Explanation: After the civil war of the Year of the Five Emperors in the Roman Empire, caused by the death of the megalomaniacal gladiator-obsessed Emperor Commodus, the North-African-born Septimius Severus emerged victorious, and claimed the title of Emperor.

Before he consolidated power, he would say that Emperor Marcus Aurelius, the father of Commodus, could have spared the Empire a lot of grief by simply killing his own son for being an unfit twit, and that Aurelius was weak for not doing so. Yet after he consolidated power, Severus appointed his sons as his own successors, despite he himself recognizing that both of them were manifestly unfit for any amount of responsibility.