Marcus Aurelius: Rome's Least Favorite Great Emperor

It would seem that great leaders are most hated by their contemporaries. It didn't matter that Marcus Aurelius was one of the Five Good Emperors, that he kept Rome safe from the Germans, or that he was so petrified of tyranny that he split his emperorship; he did things that were entirely unforgivable to the masses. What was the greatest of his crimes?

He expressed a distaste for the games.

Initially this is simply seen as a frustrating disagreement between a people engrossed in gladiatorial combat - but Marcus Aurelius made it a point to explain not just that he did not like the games. He loathed the games, he saw them as a waste of his time, so much so that he wrote philosophy while two gladiators battled to the death for his amusement. The People were usually so astonished by this that they could not pry their eyes from the scribbling emperor.

Was he really preferring the paper and the quill to the bloodsport of the muna? It seemed an unthinkable crime. But sure enough, every time there were games, he was busy writing away or vocally complaining on just how boring they were.

This was tantamount to the President of the United States playing minesweeper at the Superbowl. In many regards, it would have been preferable if he had not gone at all - so that it did not appear as though he were making a kind of gesture towards the people, but was uninterested in sharing a joy with them. To many plebeians, it was a downright slap in the face.

This resulted in a chorus of opposition to the emperor. In many ways, he was actually less popular than Nero at the mad emperor's height. True, Nero had been forced to kill himself and Marcus Aurelius died of natural causes, but until the man's madness had begun to set in, the people were absolutely enthused by his tantalizing muna, or gladiatorial games.

Far from the claims of Ridley Scott in Gladiator, Marcus Aurelius did not ban the games. Even for someone who found them as distasteful as he, he recognized the economic influence of the Colosseum. He was not ready to wholly abandon it and all of its advantages - although it was a soft spot for him. His son, Commodus, it is widely believed, was not actually his, but belonging to a gladiator.

How did the philosophy touting historian of an emperor respond?

As any reasonable philosophical, soft spoken emperor would.

He slit the man's throat, filled his bath with the man's blood, and literally bathed in it.

For many of the people, this appeared to be a dramatic, even comical, irony for his "unjust" hatred for the Colosseum. It is amusing that in hindsight, the Marcus Aurelius is seen as one of the greatest emperor in Rome's history - but the Empire's people sure didn't think so. It also serves as another stunning example of just how impossible it is for contemporaries to judge how history will look upon a figure.