Avey, and welcome to Emperor of Rome, a podcast about the rulers of the ancient Roman Empire.

I'm your host, Matt Smith Smith and with me as always is Dr.

Rianna Evans, a senior lecturer in ancient Mediterranean studies at Latrobe University.

This is episode LX-V-I-I. Air and despair. You thought Antoninus Pierce

was a tough act to follow? Then allow me to introduce you to Marcus Aurelius.

Emperor, Warrior, philosopher, leader,

lover, all-round good guy. Oh and let's not forget his younger brother Lucius

Virus. Here's Rianna Nevins.

Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Ferris are the heirs of Antoninus Pius in a decision made by Antoninus

Pius's predecessor Hadrian.

So Antoninus Pius in order to become Hadrian. So Antoninus Pierce, in order to become Hadrian's heir, had to adopt the next generation.

So this all became part of a big succession plan which pretty much sets Rome up for the next you know conceivably

50-odd years or so. Yeah you could see it as Hadrian being a real control

freak in that he's ensuring the succession ensuring his legacy for a couple of

generations. This is the kind of thing that often would

go wrong but for Hadrian it actually worked. So was it a case of an air and despair or

were they both intended to be as it turns out to be co-emperors? We don't know that the

intention seems to have been co-empororship but it may well be that there's a

paranoia about people dropping off the twig because they had so often in Rome's history and

Hadian himself had experienced losing someone he'd intended to be the air.

So it sort of makes sense that you have two possibilities there.

You can stage it as co-airs so that both of them

...