Curated category
Deified Roman emperors
- Constantius ChlorusFlavius Valerius Constantius entered the world on the 31st of March, though historians cannot name his birth year. His career and the age of his eldest son…
- 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…
- Theodosius ITheodosius I was born in Hispania on the 11th of January, probably in the year 347, and by the time he died in Mediolanum on the 17th of January 395, he had…
- Constantine the GreatConstantine the Great was born on the 27th of February 272 in Naissus, a provincial city in what is now Serbia, to a Roman army officer and a Greek woman of…
- CaracallaCaracalla was born Lucius Septimius Bassianus on the 4th of April 188 in Lugdunum, Gaul, the city now called Lyon, France.
- GallienusGallienus ruled Rome for fifteen years, the longest reign in half a century, and spent nearly every one of those years fighting.
- VespasianVespasian was born on the 17th of November, 9 AD, in a village called Falacrinae, northeast of Rome, to a moneylender and debt collector.
- 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…
- 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.
- ClaudiusClaudius was born on the 1st of August 10 BC in Lugdunum, modern Lyon, making him the first Roman emperor born outside Italy.
- 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…
- Claudius GothicusMarcus Aurelius Claudius was born on the 10th of May in 214. Some researchers suggest a later date of 219 or 220, yet most historians adhere to the first…
- 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…
- 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…
- 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…
- 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.
- GaleriusGalerius Valerius Maximianus arrived in the world between 258 and 260 within the Danube provinces. Ancient texts place his birth either near Serdica or at a…
- MaximianMaximian was born around the year 250 near Sirmium in the province of Pannonia. His family owned a shop, and he grew up along the war-torn Danube frontier.
- 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.
- 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…
- Roman imperial cultIn 77 BC, loyalist Romans in Further Spain burned incense to the proconsul Metellus Pius as if he were a god. They organized a lavish banquet with imported…
- 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…
- 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…
- Valerian (emperor)Valerian entered the Senate before AD 238 as a Suffectus consul. He later served as Ordinarius consul in that same year, marking his early ascent within…
- Gordian IIIGordian III became Roman emperor at the age of thirteen, making him the second-youngest sole ruler the unified empire had ever seen.
- 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.
- ValensOn the 28th of March 364, soldiers gathered before the Constantinian Walls at a place called Hebdomon to acclaim Valens as co-emperor.