A Roman emperor would consider the tyrant Putin’s treatment of Alexei Navalny’s supporters as foolish but, looking at Russia as a whole, would not see Navalny as a danger to Putin’s tyranny.
The emperor took a largely eirenic view of angry mobs. If they were asking for e.g. food in a shortage, he supplied it. Keeping the people happy was his job. In cases of sedition, as Seneca said, one punished only as a last resort. So when bakers rioted in Ephesus, the governor threatened imprisonment, but in the event just reprimanded them. No one wanted a bloodbath. So there is no record of emperors being removed by citizen protest, though citizens might applaud an emperor’s removal. In Russia, likewise: bar 1917 and irregular episodes such as the crowd’s support for Gorbachev in 1991, the Russian mob is not usually a decisive political force.
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