Curated playlist
Roman emperors to suffer posthumous denigration or damnatio memoriae
- Constantine II (emperor)In June 337, Constantine II had not yet been named emperor, but he was already acting like one. He issued an order returning the exiled bishop Athanasius to Alexandria, a city under the jurisdiction of his brother Constantius II. To…
- 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…
- LiciniusIn September of 324, at a place called Chrysopolis near Chalcedon, Licinius surrendered to Constantine I. It was the end of a sixteen-year reign as Roman emperor. He had spent those years as both colleague and rival to Constantine.…
- 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…
- 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…
- DomitianDomitian was assassinated on the 18th of September 96, stabbed seven times in a carefully staged attack by members of his own household. His chamberlain had recruited a steward named Stephanus, who spent several days feigning an arm injury…
- Clodius AlbinusClodius Albinus was born around 150 CE in Hadrumetum, a city on the coast of North Africa, in what is now Sousse, Tunisia. He died on the 19th of February 197, on a battlefield outside a Gallic city, his army defeated, his cause lost. In…
- 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. His last words, according to Suetonius, were "Too late! This is fidelity!" It was, of all endings, an…
- 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…
- 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 final years in paranoid seclusion on the island of Capri, presiding over a reign…
- 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…
- 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 Aurelius, and the empire at that moment was still basking in what later…
- 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…
- 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. The Praetorian Guard had just murdered Pertinax, the reigning emperor, and then announced that…
- 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…
- MaxentiusRome itself recognized Maxentius as emperor. Every other emperor in the empire refused to. He ruled from 306 to 312, holding the ancient capital while the rest of the empire called him a usurper. The man who finally defeated him spent…
- 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…