Birthplaces of Roman Emperors

I've posted a map here before showing the birthplaces of Roman authors - here's another one showing the birthplaces of some of the more famous Roman emperors. Again, surprisingly few of them were actually born within the city of Rome itself.



View Birthplaces of Roman Emperors in a larger map

BO

You might be familiar with this problem- a friend, colleague, family member stinks and you don't know how to tell them without embarassing them, offending them and destroying your relationship with them. Thankfully Marcus Aurelius has the answer:

Are you angry with the man who smells like a goat, or the one with foul breath? What will you have him do? That's the way his mouth is, that's the way his armpits are, so it is inievitable that they should give out odours to match. 'But the man is endowed with reason', you say, 'and if he puts his mind to it he can work out why he causes offence.' Well, good for you! So you too are no less endowed with reason: bring your rationality, then, to bear on his rationality - show him, tell him. If he listens, you will cure him, and no need for anger.

(Meditations 5.28)

Catullus also had a friend with the same problem, but was not quite so sensitive:

Noli admirari, quare tibi femina nulla,
Rufe, velit tenerum supposuisse femur,
non si illam rarae labefactes munere vestis
aut perluciduli deliciis lapidis.
laedit te quaedam mala fabula, qua tibi fertur
valle sub alarum trux habitare caper.
hunc metuunt omnes, neque mirum: nam mala valde est
bestia, nec quicum bella puella cubet.
quare aut crudelem nasorum interfice pestem,
aut admirari desine cur fugiunt.

Don't be so amazed, Rufus, that no woman
wants to lay her soft thigh beneath you,
even though you tempt her with a gift of rare cloth
or the delight of a translucent stone.
A certain evil rumour haunts you, which reports
that a wild goat lives down in the valley of your armpits.
Everyone fears him, and I'm not surprised: for he is a particularly
evil creature, who no pretty girl would want to sleep with.
And so either kill that cruel plague of noses,
or stop wondering why they run away.

(Catullus 69)

Meditations

Over the holidays I took great pleasure in dipping in and out of Marcus Aurelius' Meditations (a very kind Christmas present). It turns out I wasn't the only one; Canadian author Yann Martel (who wrote Life of Pi- one of the best books I've read in the past few years) has been sending the Canadian prime minister a book every fortnight- accompanied by his own reflections on each book. He has also been publishing the letters on this website. As his 22nd book for the prime minister he chose the Meditations.

The whole letter is well worth reading; here is just a short extract:

The case of Rome is worth studying. How a small town on a river became the center of one of the mightiest empires the world has known, eventually dominating thousands of other small towns on rivers, is a source of many lessons. That Rome was mighty is not to be doubted. The sheer size the empire achieved is breathtaking: from the Firth of Forth to the Euphrates, from the Tagus to the Rhine, spilling over into Northern Africa, for a time the Romans ruled over most of the world known to them. What they didn’t rule over wasn’t worth having, they felt: they left what was beyond their frontiers to “barbarians”.

Another measure of their greatness can be found in the Roman influences that continue to be felt to this day. Rome’s local lingo, Latin, became the mother language of most of Europe, and Italian, French, Spanish and Portuguese are still spoken all over the world. (The Germanic hordes beyond the Rhine, meanwhile, have managed to sponsor only one international language, albeit a successful one, English.) We also owe the Romans our calendar, with its twelve months and 365 1/4 day years; three days in our week hark back to three Roman days—Moonday, Saturnday and Sunday; and though we now use the Roman number system (i, ii, iii, iv, v, vi...) only occasionally, we use their 26-letter alphabet constantly.

Despite their power and might, another lesson about the Roman Empire forces itself upon us: how it’s all gone. The Romans reigned far and wide for centuries but now their empire has vanished entirely. A Roman today is simply someone who lives in Rome, a city that is beautiful because of its clutter of ruins. Such has been the fate of all empires: the Roman, the Ottoman, the British, the Soviet, to name only a few European empires. Which will be the next empire to fall, the next to rise?

[Thanks to rogueclassicum for bringing this to my attention]