by Valerius Claudius Iohanes on Fri Sep 14, 2007 7:08 pm
Salve, Draco Clarissime -
[I know - my penchant for superlatives is absurd and probably irritating! But it's part of the general fun of language, I'm afraid.]
Yes, Nerva's reign was NOT a successful one, so he's not on my list of "Most Capable". His balanced budget notions were properly Cato-like, but impractical in social, PR and political terms. Moreover, as I recall (I have to go back to an authority and get my recollections straight) he took an oath never to execute members of the Senate, quite unlike most of the emperors, as it seems to me.
And it was he, as I recall, who first got the adoptive principle of succession going, which is the closest the imperials ever got to fixing Augustus's omission of a hard, dependable succession system. That may have been his greatest contribution, since that was used successfully by his immediate successors. It wasn't original, adoption being a norm in Roman politics, but it was a step away from Caligula and Nero and Domitian, and so on, and back toward good sense. I'm still amazed (I know that, given human nature, I shouldn't be) that for all the effort and dedication and civic-minded philosophy of the Roman elite, creating a binding, elective succession proved so hard to do.
So Nerva's efforts and ideas were impractical, but still seem to me to have been right ideas, and so I put him on my list along with Julian.
Tibique, ut bene valeas.
Valerius Claudius Iohannes
Curator anno MMDCCLXII
Centurio Honorarius Societatis
Civis ab MMDCCLIV
:: Adversitas bono viro intelligentiam docet. ::