Curated category
Roman emperor-consuls
- 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…
- 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…
- 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.
- 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…
- 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.
- DomitianDomitian was assassinated on the 18th of September 96, stabbed seven times in a carefully staged attack by members of his own household.
- ClaudiusClaudius was born on the 1st of August 10 BC in Lugdunum, modern Lyon, making him the first Roman emperor born outside Italy.
- 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.
- 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.
- Justinian IJustinian I was born in 482 in Tauresium, in Dardania, near the city of Naissus, into a peasant family of either Thraco-Roman or Illyro-Roman origin.
- 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…
- 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…
- ArcadiusArcadius was born around 377 in Hispania, and by the time he was five years old, his father had named him co-ruler of the eastern Roman Empire.
- 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…
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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…
- 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…
- HonoriusHonorius was emperor of the Western Roman Empire for thirty years, from 393 to 423, and he presided over one of the most catastrophic stretches in Roman…
- 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…
- ElagabalusElagabalus became Roman emperor at fourteen years old, declared so by a single legion at sunrise on the 16th of May 218.
- 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…
- 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.
- Julian (emperor)Julian, the Roman emperor who ruled from 361 to 363, is remembered by a name he did not choose: the Apostate. To the Christians who survived his reign and…