March 9 | Wilhelm I of Germany

March 22, 1797 - March 9, 1888: Age 90

The first Kaiser Wilhelm lived to be 90; if he had died sooner, the history of Europe and, indeed, the world, might have been very different.

Wilhelm began life as a prince, the younger son of King Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia. His brother inherited the crown in 1840 but was incapacitated by a stroke in 1857 dying a few years later. Thus Wilhelm found himself King of Prussia and, in 1862, appointed Otto von Bismarck prime minister, with a mandate to implement the conservative politics he favoured.

Bismarck was a genius whose life's ambition was to unify the German states into a world superpower, and in less than a decade he had succeeded completely, using fear of socialism and hatred for the French as goads to consolidate Wilhelm's power. Wilhelm became the first German Emperor in 1870.

Wilhelm was extremely conservative, and the German state was effectively a military regime in which the acquisition and maintenance of superior armies was paraamount. His son, Crown Prince Friedrich, dreamed of modernizing the German state, creating a (relatively) liberal society modeled on the British Empire. He was greatly influenced by his wife, the daughter of Queen Victoria, an intelligent and passionate liberal. He opposed Bismarck's politics of fear, but since Bismarck ruled through his father, it seemed it was only a matter of time before Friedrich would ascend the throne and begin to realize his dream.

Wilhelm, however, lived on. And on. He became confused and weak in his old age, giving Bismarck complete liberty to aggressively pursue his reactionary policies. Moreover Bismarck, with a keen eye to the future, was actively cultivating the esteem of Friedrich's son, the future Wilhelm II. He played on tensions between father and son in both generations, wisely making no attempt to appease Friedrich while manipulating the elder Wilhelm and seducing the younger one.

Bismarck's bet paid off: by the time Wilhelm finally died at age 90, Friedrich was already dying of cancer. He ruled for just 99 days, and was succeeded by a young, brash, aggressive Wilhelm II.

Bismarck anticipated that his influence over the throne could thus continue unabated, but in the end Wilhelm's megalomania pushed him beyond even Bismarck's reach. Although the causes of World War I are complex, there is no doubt that the aggressive and often foolish policies of Wilhelm II were a very big factor in pushing Europe into a state of total war.

January 15 | Galba

December 24, 3 BC – January 15, 69: age 70

Nobody liked Galba. He succeeded Nero as Emperor of Rome, primarily by dint of showing up in Rome with an army shortly after Nero's death. There was a considerable anti-Nero faction that called for Galba to become emperor, and forced Nero to commit suicide, but it was Galba's arrival at the crucial time that made all the difference.

Unfortunately for Galba, he inherited a huge mess, and politicians who inherit messes are almost always unpopular, regardless of how relieved people are to get rid of the incumbent (US presidential candidates take note). Galba's first priority was to try to restore order to the imperial finances, and he managed to make himself extremely unpopular in the process. It didn't help that he was old, either. Within a couple of months legions began to refuse to swear allegiance to him. When he went out to punish the rebels (in a litter, he was so weak) he was killed. In his final moment he offered his neck, saying, "Strike, if it be for the good of the Romans!"

About 120 different people claimed credit for killing Galba, hoping to capitalize on his unpopularity. It backfired though; when the next emperor (Otho) was replaced by Vitellus, the 120-name list fell into his hands and he had every one of them executed.

Source: Wikipedia

December 31 | Commodus

August 31, 161 – December 31, 192: Age 31

"Not naturally wicked but, on the contrary, as guileless as any man that ever lived. His great simplicity, however, together with his cowardice, made him the slave of his companions, and it was through them that he at first, out of ignorance, missed the better life and then was led on into lustful and cruel habits, which soon became second nature." — Dio Cassius

Commodus was Emperor of Rome between the years 180 and 192 C.E. He was the son of Marcus Aurelius and, yes, he's the guy portrayed by Joachim Phoenix in Gladiator. Surprisingly, he was in real life almost as much of a bastard as Phoenix portrayed him to be.

His father was a sober, wise man who ruled during a difficult period in Rome's history. Commodus was not the first Roman emperor who inherited the title from his father, but he was the first to be "born to the purple", that is, born during his father's rule. Commodus was handsome, strong, athletic, but he was vain, impatient, cruel, and ultimately quite foolish. A shown in the movie, he really did like to fight gladiators in the Coliseum; he did it in the nude. He never lost, naturally, since the penalty for winning against the Emperor would be infinitely worse than being humbled by him in the ring. He was no coward: he also faced wild animals, incapable of faking submission — and he won. Publicly, he never killed his opponents, but privately he frequently did. He also charged the City of Rome a million sesterces for each appearance (to get a sense of the value, the average legionary was paid 1,200 sesterces per annum). His behaviour got even more eccentric: wounded soldiers would be placed in the arena for Commodus to kill with a sword. And people missing their feet due to accident or disease were taken to the arena where they were tethered together for Commodus to club to death while pretending they were giants.

