Curated category
Roman emperors to suffer posthumous denigration or damnatio memoriae
- 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…
- GallienusGallienus ruled Rome for fifteen years, the longest reign in half a century, and spent nearly every one of those years fighting.
- CaracallaCaracalla was born Lucius Septimius Bassianus on the 4th of April 188 in Lugdunum, Gaul, the city now called Lyon, France.
- DomitianDomitian was assassinated on the 18th of September 96, stabbed seven times in a carefully staged attack by members of his own household.
- Clodius AlbinusClodius Albinus was born around 150 CE in Hadrumetum, a city on the coast of North Africa, in what is now Sousse, Tunisia.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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…
- 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…
- 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…
- 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…
- 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.
- 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…
- MaxentiusMarcus Aurelius Valerius Maxentius entered the world in 283 as the son of Emperor Maximian and his Syrian wife Eutropia.
- 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.