What stories does HearLore have on 2nd-century Roman emperors?

HearLore has narrated stories on 2nd-century Roman emperors, each linked to related entries. Start with any one and follow the connections to your next listen.

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Curated playlist

2nd-century Roman emperors

Year of the Five Emperors6 minThe 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. It started with the murder of the sitting emperor on New Year's Eve, an act carried out by men inside…
Caracalla13 minCaracalla was born Lucius Septimius Bassianus on the 4th of April 188 in Lugdunum, Gaul, the city now called Lyon, France. He would die on the 8th of April 217, stabbed by a soldier while stopping to urinate on a road in the eastern…
Septimius Severus13 minSeptimius 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 born. He had climbed from an obscure provincial family to become the sole ruler of…
Marcus Aurelius10 minMarcus 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 included sprawling brickworks on the city's outskirts. He would go on to rule the…
Lucius Verus14 minLucius 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 who he was, but what he and his co-emperor Marcus Aurelius represented: for the…
Hadrian11 minHadrian 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. He governed Rome from 117 to 138, yet he spent more than half that time outside Italy,…
Trajan19 minTrajan 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…
Antoninus Pius14 minAntoninus 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 throughout that entire reign. No other emperor of the Principate could make that…
Commodus13 minCommodus 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 Aurelius, and the empire at that moment was still basking in what later…
Pescennius Niger7 minPescennius 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 rival who would not stop. The citizens of Rome had taken to the streets, shouting his…
Didius Julianus8 minMarcus Didius Julianus became Roman emperor on the 28th of March 193, not through conquest or succession, but by shouting his bids over a wall. The Praetorian Guard had just murdered Pertinax, the reigning emperor, and then announced that…