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 4Bread stall, from a Pompeiian wall painting (from Roman Empire)
Image 5Condemned man attacked by a leopard in the arena (3rd-century mosaic from Tunisia) (from Roman Empire)
Image 6A multigenerational banquet depicted on a wall painting from Pompeii (1st century AD) (from Roman Empire)
Image 7Excavation 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 8Eighteenth century painting by Pompeo Batoni depicting Aeneas fleeing from Troy. Aeneas carries his father. (from Founding of Rome)
Image 9The Roman Empire by 476, noting western and eastern divisions (from Roman Empire)
Image 23A 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 24The Flavian Amphitheatre, more commonly known as the Colosseum (from Roman Empire)
Image 30Landscape 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)
Image 35Relief panel from Trajan's Column in Rome, showing the building of a fort and the reception of a Dacian embassy (from Roman Empire)
Image 36Pride 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 37Aeneas's route in Virgil's Aeneid. The epic poem was written in the early first century BC. (from Founding of Rome)
Image 41Solidus 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 42Mosaic depicting a theatrical troupe preparing for a performance (from Culture of ancient Rome)
Image 62Cinerary urn for the freedman Tiberius Claudius Chryseros and two women, probably his wife and daughter (from Roman Empire)
Image 63Forum 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 64A teacher with two students, as a third arrives with his loculus, a writing case (from Roman Empire)
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (born Lucius Septimius Bassianus, 4 April 188 – 8 April 217), better known by his nickname Caracalla (/ˌkærəˈkælə/), was Roman emperor from 198 to 217 AD. He was a member of the Severan dynasty, the elder son of Emperor Septimius Severus and Empress Julia Domna. Severus proclaimed Caracalla co-ruler in 198, doing the same with his other son Geta in 209. The two brothers briefly shared power after their father's death in 211, but Caracalla soon had Geta murdered by the Praetorian Guard and became sole ruler of the Roman Empire. Julia Domna had a significant share in governance, since Caracalla found administration to be mundane. His reign featured domestic instability and external invasions by the Germanic peoples.
Caracalla issued the Antonine Constitution (Latin: Constitutio Antoniniana), also known as the Edict of Caracalla, which granted Roman citizenship to all free men throughout the Roman Empire. The edict gave all the enfranchised men Caracalla's adopted praenomen and nomen: "Marcus Aurelius". Other landmarks of his reign were the construction of the Baths of Caracalla, the second-largest bathing complex in the history of Rome, the introduction of a new Roman currency named the antoninianus, a sort of double denarius, and the massacres he ordered, both in Rome and elsewhere in the empire. In 216, Caracalla began a campaign against the Parthian Empire. He did not see this campaign through to completion due to his assassination by a disaffected soldier in 217. Macrinus succeeded him as emperor three days later. (Full article...)
...That according to Suetonius, Caligula "often sent for men whom he had secretly killed, as though they were still alive, and remarked offhandedly a few days later that they must have committed suicide"?
...That Mark Antony, who avenged Julius Caesar, was killed by Julius Caesar's grand nephew (Octavian) Augustus Caesar?
...That Sulla's grave read No friend ever surpassed him in kindness, and no enemy in ill-doing?
[...] 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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