. The successful usurper, proclaiming himself Henry VII, sought immediate respectability by marrying the eldest daughter of the rival royal house. (He then made sure that the rest of her family disappeared: in convents, the Tower of London, you get the idea) The crafty king took nothing for granted. He certainly didn’t trust the nobles, most of whom had better claims to the throne than he did.

To control a restless aristocracy, Henry VII created a force that remains as terrifying now as it was then:  the civil service.  His bureaucracy remorsely taxed the nobility into a passive stupor: nobles could still afford all of their vices but not an armed rebellion.  In dealing with his other subjects–townspeople and small landowners–Henry had a novel approach:  good government.  The King had a most solicitous attitude.   Any proposal or project that would resolve problems and nurture prosperity had his support.  (That’s how the nobles’ taxes were spent.) 

Henry VIII had his father’s political shrewdness.  He may have been a serial husband but he maintained a monogamous romance with Parliament.  That English institution had been founded in 1265 by English barons who realized that the Magna Carta had left a few loopholes. Its assembly of gentry, clergy, and burghers formed a permanent council: no law could be enacted without its consent.  For two centuries, however, the Parliament had acted only like a notary public: approving and filing the royal decrees.

But to the crafty Tudors, Parliament was more than a bureaucratic eccentricity. Its members represented constituencies; the town burghers and small landowners were potential allies against the aristocracy and even the Catholic Church.  Henry VIII applied his seductive skills to wooing Parliament.  If a serenade of Greensleeves was insufficient, a knighthood on a status-starved burgher  or the deed to an estate (freshly confiscated from the Catholic Church) usually proved irresistible.  Of course, Henry’s approach also had an element of menace.   Imagine the choice confronting a member of Parliament: the King’s munificent patronage or being publicly disemboweled. Under those circumstances, you, too, might agree that the King was entitled to a divorce and that Thomas More was just being obnoxious.

If Elizabeth I could survive her family, she could easily contend with Spain, the Jesuits and her idiot cousin Mary.  She possessed all of the Tudors’ talents, few of their vices (just a bit of her father’s vanity), and a charm uniquely her own.  Unfortunately, a Virgin Queen is bad for a dynasty.

But the Tudors did save their best for last.  Happy Birthday, Your Majesty!

September 6, 1901:  President McKinley Becomes a Trophy

If it weren’t for the inconvenience of being assassinated, William McKinley should have been flattered.  Anarchists did not kill just anyone.  Those homicidal nihilists may not have respected any government, but they certainly worshipped status.  They would never waste a bullet on a postmaster or an alderman: only the most prestigious targets would do.  And the United States apparently had acquired some glamour, no longer the detritus of Britain, a failed attempt at Australia.  No, America was a world power and its President worth shooting.  The Spanish-American War really had paid off!

On this day in 1901, President McKinley was shot.  He did not die until September 14th, when he succumbed to gangrene.  No doubt our modern medicine would have saved him, if his health insurance had permitted it.  (I’m sorry, Mrs. McKinley but we can’ t be sure if that hole in your husband’s stomach and pancreas was not a pre-existing condition.  You wouldn’t expect us to pay for an old Civil War wound, would you?) 

The assassin was Leon Czolgosz, whose very name was linguistic anarchy.  Although his two bullets did not topple the American government and return mankind to Eden, Czolgosz did elevate McKinley above Benjamin Harrison into a very distinguished company of corpses: presidents, prime ministers and kings.  Between 1894 and 1913, the anarchists acquired quite a collection of big game trophies and made royalty an endangered species.

The inadvertent trendsetter was President of France, Sadi Carnot; he encountered an anarchist with a knife.  That anarchist soon after encountered a guillotine.  In 1897, an anarchist with a pistol spared Spanish Prime Minister Antonio Canovas the embarrassment of losing the Spanish-American War.  The following year, while on vacation in Switzerland, Empress Elizabeth of Austria had the misfortune to bump into an anarchist with a shoemaker’s awl; initially Frau Hapsburg could not discern the stabbing from the usual pain of wearing a corset. 

Umberto I of Italy actually might have been the Anarchist’s first trophy.  An anarchist tried stabbing him in 1878; a gun in 1900 proved more effective.  The royal family of Portugal found itself in a shooting gallery in 1908:  King Carlos and Crown Prince Luis Filipe were killed, while Prince Manuel was wounded and suddenly king; he seemed rather amenable to the idea of abdication.  In 1912, Jose Canalejas learned how Spanish Prime Ministers often retire.  The following year George I of Greece, possibly the only ruler in his dynasty who did not deserve to be shot, was. 

