Pretenders in The Roman Empire
Ancient Rome knew many pretenders to the offices making up the title of Roman Emperor, especially during the crisis of the Third Century.
These are customarily referred to as the Thirty Tyrants, which was an allusion to the Thirty Tyrants of Athens some five hundred years earlier; although the comparison is questionable, and the Romans were separate aspirants, not (as the Athenians were) a Committee of Public Safety. The Loeb translation of the appropriate chapter of the Augustan History therefore represents the Latin triginta tyranni by "Thirty Pretenders" to avoid this artificial and confusing parallel. Not all of them were afterwards considered pretenders; several were actually successful in becoming Emperor at least in part of the Empire for a brief period.
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Read more about this topic: Pretender Famous quotes containing the words roman empire, pretenders, roman and/or empire:“The descendants of Holy Roman Empire monarchies became feeble-minded in the twentieth century, and after World War I had been done in by the democracies; some were kept on to entertain the tourists, like the one they have in England.” “There are pretenders to piety as well as to courage.” “The Roman Empire stood appalled: “That is the great end of empires before God, to be Catholic and draw nations into their Catholicism. But our empire is less and less Christian as it grows.” |