This infographic shows the relationship between currency debasement and the assassination of Roman EmperorsJeff Desjardins
Also ranks #6 on The Best Movies Of 1995 6 Gladiator Russell Crowe, Joaquin Phoenix, Connie Nielsen 1,291 votes In the spellbinding epic Gladiator, Russell Crowe embodies Maximus, a Roman general betrayed and reduced to slavery. Joaquin Phoenix plays Commodus, the treacherous emperor who orchestra...
The powerful Roman empire became a mirror of civilization of authority, strength to fear, dictatorship, and voraciousness. These powerful aristocrats were emperors, sat on the top of Rome’s social order, but many of these emperors abused their status and ability. Roman emperors’ history was ...
“He was a cunning, ruthless politician who knew how to play both sides,” Barry Strauss, author of Ten Caesars: Roman Emperors from Augustus to Constantine, says of Octavian. Ancient Empires Watch the three-episode documentary event, Ancient Empires. Available to stream now. WATCH NOW Mary ...
10. The Might of Julius Caesar When Gaius Julius Caesar took on the role of general in the Roman Republic army, he came across as a man of many talents. From his early days of being part of the First Triumvirate along with Pompey and Crassus, to becoming a dictator after defeating the...
Commodus exhibited little interest in government affairs, unlike the previous emperors Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, and Marcus Aurelius. Saoterus, a freedman from Nicomedia who became his chamberlain, was the first in a succession of favorites he left in charge of running the state at this po...
The popular image of the early Roman emperors is marked by notions of unbridled sexuality and moral decadence. It is the work of the imperial biographer Suetonius more than any other that has given rise to this image. His biographies include reports about the sex lives of the emperors that ...
The Roman Empire offers many examples of posthumous character assassination. Since it was a risky business to antagonize living emperors, critics usually aimed their arrows at those rulers who were safely dead. Yet that did not make their attacks any less vicious—rather the opposite. The ...
Important for the understanding of his character and behaviour is his identification withAlexander the Great. Admiration of the great Macedonian was not unusual among Roman emperors, but, in the case of Caracalla, Alexander became anobsessionthat proved to be ludicrous and grotesque. He adopted cloth...
Petronius Maximus was the Western Roman emperor from March 17 to May 31, 455. He was not recognized as emperor by the Eastern empire. Maximus was prefect of Rome in 420 and twice served as consul. In 454 he and the eunuch Heraclius engineered the assassi