I remember something from an article I read many years ago, perhaps a review of a book about the Emperor Nero, quoting or near-quoting from memory: “I can but smile when some excessively earnest historian writes a learned monograph about Caligula’s nationalities policy or Elagabalus’s religious policy. Such men did not have policies; they had the whims of spoiled children, whims which, by the accidents of history, they were able to command the resources of the whole Mediterranean basin to fulfill. Nero was a somewhat more complicated case.”

I wonder whether a certain American politician can be classed as “a somewhat more complicated case.” He does have some policies, even if many of them are bad policies. On the other hand, he also exhibits childish whims and a childish understanding of the world, he frequently contradicts himself, and sometimes his views are those of whichever flunky managed to speak with him most recently, even if he said or tweeted something quite different the previous day, after hearing from a different staffer or cabinet member.

I can imagine an assignment for future schoolboys and schoolgirls: compare and contrast President Trump with the Emperor Elagabalus.