Curated playlist
3rd-century Roman emperors
- HostilianHostilian ruled Rome for one of the shortest reigns in the empire's long history, a boy emperor caught between a catastrophic military defeat and a disputed death. His full name, recorded on coins and inscriptions, was Gaius Valens…
- Constantius Chlorus"Constantinian propaganda bedevils assessment of Constantius, yet he appears to have been an able general and a generous ruler." That verdict comes from the Oxford Classical Dictionary. It frames the central difficulty with Constantius…
- Gordian IGordian I held power over the Roman Empire for exactly 22 days. That figure alone sets the stage for one of the strangest episodes in Roman history, a year so chaotic that six men would claim the title of emperor before it ended. The man…
- CaracallaCaracalla 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…
- GallienusGallienus ruled Rome for fifteen years, the longest reign in half a century, and spent nearly every one of those years fighting. He fought Germanic tribes on the Rhine, Persian-backed usurpers in the East, breakaway generals in Gaul, and a…
- 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 born. He had climbed from an obscure provincial family to become the sole ruler of…
- BalbinusBalbinus ruled the Roman Empire for just three months in 238 AD, a year so chaotic it earned the name the Year of the Six Emperors. He was already in his early sixties when the Senate elevated him, alongside a colleague named Pupienus, to…
- Claudius GothicusMarcus Aurelius Claudius, remembered today as Claudius Gothicus, once knocked out a horse's teeth with a single punch, or so an ancient legend claims. That brute strength carried him from the ranks of the Roman army to the imperial throne…
- Gordian IIGordian II held the Roman imperial throne for about 22 days in the spring of 238 AD. That figure alone sets him apart from every other emperor in Roman history: no recorded reign was shorter. Yet within those three weeks, he fought a…
- DiocletianDiocletian retired from the most powerful office in the world and went home to grow cabbages. When rivals begged him to return to the throne in 308, he wrote back: "If you could see the cabbages I have planted here with my own hands, you…
- GaleriusIn the streets of Antioch, Galerius walked a mile ahead of Emperor Diocletian's imperial cart. He wore the full purple robes of a Roman emperor. This was not ceremony. It was punishment, delivered before watching crowds after his forces…
- MaximianMaximian died by hanging in July 310, on the orders of his own son-in-law, the emperor Constantine. Within seven years, that same man had declared him a god. Born around 250 near Sirmium, in what is now Serbia, Maximian grew up in a family…
- Maximinus ThraxMaximinus Thrax became Roman emperor in 235 without ever having sat in the Senate, without ever having governed a province, and without any of the social credentials Rome's ruling class considered essential. He rose from what ancient…
- AurelianAurelian earned a title that no Roman emperor had ever held before: Restitutor Orbis, Restorer of the World. He was born around 214, the son of a tenant farmer in the borderlands of Moesia Superior, and he died in 275 with an empire…
- Valerian (emperor)Valerian ruled Rome as emperor from 253 to 260. His reign ended at the battle of Edessa, in a way no Roman emperor had experienced before. He was captured alive by the Persian emperor Shapur I, becoming the first Roman emperor ever taken…
- ElagabalusElagabalus became Roman emperor at fourteen years old, declared so by a single legion at sunrise on the 16th of May 218. He would be dead before he turned nineteen. In the four years between, this Syrian teenager managed to install a…
- MacrinusMacrinus, born around 165 in Caesarea - the city now called Cherchell in modern Algeria - became Roman emperor in April 217 without ever having set foot in the Senate. He was a Berber from Mauretania Caesariensis, the son of an equestrian…
- Gordian IIIGordian III became Roman emperor at the age of thirteen, making him the second-youngest sole ruler the unified empire had ever seen. The year was 238 AD, and Rome had already burned through a bewildering succession of rulers in a single…
- Severus AlexanderSeverus Alexander was born on the 1st of October 208 in Arca Caesarea, Phoenicia, and by the age of thirteen he was ruling the Roman Empire alone. His predecessor, the emperor Elagabalus, had been killed by his own guards, and the bodies…