[Donald Rumsfeld Fan]

Throughout, its strength was vitiated by the absence of any coherent, agreed upon means of selecting and legitimizing its rulers, a crippling internal weakness when fending off the weight of the rest of the world on its borders.

You don't need to to "legitimize" the selection process. What you need are brave and honorable rulers...period.

The best goverment is a "Good Caesar". The worst government is a "Bad Caesar".

It's that simple.

Caesar Augustus

[joebuck]

"The best goverment is a "Good Caesar". The worst government is a "Bad Caesar"."

That's one of the most perceptive statments I've read in a while.

[WoofDog123]

“You don’t need to to “legitimize” the selection process. What you need are brave and honorable rulers...period.

The best goverment is a “Good Caesar”. The worst government is a “Bad Caesar”.
“

You’ve got to be kidding. Without effective mechanisms to sort out the ‘honorable rulers’ from the rest, you are stuck with what was reality for a good part of the western empire’s history, where control was as much as anything predicated on how many troops you had at your disposal, where you were located, and what other problems the empire had on its plate at the moment.

Everyone needs brave and honorable rulers, this is like saying everyone needs good nutrition. Without mechanisms to sort pretenders to the throne out effectively, you aren’t going to get them most of the time....civil war every time a legion declared its general as emperor is one of the sorts of problems ‘legitimizing’ the selection process would hope to avoid.