Hello everyone and welcome to the history of Byzantium episode 350, questions 19.

Today we continue looking at listener questions. These are somewhat timeless inquiries.

Listener VA asks why teenage emperors in the earlier Roman period, Caligula, Nero, Elagabalus,

comidus, turned out to be terrible people, while Byzantium produced a series of teenagers

like Constance II, Constantine IV, and Theophilus, who turned into mature adult emperors.

I suspect I've answered a variation of this before. Why do we have very few mad, bad emperors in Byzantium?

The first part of the answer is that for the Giulio Claudians, the whole concept of the emperor was new.

It wasn't yet clear what an emperor was or what limits should be placed on their power.

Augustus worked very hard to make it clear that he wasn't a king, and yet some of his successes

felt they were and acted accordingly.

Elagabalus and Comedus came centuries later, but in general, most emperors after the

Julio-Claudians are better behaved than Caligula Nero.

Then I think Christianity plays a big part in better-beh behaved emperors. You could argue that that's

because of improved moral behaviour by insisting on more obvious virtues like humility and forgiveness.

But I also think Christianity just imposed a stricter sense of ceremony on all those involved.

The looser framework of the pagan world gave earlier emperors more freedom

to create their own court. Whereas once you have to be at church on time and have to pay respect

to certain physical items and spaces within the building, then your behaviour is hemmed in.

Both commodious and elegabulus wanted to dramatically change things about political and religious

life in a way that's just hard to imagine in a Christian system. An emperor who openly

rejected Christianity would be one who was committing a sacrilegious act that instantly

delegitimized him in a way that wasn't the same in the pagan world.

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