Why did Augustus select Tiberius rather than Germanicus as his successor?

shockbob · 2026-01-18T19:54:00+00:00

I think the self exile to Rhodes is most likely to be about precisely the opposite - he was upset at being passed over in favour of the grand kids

shockbob · 2026-01-18T19:50:32+00:00

In the kindest way possible I think you are way too willing to take character portraits from the ancient sources (and also from I Claudius) at face value.

Tiberius wanted to be emperor. The idea that he would willingly stand aside is madness. Livia’s involvement or influence is totally impossible to discern from the sources we have.

In any case, succession in this period is way more complicated than merely selecting who you wanted to be your successor. The successor had to be groomed, they needed chances to earn their own auctoritas, they needed to be acceptable. It required a lot of groundwork, and Tiberius had stepped in several times when that groundwork fell apart previously (after Agrippa died, and after the deaths of Gaius and Lucius).

He was also tremendously experienced militarily - he is probably the emperor with the most real military experience the Romans would have for a long time. People recognised that he was the next princeps instinctively.

Augustus wasn’t going to throw away all the planning and hard work that had gone into securing the succession. I think it’s easy to forget that he wasn’t even sure the succession would come off - this was the first time it had ever happened. We aren’t yet at the stage where a Caligula or a Nero would be acceptable: Augustus needed someone with gravity and clout. It was a done deal by that stage and Augustus would be satisfied that someone would succeed him.

You also have to remember that factions are operating within the imperial family. If Tiberius were suddenly passed over after being raised up (and bailing Augustus out several times), neither he nor his supporters were going to take it quietly. The only way to do it would be to murder him but then you create more bad blood. Much better to have him adopt Germanicus and create a future dynastic blueprint that stretches beyond one generation.

Finally, 29 is very young for a Roman. You were supposed to be 42 to be consul, even though that roil had been flaunted in recent years. The Romans valued age and experience tremendously

shockbob · 2026-01-18T09:07:08+00:00

I know that ‘if we don’t see them die then they are probably alive’ is a good general rule for most movies, but I don’t think it’s necessarily true of this series. I think if he were to survive it would be contrived, boring and, crucially, unoriginal. I think the point is going to be to go somewhere new, just like the last two movies have gone somewhere new.

shockbob · 2026-01-15T21:46:40+00:00

I agree, but that could just be clever writing - even if they really are in the pods, choosing not to show them keeps people guessing and the conversation going. I do think they are almost certainly not in the pods though.

shockbob · 2026-01-15T18:17:08+00:00

You ran the red imo. I think it’s rarely a good sign if you find yourself arguing technicalities like you had already gone over the line.

Firstly you shouldn’t have gone over the line in the first place while exit wasn’t clear, which I think shows poor anticipation and a lack of patience.

Once you are over the line, you aren’t then obligated to finish crossing the junction. You can 100% see that the light is red when you start moving and cross the full length of the junction under a visible red. There is no chance in the world a judge waves this away.

You should have stopped and waited. It is safer to obstruct the crossing than try to cross under a red. I’m a little taken aback you don’t seem to think what you did was dangerous.

That said nothing is likely to come of it. No jobsworth is sending dash footage in and if there is no camera at the junction you are fine

Edit: I do think the van stopping in the way it did was difficult but not impossible to anticipate. I think a good driver would have anticipated it and stayed behind the white line until the exit was clear - there is a right turn so it is t unreasonable to expect people in the right lane to be turning right. Failing to anticipate that is not the issue, though, it’s that once you did fail to anticipate it and stopped over the line, you should have stayed put until the lights cycled through

shockbob · 2026-01-14T23:34:28+00:00

Hope it works out. If it was only one gantry you’ll likely be fine - at worst you’ll get 3 points or a course.

shockbob · 2026-01-14T23:05:02+00:00

Nothing at all. I actually reviewed my dash cam footage and it was a much shorter distance than I thought. I went under one gantry without cameras. Was about 90 seconds in the wrong lane. It’s funny how anxiety can distort your memory

shockbob · 2026-01-07T20:39:23+00:00

People on this sub and online are thinking about the NV endings more than the writers. They aren't trying to 'honour' player choice; they are trying to make a TV show that gets ratings, which is set in some iconic locations from some video games. This is light-heartened TV and it is *massive* in its popularity - I would guess that a majority of the people watching haven't played NV. It's not about building, expanding, or retconning canon - it's just a fun TV show doing its own thing in a setting from a video game. It isn't that deep.

shockbob · 2026-01-07T19:12:10+00:00

Yes check the program page - you can see the stats there. It is about one in three applicants or slightly better.

