Hi everyone and welcome to another episode of ancient warfare answers with me, Murray.

I'll be your guide on this 10-minute excursion into ancient history.

Ancient history today, less warfare-related, but maybe warfare-related.

We'll get to that.

And, of course, you can ask us a question.

You can support us on Patreon, and we do indeed like answering your questions this one actually

is a response to an earlier issue an earlier episode so this is from northern xy and is a reply

in the comments on youtube from the episode I did on Probus and Aurelian in a few weeks ago.

And Northern XY asks, why does Marcus Aurelius never take the blame for appointing his son,

for appointing his son his heir rather than the son his heir, rather than the most qualified,

like three of the four emperors before him.

Maybe he should have spent less time philosophizing and more time being a father.

Well, firstly, that criticism is not really Marcus Aurelius's fault.

I think it's comodice.

Commodus was a bad son, not Marcus Aurelius's fault for the fatherhood, because of course, he does have Commodus with him for a lot of the time in his northern campaigns. So the fact that Comedus is a bad emperor isn't Marcus Aurelius's fault. I don't think you can lay the blame on

Marcus Aurelius. And I think it's an interesting one because when you look at what we now call

the five good emperors, you know, which do indeed achieve the height of the Roman Empire,

in the high Roman Empire in the first 80 years of the second century AD.

You have a pattern that Marcus Aurelius does indeed break, but he breaks it in more ways than one.

But there may be reasons for that, and I think they're military.

So Nerva becomes emperor at the assassination of demission in September 96 AD.

And he then sets up Niver as elderly.

...