Teach the Controversy: Question Belief!
Did Pagan or Christians Roman Emperors Live Longest?
Abstract
© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Friday, July 30, 1999
September 2004
Did Pagan Roman Emperors Die of Old Age?
Christians sometimes try to denigrate classical Paganism by picking on the Romans, who admittedly kept their “Peace” by a rather strict regime. But quite apart from law and order, they make out that the rulers of the Pagan empire were unprincipled murderers who never lived long in office. We read:
It is difficult to think of any Roman leader who died of old age.
The truth is rather the opposite. Roman leaders were mainly short lived after Christianity took over. Shane Mage of Collier’s Encyclopedia, New York, has pointed out that pre-Christian emperors often died in their beds at advanced ages: Augustus (76), Tiberius (78), Vespasian (70), Nerva (63), Trajan (64), Hadrian (62), Antoninus Pius (75), Septimus Severus (65), and Diocletian (68). Marcus Aurelius died young, from plague, at the age of 59 (shown as being murdered by his son, Commodus, in the film, Gladiator). These ten emperors ruled over 200 of the first 300 years of empire before Christianity conquered.
The longest reigning Christian emperor before the fall of Rome was Constantine himself who reigned 30 years dying at 60. Constantine’s new Christian capital was at Byzantium. 29 of 88 Byzantine emperors died violent deaths and another 13 took refuge in monasteries to avoid it.
In 340 years of the Pagan empire there were 62 emperors ruling for an average of 5.5 years. In only another 170 years, from the access of Constantine, the western empire had collapsed, having seen 32 emperors, for an average of 5.3 years. On average, then, the length of a Roman emperor’s rule did not differ under Pagans or Christians.