There was more. He kept taking on new names, and when the number of his names reached 12 (Lucius Aelius Aurelius Commodus Augustus Herculeus Romanus Exsuperatorius Amazonius Invictus Felix Pius) he ordered that the 12 months of the year be renamed according to each of his names. So January became Lucius, etc. He also renamed Rome "Colonia Lucia Annia Commodiana", and renamed all kinds of institutions after himself too (for example, the Senate was renamed "Commodian Fortunate Senate", the legions were renamed "Commodianae", etc.).

It was all too much for his enemies, and the number of plots for his death increased. One group of conspirators, including his lover, Marcia, poisoned him on December 31, 192, but he vomited it all up again. They then sent a wrestler named Narcissus to Commodus in his bath to strangle him. This attempt succeeded. Upon his death the Senate immediate declared him a public enemy and changed the names of the months and the city and everything else back again.

Sources: Wikipedia, Roman Emperors

October 13 | The Emperor Claudius

August 1, 10 BC - October 13, 54: Age 64

Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus was the grandson of Mark Anthony and Octavia (Augustus Caesar's sister) on his mother's side, and of Livia (Augustus' third wife) on his father's side. His strong connections with the imperial family of Rome would have marked him for untimely death but for one thing: he was considered an idiot and a cripple.

Claudius had some kind of physical ailment — it may have been cerebral palsy, Tourette's syndrome, or polio — but there was nothing whatever wrong with his intellect. His knees were weak, his head shook, he stammered and slobbered when excited, and he had a peculiar voice. In materialistic Rome, beauty was thought to reflect inner virtue and intelligence, and physical defects reflected moral and intellectual lacks. This certainly saved Claudius from the many purges of eligible and well-connected males undertaken by Augustus, Tiberias, and Caligula and their allies. His own mother despised him, and made no secret of it. As a youngster his family hired a mule-driver to babysit him, on the assumption that his afflictions were the result of a stubborn and dull temperament.

But Claudius was by no means an idiot. In later life he admitted to having exaggerated his defects as the perfect disguise to defend himself; he could not, however, hide his intelligence from everyone: the historian Livy and the philosopher Athenodorus tutored him as a teenager. He undertook to write a history of the Civil Wars, and this nearly undid him: they were a bit too accurate. Fortunately his mother and his grandmother Livia saw the danger and put a stop to it. This incident presumably confirmed their assumption that he was unfit for public office.

Augustus died when Claudius was 24. The succeeding emperors, Tiberius (his uncle) and Caligula (his nephew), set about destroying every other male member of the imperial family in their purges — except Claudius. In 41, Caligula was assassinated, and the conspirators began to search Rome in order to kill members of the imperial family. Claudius took refuge in the palace, hiding behind some curtains, where a guard named Gratus found him and spirited him away to safety. After some debate, the Senate agreed to accept him as the new Emperor.

Then followed, contrary to nearly everyone's expectations, 13 years of sober and conscientious rule and a period of peace and expansion that must have been a great relief after the chaotic years of Caligula's mad rule. It would have been longer, but Claudius died, probably poisoned, in 54.

Accounts of the time agree that it was likely a dish of mushrooms that delivered the fatal dose. It is generally accepted that the instigator of the poisoning was his wife, Agrippina, whose son Nero was poised to succeed his stepfather. For several months before his death Claudius and Agrippina had argued a lot, and Claudius had been showing signs of raising his own 13-year-old son Britannicus to a status higher than that of Nero (in ancient Rome it was not uncommon for stepchildren to be favoured over natural children, particularly if there were residual bad feelings about the natural child's mother). To Agrippina and Nero, it was important that Claudius die before Britannicus grew any older.

Claudius was immediately deified by Nero. Seneca, an enemy whom Claudius had banished in 41, wrote the satire, Apocolocyntosis divi Claudii (The Pumpkinification of the Divine Claudius) a few months after his death ("apocolocyntosis" is a mangling of the word "apotheosis", meaning deification). Seneca writes of his last words as follows: "This was the last utterance of his to be heard among men, after he let out a sound from that part with which he found it easier to communicate, 'Oh I think I have shit myself.'" Seneca goes on to remark, "He certainly shat up everything else." On the whole, however, most of his contemporaries and virtually all historians judge Claudius to have been a popular and competent ruler.

Sources: Wikipedia, The Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine