Some of the most famous Roman emperors were perverted, megalomaniacal, or just plain crazy. The weird fixations of Caligula and Nero made them household names.
But these stories have always raised a difficult question: If these emperors were really so deranged, how did they become leaders of one of the greatest empires the world has ever known?
To sort it out, I spoke with two historians: Clifford Ando, a professor of classics and author of Imperial Ideology and Provincial Loyalty in the Roman Empire, and Anthony Barrett, a professor of classics and author of Lives of the Caesars.
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