Apart from Nicolaus, every single one of these was born into a world in which emperors were the norm, where Julius Caesar was a literal god to whom they sacrificed little (and big) animals, who had priests and whose name – Caesar – had become a simple noun to denote imperial power and semi-divine authority. They existed in a world where killing a Caesar was a pretty big fucking deal, and a world that only ever killed emperors in order to replace them with other emperors.