Occasionally the anarchists did fail.  The reprehensible Leopold II of Belgium–exploiter extraordinaire and mass-murderer of the Congo–was a target in 1902.  Two bullets hit nothing and the third broke a window   The gunman was so abysmal, bystanders wondered if he was shooting blanks; however he was a veteran of the Italian army, so that might explain his marksmanship.  And one assassination would have set the standard for bad taste.  In 1906, an anarchist hurled a bomb at King Alfonso XIII and Queen Victoria Eugenia on their wedding day.  Neither was hurt and they lived to be forced into abdication.   

Have you noticed an omission?  Where is Russia among the site of assassinations?  The anarchists really weren’t lurking there.  It wasn’t just the climate; it was also a matter of professional courtesy.  Most of the assassinations in Russia–and there were quite a few–were carried out by a radical group known as the Socialist Revolutionaries.  They never lacked for tyrannical targets–from Russian Grand Dukes to a rather dogmatic  fellow called Lenin (and they nearly killed him, leaving him a semi-invalid).  Given the Socialist Revolutionaries’ expertise and enthusiasm, the anarchists stayed out of their way.

And returning to our original topic and victim, you can see that William McKinley was in excellent company.  To Die For.

September 5, 1698:  Peter the Great Imposes a Beard Tax

Peter the Great had inherited a medieval empire. Unfortunately, the 17th century really was an inopportune time to be medieval. Even Spain was only a century behind the times. The young Tsar was determined to modernize Russia, and he wanted to see western progress for himself. So, in 1697, he travelled “in cognito” through Germany, France, the Netherlands, and Britain. Peter was not as “in cognito” as he hoped, being 6’7″ and traveling with a large entourage. The King of England did not normally greet every tourist. And most tourists ask for fresh towels rather than an alliance against the Ottoman Empire. Nonetheless, Peter found the experience to be edifying and he returned home with plans to impose progress on Russia.

Peter would have a modern army and, for the first time in six centuries, a navy. (The last Russian fleet had been incinerated by the Byzantines.) However, modern armaments would be wasted as long as the Russian mind remained medieval. Peter was determined to modernize the society as well, starting with the aristocracy. The Russian nobility had been recycling Byzantine fashion for five centuries: retro is one thing but this was stagnation. Peter demanded that his nobles look like their peers in the west.

The ladies of the court found the new fashions immodest; in their traditional Muscovite garb, a neckline was literally a neckline. For the men of the court, the transistion was worse. In place of majestic enveloping robes, they now had to wear breeches, leaving no doubt as to the shape of their legs and anywhere else in the area. But Peter made those men feel truly naked by demanding that they shave. Russian men took great pride in their beards, but Peter regarded the look as an embarrassing anachronism. No, his subjects would be as clean-shaven as Western Europeans–or else. On this day in 1698, Peter imposed a beard tax of 100 rubles annually on every Russian male except peasants and priests. In fact, even payment was no definite protection. If Peter was in one of his zanier moods, he personally would shave his hirsute subject.

Peter’s policies and tantrums did transform the aristocracy. By the early 19th century, the nobles of St. Petersburg would have been indistinguishable from those of London. (The nobles of Paris generally could be distinguished by their lack of heads or their employment as tutors in London and St. Petersburg.) The Russian aristocracy only spoke Russian to their servants; among themselves, ils parliaent francais. Indeed, when Tsar Alexander I met Napoleon in 1807, it was noted that the Russian spoke the better French. The scholarship kid from Corsica had a thick accent and would have sounded like a French Tony Danza.

For the rest of Russian society, however, Peter’s reforms were either meaningless or just an added burden. The serfs probably had to work harder to pay for master’s western wardrobe. Peter had not addressed Russia’s injustices or brooding turbulence. He had merely transformed an isolated, backward nation into an aggressive, backward nation.

September 3rd:  Happy Birthday to Diane de Poitiers

Henri II deserves to be more popular. The French king (1519-1559) may have been stupid (he never demonstrated any evidence to the contrary) and he certainly was bigoted (ask any Huguenot who survived him), but his form of adultery should earn him considerable admiration. Henri left his wife for an older woman!

