Hello, and welcome to the History of Rome, Episode 57 Germanicus.

Surprise bonus Friday edition.

I'm hopping on a plane tomorrow to visit the history of Roman loss, and since I just

took a week off, I figured it would be pretty poor form to ditch out again, so here we are.

The transition from Augustus to Tiberius went smoothly in Rome itself, the now utterly

sycophantic senate was quick to embrace their new emperor.

But beyond the capital, out on the frontiers, the death of Augustus led to immediate unrest

in a far more important body than the increasingly irrelevance senate, the legions.

It was not so much that the death of the princes incited revolutionary spirits, so much as

a few rabble-rousing common soldiers saw an opportunity to agitate for better conditions

and make sure that certain promises made to them by Augustus were not ignored by Tiberius.

The new emperor needed to secure the goodwill of the armies if he wanted to rule, right?

So why not push him a little early in the game and threaten to crash his new regime into

the ground if he didn't give them what they wanted?

The mutinies of 14 AD would be a key early test of Tiberius' rule.

Would he reveal himself to be nothing more than a cheap imitation of Augustus?

Or would he be able to rule in his own right?

There were more than a few who did not believe that the imperial regime would be able to survive

beyond Augustus.

That the dead princes possessed a singular quality that allowed him to rule unopposed.

Once he was gone, the regime would collapse and the republic would be restored.

But Tiberius proved to be stronger and much more capable than anyone had given him credit

...