Most men, having watched Gladiator or Ben Hur, have probably thought to themselves that being a Roman would be the coolest thing since Aqueducts with a wicked hat, big swords and a horse living a life full of orgies, grapes, drinking and stabbing foreigners so how bad could that be?
Julius Caesar, Augustus and Claudius and whoever the hell Russel Crowe was supposed to be in that movie, all made you think that being a Roman Legionairre was the grand poo-bah of the Ancient World but we had it tough, especially in Britannia.
We took a quick look at the cold, windswept top end of Britannia and saw it was full of barbarians in skirts and some weird creature they torture by blowing into and squeezing it until it made an awful screeching noise and we said they can keep that and built a 80 mile long wall from one side of Britannia to the other to make sure they didn't bring their hairy legs into Roman territory.
I reigned for 21 years without anyone sticking a knife in me which is pretty good as Emporers go but i did stay out of Rome quite a lot, half of my reign i was traveling through the Roman provinces keeping things organised and i was one of the very first people to come out as gay and my boyfriend Antinous accompanied me on my tours of the empire including my trip to crack some Jewish heads in Judea.
Very uptight the Jews, they didn't like the massive temple for Jupiter i built in Jerusalem and they revolted and four years and 600,000 dead Jews later, i had kicked out the remaining ones and renamed it Syria Palaestina to end any Jewish connection to the land forever more.
I doubt if anyone bothers to try and build walls to keep the nationals of other countries out anymore and i may have annoyed the Scots but i don't care, you can't understand a word the lot are saying, so in the best Roman way Veni, vidi, vici - we came, we saw, we built a bloody great wall to keep them Jocks out.
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