Curated category
2nd-century Roman emperors
- Year of the Five EmperorsThe Year of the Five Emperors is the name given to AD 193. In that single year, five different men each claimed the same Roman throne.
- CaracallaCaracalla was born Lucius Septimius Bassianus on the 4th of April 188 in Lugdunum, Gaul, the city now called Lyon, France.
- Septimius SeverusSeptimius Severus died on the 4th of February 211, in a garrison city at the far edge of the known world, far from the sun-baked coast of Libya where he was…
- Marcus AureliusMarcus Aurelius was born in Rome on the 26th of April 121, in the grand villa on the Caelian Hill that his mother had inherited along with a fortune that…
- Lucius VerusLucius Verus became Roman emperor on the 7th of March 161, the day his adoptive father Antoninus Pius died. What makes that moment extraordinary is not just…
- HadrianHadrian was born Publius Aelius Hadrianus on the 24th of January 76, in the town of Italica in southern Spain, far from the city he would one day rule.
- 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…
- Antoninus PiusAntoninus Pius ruled Rome for twenty-three years, and by the account of the historian J. J. Wilkes, he was likely never within five hundred miles of a legion…
- CommodusCommodus was born on the 31st of August 161 into perhaps the most gilded circumstance a Roman child could occupy: his father was the reigning emperor Marcus…
- Pescennius NigerPescennius Niger was a Roman general who, in the spring of 193 AD, found himself proclaimed emperor by the eastern legions against his will and against a…
- Didius JulianusMarcus Didius Julianus became Roman emperor on the 28th of March 193, not through conquest or succession, but by shouting his bids over a wall.