What Did a Roman Emperor Actually Do All Day?

Ancient Rome. It is still dark. There are already several dozen people outside your bedroom door. Not friends. Not an emergency. This is just Tuesday — and you are the Emperor of Rome. If you have seen what an ordinary Roman did all day, you have already met this moment from the other side of the door: the man standing in the cold in his one good outfit, waiting for a basket of food. This is the story of the man on the inside. The daily life of the Roman emperor. And it was not marble and grapes. It was admin. Letters, petitions, court cases, and an unbroken river of other people's problems arriving every morning for as long as you managed to stay alive. Of the 69 men who ruled the unified empire, 62% died violently — and almost none of them in battle. Along the way: why the most famous account of an emperor's daily routine is a forgery, why a burning city was refused a fire brigade, why the emperor who answered a Bulgarian village's complaint was thirteen years old, and why Julius Caesar doing his paperwork at the games was a genuine political scandal. CHAPTERS: 0:00 Someone is already at the door 2:18 The book that made it up 4:14 He laced his own boots 6:08 The inbox 11:06 Judging from a stretcher 12:28 The village that wrote back 14:53 The scandal at the games 16:20 A seating plan with food attached 17:34 Who is actually in the building 19:35 The mirror in the corridor SOURCES: Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars — Augustus, Tiberius, Vespasian, Domitian (Loeb text, University of Chicago): https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/... Pliny the Younger, Letters — Book 10 (the Trajan correspondence) and Book 2: https://www.attalus.org/info/pliny.html Joseph Homer Saleh, "Statistical reliability analysis for a most dangerous occupation: Roman emperor", Palgrave Communications 5:155 (2019): https://www.nature.com/articles/s4159... The Skaptopara petition (Gordian III, 238 CE), Judaism and Rome: https://www.judaism-and-rome.org/gord... Harry Sidebottom on Mary Beard's Emperor of Rome, Literary Review: https://literaryreview.co.uk/demigod-... R. S. Bagnall's review of Fergus Millar, The Emperor in the Roman World: https://archive.nyu.edu/bitstream/245... ▶️ MORE FROM THE SERIES How Did Ancient Romans Invent Emperors? 👉    • How Did Ancient Romans Invent Emperors?   King Tut — How a Sick 9-Year-Old Boy Ended Up Ruling Ancient Egypt 👉    • King Tut - How a Sick 9-Year-Old Boy Ended...   How Did Humans Invent Concubines? 👉    • How Did Humans Invent Concubines?   Subscribe here for more fascinating content on the strange, true lives of ancient civilizations: 👉    / @follow-the-ankh   #ancientrome #romanempire #history #dailylifeinrome #romanemperor #dailylife #lifestlye