Ancient Rome began as an Italic settlement, traditionally dated to 753 BC, beside the River Tiber in the Italian Peninsula. The settlement grew into the city and polity of Rome, and came to control its neighbours through a combination of treaties and military strength. It eventually controlled the Italian Peninsula, assimilating the Greek culture of southern Italy (Magna Grecia) and the Etruscan culture, and then became the dominant power in the Mediterranean region and parts of Europe. At its height it controlled the North African coast, Egypt, Southern Europe, and most of Western Europe, the Balkans, Crimea, and much of the Middle East, including Anatolia, Levant, and parts of Mesopotamia and Arabia. That empire was among the largest empires in the ancient world, covering around 5 million square kilometres (1.9 million square miles) in AD 117, with an estimated 50 to 90 million inhabitants, roughly 20% of the world's population at the time. The Roman state evolved from an elective monarchy to a classical republic and then to an increasingly autocraticmilitary dictatorship during the Empire.
Ancient Rome is often grouped into classical antiquity together with ancient Greece, and their similar cultures and societies are known as the Greco-Roman world. Ancient Roman civilisation has contributed to modern language, religion, society, technology, law, politics, government, warfare, art, literature, architecture, and engineering. Rome professionalised and expanded its military and created a system of government called res publica, the inspiration for modern republics such as the United States and France. It achieved impressive technological and architectural feats, such as the empire-wide construction of aqueducts and roads, as well as more grandiose monuments and facilities. (Full article...)
The crisis of the Roman Republic was an extended period of political instability and social unrest from about c. 133 BC to 44 BC that culminated in the demise of the Roman Republic and the advent of the Roman Empire.
The causes and attributes of the crisis changed throughout the decades, including the forms of slavery, brigandage, wars internal and external, overwhelming corruption, land reform, the invention of excruciating new punishments, the expansion of Roman citizenship, and even the changing composition of the Roman army. (Full article...)
Image 7Dressing of a priestess or bride, Roman fresco from Herculaneum, Italy (30–40 AD) (from Roman Empire)
Image 8Model of archaic Rome, 6th century BC (from Founding of Rome)
Image 9Aeneas's route in Virgil's Aeneid. The epic poem was written in the early first century BC. (from Founding of Rome)
Image 10Wall painting (1st century AD) from Pompeii depicting a multigenerational banquet (from Culture of ancient Rome)
Image 11Excavation on the Palatine Hill has found the foundations of a hut believed to correspond to the Hut of Romulus, which the Romans themselves preserved into late antiquity (from Founding of Rome)
Image 28Pride in literacy was displayed through emblems of reading and writing, as in this portrait of Terentius Neo and his wife (c. 20 AD) (from Roman Empire)
Image 42Forum of Gerasa (Jerash in present-day Jordan), with columns marking a covered walkway (stoa) for vendor stalls, and a semicircular space for public speaking (from Roman Empire)
Image 52Solidus issued under Constantine II, and on the reverse Victoria, one of the last deities to appear on Roman coins, gradually transforming into an angel under Christian rule (from Roman Empire)
Image 58Aquae Sulis in Bath, England: architectural features above the level of the pillar bases are a later reconstruction. (from Roman Empire)
Image 59The Roman Empire under Hadrian (ruled 117–138) showing the location of the Roman legions deployed in 125 AD (from Roman Empire)
Image 60Sestertius issued under Hadrian circa AD 134–138 (from Roman Empire)
Image 61A fresco from Pompeii depicting the foundation of Rome. Sol riding in his chariot; Mars descending from the sky to Rhea Silvia lying in the grass; Mercury shows to Venus the she-wolf suckling the twins; in the lower corners of the picture: river-god Tiberinus and water-goddess Juturna. 35–45 AD. (from Founding of Rome)
Image 62Condemned man attacked by a leopard in the arena (3rd-century mosaic from Tunisia) (from Roman Empire)
Image 63Bread stall, from a Pompeiian wall painting (from Roman Empire)
Image 64A multigenerational banquet depicted on a wall painting from Pompeii (1st century AD) (from Roman Empire)
Image 65Roman cities in the Imperial period (from Roman Empire)
Image 74Landscape resulting from the ruina montium mining technique at Las Médulas, Spain, one of the most important gold mines in the Roman Empire (from Roman Empire)
Drusus Caesar (c. AD 8 – 33) was the adopted grandson and heir of the Roman emperor Tiberius, alongside his brother Nero. Born into the prominent Julio-Claudian dynasty, Drusus was the son of Tiberius' general and heir, Germanicus. After the deaths of his father and of Tiberius' son, Drusus the Younger, Drusus and his brother Nero Caesar were adopted together by Tiberius in September AD 23. As a result of being heirs of the emperor, he and his brother enjoyed accelerated political careers.
Sejanus, the prefect of the Praetorian Guard, had become powerful in Rome and is believed by ancient writers such as Suetonius and Tacitus to have been responsible for the downfall of Drusus the Younger. As Sejanus' power grew, other members of the imperial family began to fall as well. In AD 29, Tiberius wrote a letter to the Senate attacking Nero and his mother, and the Senate had them both exiled. Two years later, Nero died in exile on the island of Ponza. Drusus was later imprisoned following similar charges as his brother, and remained in prison from AD 30 until his death three years later. Their deaths allowed for the adoption and ascension of their third brother, Gaius Caligula, following the death of Tiberius in AD 37. (Full article...)
...That the Pater familias of a family, had the power to sell his children into slavery?
...That Trajan was the last Roman Emperor to harry the coast of Arabia with the Roman Navy?
...That Trajan was born at Italica, in Spain and adopted by the Roman Emperor Nerva and made his heir, which entitled Trajan to call himself the son of Nerva
[...] Caesar is a god in his own city. Outstanding in war or peace, it was not so much his wars that ended in great victories, or his actions at home, or his swiftly won fame, that set him among the stars, a fiery comet, as his descendant. There is no greater achievement among Caesar's actions than that he stood father to our emperor. Is it a greater thing to have conquered the sea-going Britons; to have led his victorious ships up the seven-mouthed flood of the papyrus-bearing Nile; to have brought the rebellious Numidians, under Juba of Cinyps, and Pontus, swollen with the name of Mithridates, under the people of Quirinus; to have earned many triumphs and celebrated few; than to have sponsored such a man, with whom, as ruler of all, you gods have richly favoured the human race? Therefore, in order for the emperor not to have been born of mortal seed, Caesar needed to be made a god. [...]
Augustus, his 'son', will ensure that he ascends to heaven as a god, and is worshipped in the temples. Augustus, as heir to his name, will carry the burden placed upon him alone, and will have us with him, in battle, as the most courageous avenger of his father's murder. Under his command, the conquered walls of besieged Mutina will sue for peace; Pharsalia will know him; Macedonian Philippi twice flow with blood; and the one who holds Pompey's great name, will be defeated in Sicilian waters; and a Roman general's Egyptian consort, trusting, to her cost, in their marriage, will fall, her threat that our Capitol would bow to her city of Canopus, proved vain.
Why enumerate foreign countries or the nations living on either ocean shore? Wherever earth contains habitable land, it will be his: and even the sea will serve him!
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