Curated playlist
1st-century Roman emperors
- TiberiusTiberius Julius Caesar Augustus was born on the 16th of November 42 BC, and by the time he died on the 16th of March AD 37, he had ruled the Roman Empire for more than two decades and left the imperial treasury holding nearly 3 billion…
- VespasianVespasian was born on the 17th of November, 9 AD, in a village called Falacrinae, northeast of Rome, to a moneylender and debt collector. His family had no political pedigree worth mentioning. His mother's family had inched a little…
- Year of the Four EmperorsThe Year of the Four Emperors began not with a coronation but with a whisper. In the winter of 67-68, a Roman official named Gaius Julius Vindex began quietly writing letters to governors across the empire, feeling out who might help him…
- AugustusOn the 8th of May 44 BC, a teenager named Gaius Octavius accepted a dead man's will and, with it, the most dangerous inheritance in the Roman world. Julius Caesar, his great-uncle and Rome's dictator in perpetuity, had been stabbed to…
- DomitianDomitian was assassinated on the 18th of September 96, stabbed seven times in a carefully staged attack by members of his own household. His chamberlain had recruited a steward named Stephanus, who spent several days feigning an arm injury…
- ClaudiusClaudius was born on the 1st of August 10 BC in Lugdunum, modern Lyon, making him the first Roman emperor born outside Italy. He came into the world with a limp, a stammer, and a tremor, physical signs that his own mother Antonia Minor…
- NeroNero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus died on the 9th of June AD 68 with a private secretary's hand helping him drive a blade home. His last words, according to Suetonius, were "Too late! This is fidelity!" It was, of all endings, an…
- CaligulaCaligula, the third Roman emperor, came to power in AD 37 at age 24, welcomed by a city delirious with relief. Tiberius, his grim predecessor, had spent his final years in paranoid seclusion on the island of Capri, presiding over a reign…
- TitusTitus Flavius Vespasianus was born on the 30th of December 39 AD, in the same world that would later watch him tear down one of its most sacred buildings. He ruled Rome for just over two years. In that time, a volcano buried two cities, a…
- GalbaGalba put on a linen corset on the morning of the 15th of January AD 69, knowing it would offer little protection against so many swords. He had been emperor for just seven months. Within hours, soldiers he had refused to pay would hack…
- OthoMarcus Salvius Otho stabbed himself in the heart on the 16th of April 69 AD, one day after losing the Battle of Bedriacum. He was 36 years old. He had been emperor for just 91 days. What makes his death remarkable is not the brevity of the…
- VitelliusVitellius ruled Rome for just eight months in AD 69, and his last words were spoken to soldiers who were about to kill him. "Yet I was once your emperor," he said. That year, 69, became known as the Year of the Four Emperors, a spiral of…
- TrajanTrajan was born Marcus Ulpius Traianus on the 18th of September in AD 53, in a modest Roman colony called Italica, in what is now the Andalusian province of Seville in southern Spain. At the time of his birth, Italica was a small town…
- NervaNerva was almost 66 years old when the Roman Senate proclaimed him emperor on the 18th of September 96. He had spent a lifetime in imperial service and almost no time in the public eye. He was old, childless, and weak in health. To his…