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Officially, the 'Five Good Roman Emperors' are listed as Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Augustus Pius and Marcus Aurelius, because under their rule the Roman Empire was at it's most stable and prosperous, and these Emperors introduced tax reform that favoured the poor. Their rule is known as the 'Pax Romana'.

However, The Roman Empire lasted 400 years and at first was not ruled by an Emperor but by a democratically-elected Senate, with the Emperor being an appointed Head of State. It was only following disastrous internal governmental crises, which threatened the existence of the Empire, that the system was changed to having an unelected Emperor who ruled by decree and who's ancestral house had hereditary claim to the Premiership (the Senate continued to exist, but the Emperor could override it's decisions). During such a long period of time- four Centuries, none less- the Empire had many Emperors. Some were generally speaking good and fair rulers, some were strict and even harsh but thought it was for the good of the Empire, and a few were downright evil genocidal dictators, at least two of whom (Caligula and Nero) were insane. Few were entirely good or entirely bad, but five examples of Emperors who were on the whole good men are Claudius, Titus, Vespasian, Augustus (who was Emperor when Jesus was born, but not when he died) and Hadrian, who built the famous wall across the North of England to keep the barbarous Celts out and who's magnificent tomb remains in Rome to this day. Even Tiberius, who is remembered as having been a wicked despot, was a good ruler for most of his Premiership, it was only in his latter years that he became delusional and began committing atrocities. After the main Roman Empire fell it continued to exist in it's Eastern sector, and the first Christian Emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire was Constantine the Great, who established the Nicene Creed and fixed the date of Easter. The Eastern Roman Empire gradually metamorphosed into the Byzantine Empire, which itself fell in 1453 when Constantinople was captured by the Turks, who renamed it Istanbul.

There are plenty of websites chronologising the Roman Emperors, and if you look them up it's up to you to decide who was basically good or bad, but one thing is certain- it was Nero who did for the Empire as a whole. His insane, dictatorial and genocidal rule bankrupted the Empire through needless wars and massive taxation, alienated potentially friendly neighbouring powers, and made the Roman public disillusioned and ashamed of being Romans. The Senate finally got the army on side and a platoon was dispatched to have him captured after he fled the wrath of the people, but he cheated justice by stabbing himself to death. The Empire could potentially have survived Caligula's reign of terror, but Nero was the last nail in it's coffin. I would also add that Otho was another good and humane Emperor, but he had a very short reign of less than a year.

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