Thread: Best Roman Emperor

Apparently, Gibbon believed otherwise:
"They refused to accept the resignation of Augustus; they conjured him not to desert the republic which he had saved. AFter a decent resistance the crafty tyrant submitted to the orders of the senate; and consented to receive the government of provinces, and the general command of the Roman armies, under the well-known names of Proconsul and IMPERATOR." --"Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire", by Gibbon, p61.

"They recieved and held their commissions at the will of a superior, to whose auspicious influence the merit of their action was legally attributed. They were the representatives of the emperor. The emperor alone was the general of the republic, and his jurisdiction, civil was well as military, extended over all the conquests of Rome." --"Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire", by Gibbon, p63

Constantine wasn't a Christian. He wasn't baptized till he was on his death-bed.
"When at last he felt the approach of death he received baptism, declaring to the bishops who had assembled around him that, after the example of Christ, he had desired to receive the saving seal in the Jordan, but that God had ordained otherwise, and he would no longer delay baptism."
CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Constantine the Great

Septimus Severus was probably the most capable man to ever take the purple. Unfortunatly, except for him the Severun dynasty was a disaster.

Bearing in mind the question is who was the best Emperor I voted Augustus since there would not have been any Emperors after him had he not had such a successful career.

With regards to the Byzantine empire certain truths must be said to clarify the confusion.

The Roman empire after the trasfer of its capital to Constantinople by Constantine I in the 4th century, and even after the death of emperor Theodosius I when it split permanently, continued to have as its official language Latin. However the great majority of its people spoke Greek.
This situation continued for almost 250 years. After that even its emperors in the 6th century spoke Greek and the official language by the time of emperor Herakleios became Greek, but they continued to call themselves Romioi (Romans).
The reason for their insistence to be called Romioi instead of Hellenes (Greeks) had to do with the fact that a lot of people in Greece proper had continued with the ancient Greek religion (12 Gods), their philosophical schools, their temples etc.
The great majority though of the people in the empire especially in the Asiatic provinces were strong Christians and for them the name Greek was considered to be pagan, and didn't want to be associated with paganism. The outside world however were calling them properly "The Empire of the Greeks" and were considered Greeks.
It was in the later dynasties of the Byzantines that they started to call themselves Hellenes and be proud of it, and exploring the ancient Greek civilization.

There were very substansial differences between the ancien Roman empire and the Byzantine empire of the middle ages.
1) The language was different being Greek.
2) The culture was also very different even though they kept some of the administrative practices of the ancient Roman empire.
3) The religion also was different being Orthodoxy instead of Catholicism with different rituals and practices than those in the Latin West.