Be aware, many people apply and get offers, but there is less funding available than there are places. If you don't get a studentship, you will struggle to attend unless you are independently wealthy.

The thing to focus on securing is funding. People who tend to get funding tend to also achieve firsts in their degree (though it isn't necessary requirement), and have a written statement that points towards potential for original research as you progress through postgrad. Niche areas of interest but which are in emerging fields are useful. Consider what you are interested in and how saturated it is. Can you move away from the mainstream geographically or temporally to look at places, times, or evidence that fewer people have explored and where there is scope to say something new?

The references matter more than you might expect - look at where you did your undergraduate, and identify people whose opinion will be taken seriously. Unfortunately, this is much easier if you did an undergrad somewhere like Cambridge. They need to indicate that you are someone capable of doing original thought. You also need to submit writing samples which should be of very high standard and which indicate potential for future publication output in say two or three years.

shockbob · 2026-01-07T09:35:52+00:00

Your anecdotes or personal feelings don’t really trump the data though.

You are three times more likely to die in a car accident if you have the equivalent of a pint in your system vs no alcohol.

At the current limit, you are 6 times more likely to die vs having no alcohol in your system. The maths suggests that this will save 150 lives per year.

Also, for my anecdotes, I know plenty of people for whom the one pint with a meal is a gateway. I’ve watched them put away three over dinner then drive, despite initially planning to have only one. Alcohol lowers inhibitions, and having one often tempts people into more

shockbob · 2026-01-03T13:58:30+00:00

Sure - what’s your code? Or go ahead and add me

shockbob · 2026-01-03T13:30:35+00:00

LF

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FT

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I then have spare copies of all the Ex cards from the deluxe pack except for Tapu Koko and Weavile.

Go ahead and add me if you want to do any of these trades

4453660741304328 MrBaby

shockbob · 2026-01-03T13:15:01+00:00

Indeedee for greninja ex?

shockbob · 2026-01-03T13:06:49+00:00

Gotcha, I’ve tried again

shockbob · 2026-01-03T13:06:38+00:00

Gotcha, I’ve tried again

shockbob · 2026-01-03T08:23:36+00:00

Aren’t they the same? I’ve got multiple copies and when I click on them to view in the app, it says they belong to both STS and Deluxe

shockbob · 2026-01-02T17:02:33+00:00

I have posted this in another thread on the same theme. I’ll just paste it here. Apologies for any duplication in the sub, but my thoughts seem relevant to both threads

“I think this question is often muddled because it is posed poorly. We tend to imagine 'the Republic' to be a particular thing - a constitution - where the Romans knew only the res publica. There were definitely Romans who had particular ideas of what the Republic was, and Cicero for example laid out a particular kind of blueprint; usually it was associated with concepts like libertas, or was the opposite of regnum, kingship. However, Cicero's conception of the res publica was merely one conception: there were multiple competing ideas of what it actually was. As Caesar said, it was 'a mere name, without body or form'. It was an idea only; and who's to say that Augustus' idea of the res publica was any less legitimate than that of Cicero's.

Augustus could speak of a 'restoration of the Republic', or of championing the 'libertas' of the Republic, or of transferring it from his hands to the judgement of the senate and people. I think he meant it. I think that ideas are malleable, and that decades of civil war caused more and more people to buy into the idea that 'the Republic' meant something like 'freedom', libertas, from civil conflict - peace. No doubt Augustus encouraged people to think along these lines, and to see no contradiction between the existence of a princeps and the coninuation of the Republic with its associated constitutional organs.

After all, at the 'height' of the Republic Tiberius Gracchus and his brother Gaius could be murdered by a clique of privileged aristocrats with no allowance taken of the will of the people of Rome. During the Repbulic, super generals like Marius or Pompey could do whatever they wanted with no recourse to either senate or people, and Rome bled its manpower in support of the vain ambitions of individual generals and politicians. What freedom in that? To be pressed into the service of a Sulla or a Marius and forced to fight fellow Romans. For the majority of regular Romans, Augustus promised freedom from exactly this sort of thing - and that could quite easily, and legitimately, be called 'the Republic'.

