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Hello and welcome to the history of Rome. Episode 81, The Greekling. The Roman

Empire had just enjoyed 20 years of wise and beneficial stewardship when the

tragic but inevitable news arrived that the Emperor Trajan was dead. Even his

contemporaries realized that they were living under the best Emperor since

Augustus and fears about what came next filtered through every level of

society. With Trajan being so great and all it's pretty reasonable to assume

that whoever succeeds him is going to be worse. Maybe not much worse but it's

going to be a step backwards. You can't get better than Optimus. It's a

logical impossibility. And who knows maybe his successor will be a lot worse. It's

happened before. Compounding everyone's fears was the fact that Trajan had paid

...