Question

How are the roman and byzantine emperors the same and different from our political leaders (USA)?

Answer 1

Well, the emperors were seen as the top leaders -- much like the US President is today. They were responsible for leading their respective empires and making the big decisions that would decide the fate of their nations, the laws that would be followed, and where the government should lead the people.

But a lot of excesses that the emperors indulged in back then would get any of our political leaders today arrested and tried as criminals today.

Roman emperors literally had the power of life and death and a number of them abused this fact, such as Caligula. He was the emperor -- if he wanted to feed you food carved out of marble as a joke, he could, or kill you for refusing him. If you thought his poetry reading was just "okay", he might have you poisoned later. And he'd get away with it, though that only lasted so long once his own bodyguards realized how insane he was.

On the Byzantine side, Justinian essentially ordered his army to slaughter thousands of rioters who threatened the stability of the capital and the empire, as another example. Byzantine, and Roman, emperors regularly exiled people they didn't like -- even their own family members if they saw them as a threat. If they couldn't exile them, they would make them 'disappear'.

Our political leaders can't do even a fraction of the things emperors did because of laws that prevent such abuse of power. The President can't simply order in the army to attack people in the streets because they're making fun of him, or a Senator or Congressman can't walk around with an entourage of machine-gun wielding bodyguards and shoot whoever they please for looking at them funny. Civilization's come a long way since then from that perspective.