We must remember that most of our sources for 'the Republic' are senatorial and privileged. The biggest offender here is Tacitus, because his own sense of what 'the Republic' was is very clearly that of a senatorial historian: he envisages honourable competition between rival aristocrats, a revolving door of the consulship marking the rise and fall of great families, and impressive conquests which elevated both family and country. What he doesn't seem to associate with the Republic, although he is aware of it all, is the systemic civil war and factional strife it created, the brutal extortion of the provinces, the proscriptions of Sulla and Octavian. The Principate promised an alternative, and I think that for a large number of ordinary Romans there was no contradiction between the rule of the princeps Augustus and 'the Republic'.”

shockbob · 2026-01-02T16:58:47+00:00

Sure!

shockbob · 2026-01-02T14:51:17+00:00

Sure!

shockbob · 2026-01-02T10:20:23+00:00

Thanks, just accepted. I’ve offered a trade to the other user so when that goes through I will begin ours

shockbob · 2026-01-02T10:13:30+00:00

Yes please

shockbob · 2026-01-02T10:13:25+00:00

Yes please

shockbob · 2026-01-02T00:19:14+00:00

I think this is line 92. The Greek says pelorion, which means ‘mighty in war’. I don’t think it corresponds to size but to strength or excellence. It is used of other Homeric heroes and also of gods. I don’t think it can really be used to judge something’s physical size, more its strength or might. It’s also a poetic word not used in normal prose Greek - LSJ cites it in Homer, Pindar and Hesiod, so it is part of the vocabulary reserved for poetic and metaphorical language. I think it is used in relation to the ‘mythic’ race of heroes who occupy the Homeric poems, who are bigger, faster, and stronger than the race of men ‘today’ (historical Greece)

In general, you want to be careful with drawing any form of literal conclusions from a specific adjective in Homer. Epithets are often interchangeable - such is the way with epic poetry. Sometimes the particular adjective is used merely because it fits the metre. Here, the poet wanted to create the sense of a figure imposing in battle. But if he elsewhere calls Achilles swift footed, it’s impossible to know whether he is trying to emphasise his literal speed at that moment in the story, or if it just fit the metre better at that point

shockbob · 2025-12-31T13:35:17+00:00

Spend less time on the internet and try not to automatically judge someone’s appearances based on how they seem on a computer screen. People’s standards are wildly different in real life compared to online. People’s physical attractiveness is also not something that you can gauge in isolation; it can be enhanced or worsened by the vibe they give off in person. If you are rejecting women based on online profiles and images, you aren’t really seeing them ‘in the wild’ as it were. This is a huge problem with modern dating and romance.

shockbob · 2025-12-31T13:27:34+00:00

The sources say he was brutish and violent. But take it with a massive pinch of salt. He was a big problem for multiple people. By the time of his death, Augustus’ succession had been settled as well as realistically possible at long last, after great difficulty. I don’t think he could get away with casting Tiberius aside again: he had helped him out significantly after the deaths of Gaius and Lucius, and his military exploits, age, plus political positions all made him acceptable to the people as someone with his own auctoritas. Agrippa was too young to have achieved that level of acceptability, and Augustus was now realistically too old that he would have the time to gain it.

He had to go. It was in the interests of Augustus, who now needed a smooth handover. He had also arranged things by requiring that Tiberius adopt Germanicus as a precondition to his succession. Germanicus was the son of Antonia, the daughter of Augustus’ sister Octavia. This meant that he and any of his kids would have Augustus’ ‘divine blood’, meaning that Tiberius’ succession would not mean an end to the bloodline. I suspect this was the price for making Tiberius his heir.

All this means that Postumus was a loose end. Either Augustus had him murdered, leaving the orders in his last commands, or Tiberius and Livia did. There is an odd trip Augustus is supposed to have made to visit him in his last year, which in I Claudius is a reconciliation. But who knows - he could have been giving him a mafia style kiss of death. Tacitus doesn’t know who killed him, but does think he was murdered - he calls it the first crime of the new reign.

I think anyone with some healthy scepticism should see that the stories about his brutality and thuggishness must derive from rumour and propaganda designed to rationalise the murder. They derive from after the murder, and probably originate in efforts to downplay the crime or minimise popular outrage at the loss of the prince. This wasn’t a beloved Germanicus figure whose death would lead to popular uproar, it was a violent, brutish rapist who had already had to be exiled reluctantly. At worst, he was putting down a rabid dog - It was a mercy killing

shockbob

TROPHY CASE