And I do mean older. His mistress Diane de Poitiers was 20 years his senior. Freud might have had something to say about that, although it would have only incited Henri to start persecuting Jews. Diane (1499-1566) was a woman of great charm and beauty; that could not be said about Henri’s wife: Catherine de Medici. (Catherine was quite intelligent, but Henri would have resented that.) Unfortunately, in his enthusiasm for Diane, Henri was continually affronting his wife. Guess who received court precedence or the pick of the best chateaux? Henri must have thought that his wife was good-natured. Did I mention that he was stupid?

In 1559, Henri apparently confused jousting with soccer, and attempted to catch a lance with his eye. It was not good for his health, or for Diane’s career. The new king of France was 15 years old and not in the market for a 60 year-old mistress. Besides, the Queen Mother had a definite grudge against Diane. The unemployed courtesan did survive, but it was not a pleasant retirement. From a deluxe suite at the Louvre and a Loire estate at Chenonceau, Diane now found herself in the equivalent of a studio apartment frigidly far from anywhere of interest. She did seem to die of natural causes. Either Catherine did not live up to her murderous reputation or for once really got away with a crime.

Finally, by the standards of the 16th century, Diane had a very eccentric habit. She bathed daily. Of course, we now surmise that was the basis of her allure.

  As you see from the portrait on the right, 16th century France had its own version of iCloud.

September 2, 31 B.C.:  Why You’ve Never Heard of the Egyptian Navy

Octavian (or at least his tougher friend Agrippa) won the naval battle of Actium, triumphing over a drunk and a trollop. (Marc Antony and Cleopatra would have had a better chance in a barroom brawl.)

Mr. and Mrs. Antony had prepared for this showdown with that annoying Caesar boy by constructing a fleet of massive battleships. Just the name quinquereme suggests that they were twice the size of your standard trireme. The bows were stoutly built to withstand ramming and further protected with brass plating; you’d think that these naval fortresses might still be afloat. Of course, fortresses are not terribly mobile, and neither was the Antonys’ fleet. The ships were too massive, and the fleet’s oarsmen could barely move the deadnoughts. Yes, the quinqueremes would have crushed anything directly in their path, but Octavian’s fleet was not that obliging. The young Caesar’s ships kept moving and shooting, riddling the paralyzed behemoths until they literally were dead in the water.

Not feeling particularly suicidal that day, Cleopatra fled the battle and sailed home to Egypt. Seeing her flight, Antony abandoned his flagship and hitched a ride on Cleopatra’s galley. The rest of his fleet did not have that option, and either incinerated or surrendered. Watching the debacle from the Greek shore was Antony’s army. Without the support of the navy or the presence of their commander, Antony’s 19 legions soon surrendered to Octavian.

Marc Antony once had possessed such respect and charisma that, after losing a battle, he persuaded the victorious army to defect to him. Now, for the decadent sot, the opposite was true. He commanded neither respect nor even a viable army. His forces in Egypt either deserted or defected. Puny, reptilian Octavian had won. In any case, you have seen the movie. The drunk with the beautiful speaking voice stabbed himself, and the beauty with the annoying speaking voice snaked herself.

And that brings us to the first episode of “I, Claudius.”

p.s.  Also on this day:  https://finermanworks.com/your_rda_of_irony/2008/09/02/on-this-day-in-1898/

September 1st:  the California zoning commission in 1772

It must have been at least two weeks since Father Junipero Serra had built a mission in the territory of California and, with some 15,000 saints in the Church calendar, he was falling behind schedule.  On this day in 1772, Father Serra founded the mission of St. Luis Obispo.

Of course, you expect me to divulge exactly who Luis Obispo was, and why was he so saintly.  I won’t disappoint you.  First, Luis Obispo (1274-1297) was not really Luis, and he was not Senor Obispo either.  In fact, he was a Louis and he didn’t have a surname so much as a dynasty:  Capet.  The family business was ruling France, but Louis’ grandfather was a younger brother and relegated to being a mere Duc d’Anjou.  To his credit, the Duc did not attempt to bump off his older brother, the saintly Louis IX; instead he heard of a vacant throne and so attempted to make himself king of Southern Italy and Sicily.

The Sicilians wouldn’t have him, and the Southern Italians were less than thrilled.  The Royal House of Aragon had extra sons, too, and they were fighting for the same territory.  If the House of Anjou hoped to maintain its precarious throne, every able-bodied male in the family was expected to fight.  Apparently, Louis did not pass the physical.  (Be fair: a full suit of armor would require considerable stamina.)  If a young aristocrat was too frail for war, he obviously would not be encouraged to breed, either:  so Louis was ordained for the Church.

Of course, a scion of a royal line could forgo the drudgery of parish work: he would not be collecting bells for lepers or directing the student production of a morality play.  At the age of 20, Louis was already the Archbishop of Lyons.  It was  irrelevant that he had never attended a seminary or joined a religious order.  Neither had a number of Popes.  Fulfilling such laborious details were left to Louis’ discretion.

But in 1295, a decision was forced upon Archbishop Louis.  His older brother had died and now Louis was the heir to the Kingdom of Naples.  Since he had yet to take Holy Orders, there was nothing to bar him from the succession.  Of course, he didn’t want the responsibility and the family preferred a more robust, younger son as the heir.  So Louis joined the Franciscans.  He certainly had no problem with the order’s chastity and obedience.  Louis could even rationalize the vow of poverty because an archbishop was poorer than a king.

If Louis was no longer heir to a kingdom, as a prince of the Church he was inheriting archdioceses.  In 1297, he was appointed the Archbishop of Toulouse.  Administering both Lyons and Toulouse exhausted him; he was dead within six months.  However, he now was expected to represent the dynasty and French interests in Heaven.  If a sainthood would help his celestial status, that could easily be arranged.  Pope Clement V (born Raymond Bertrand de Got–quel coincidence) proposed Louis’ sainthood  in 1307 , and Pope John XXII (Jacques Dueze, you are noticing a pattern) formally canonized him in 1317.  He was the second saint in the Capetian line.  His great-uncle was St. Louis the King, so he was revered as St. Louis the Bishop.  In Spanish, that would translate to San Luis Obispo.

But why would Junipero Serra named a mission for San Luis Obispo?  Louis was a fellow Franciscan but there was a political motive as well.  Since 1701, the royal family of Spain was the Bourbons.  Yes, surplus French royalty was always looking for an empty throne, and Spain had one.  (They merely had to win the War of the Spanish Succession).  Madrid had basically given the Franciscans all of California to colonize and cultivate; good manners required at least one mission to be named for a French saint, and Louis the Bishop was a cousin of the Spanish Bourbons.

Of course, if the Austrian Hapsburgs had won the War of the Spanish Succession, Father Serra would have named missions for Santa Hildegunde or the Madonna of the Lederhosen.  So California lucked out.

August 31st:  Happy Birthday to Emperor Commodus

Marcus Aurelius was a statesman and philosopher.   But for all of the esteem that history has conferred on the him, he did leave the Roman Empire in the hands of a teenage idiot: his son Commodus.  The  fatuous, petulant princeling, born this day in 161, possessed no distinctions other than his father’s name and a talent for carousing.  Commodus’ reign was only as good as his advisors and his temper, and the former rarely survived the latter. He hated to be distracted from his chief interest: professional sports. The emperor preoccupied himself with managing a gladiator school. His tantrums finally compelled some endangered advisors to organize a fitting plot. The imperial jock got a fatal headlock from a professional wrestler.

How could the great Marcus Aurelius have made such a foolish choice?  Stoics are not supposed to be sentimental. Furthermore, the imperial position was not hereditary. From 96 to 180, five Emperors–Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninius Pius and Marcus Aurelius–had been selected on merit.  Heredity had proved a very poor criterion for government.

First, the Roman Patrician turned out to be very unproductive–literally. All that Italian body hair (I am referring to the men) had no correlation with fertility. Augustus had only one child–a daughter. Tiberius had only one child–a son who was murdered by his wife. Nero certainly did not prolong the dynasty by kicking to death his pregnant wife. And with Caligula’s habit of “dating” his sisters, sterility was preferable. So progeny may have been a Latin term but not a Latin habit.

Given the sparsity of heirs, the Romans were almost forced to pick Emperors on merit. Then the Philosopher-Emperor had to ruin it by indulging in nepotism. Commodus proved so abysmal that his reign seemed to Edward Gibbon the appropriate beginning of “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.” After Commodus, the Emperors again were elevated generally on merit. Unfortunately, the merit now was one’s ability to kill your predecessor. That would explain why there were some 80 emperors in five centuries.

p.s. Today is also Caligula’s birthday, but he doesn’t need me as a publicist.