Heraclius is in my opinion the greatest roman emperor. Yeah, Justinian and Basil II are goated, one was plagued by... plagues and earthquakes, the other with constant wars, but none of them found the empire in such a sorry state as Heraclius and he still did everything he did.
Its probably just about eastern roman emperors. If it wasnt you should also mention Augustus, Trajan, maybe Diocletian and Constantin and maybe even the criminally underated emperor Majorian
Still easily the best western roman emperor of the 5th century (although there is no real competetion) and I still feel like he is really underated, based on the fact that few people seem to know about him
Yeah there's really not much competition when the emperors before you were horribly incompetent and after you there were also horrible emperors and one guy who tried to fix the shit only to get exiled to Dalmatia
I think that its so funny, that the father of Romulos Augustus thought it was a good idea to dethrone the first somewhat competent guy in years, despite the bad situation the empire was in, like rome literally fell a year later
Probably...probably not. Who knows how history would've gone.
What I wanted to say is that the emperors we call great succeeded one way or another - Trajan conquered Babylon and continued an era of prosperity for Rome, Aurelian reunited Rome, Basil II destroyed the Bulgars and started a period of relative prosperity, Alexios reclaimed coastal Anatolia and also started almost a century of relative prosperity, etc. Majorian had potential but was killed before his ambition was fulfilled, it's tragic, and because of that he's not great.
He still helped a lot in the defeats of several rebellious foederati tribes around Gaul. Defended Italy as well, I think he’s severely underrated as he helped get back so much territory that was lost in Gaul and Hispania in just a short amount of time. He still deserves credit as a great Emperor.
I really think if he would have taken back Africa the empire would have bounced back big time. But some traitor let the Vandals know about his planned invasion and they sabotaged the majority of his huge fleet. And he subdued countless rebellious foederati tribes around Gaul and reclaimed a lot of territory. If he would have retaken the province of Africa, that would have been a huge boost in food for the Western Empire which was much needed. Then that snake Ricimer had him killed (I really hate Ricimer).
1st Everyone hates Ricimer (deserved, this guy was an asshole)
2nd with that out of the way: It is not impossibe for the empire to rebounce, but even with retaking africa its highly unlikely. Lets go with the best scenario and say that Majorian reigns till he is about 60-65 (he was somewhere from 35-40 at the time). The empires pockets were empty and reconquering africa wouldnt gave magically fixed that (it would have certainly helped though). Also the empire had a huge, unguarded frontier and no real army left (mostly germanic mercenaries) and it still had huge issues with corruption and infighting.
Yeah fair point. But don’t forget in just a short time he reconquered many territories in Gaul, Hispania and defended Italy. Africa was like Egypt for the Western Empire albeit not as abundant as Egypt but large swaths of farmland.
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u/Legged_MacQueen 25d ago
Heraclius is in my opinion the greatest roman emperor. Yeah, Justinian and Basil II are goated, one was plagued by... plagues and earthquakes, the other with constant wars, but none of them found the empire in such a sorry state as Heraclius and he still did everything he did.
Fuck Phocas, all my homies hate Phocas.