Tag: Roman Empire

By popular acclaim, fresh from his brilliant triumph over the pirates, Pompey was given supreme and unlimited authority over the whole east. His powers were to be in his hands until he himself should be satisfied with the completeness of the settlement he might effect. No Roman, other than Sulla, h...

Prehistoric Europe 00003. Oval hut, Terra Amata (Nice), France, c. 400,000 BC. 00006. Caves, Lascaux, France, c. 15,000-13,000 BC. 00006a. Swimming deer (at Musée d'Aquitaine, France), photo 1990, K. Cohen, San Jose State U. 00010. Menhirs, Carnac, Brittany, France, c. 4250-3750 BC. 00010a. Alignmen ...

Slaves were trained as gladiators, and in 73 BC such a slave, a Thracian named Spartacus, broke out of a gladiator training camp at Capua and took refuge in the hills. The number of his band swelled rapidly and he kept his men well in hand and under strict discipline and routed two commanders who we...

Crassus grew up as the son of a consul and distinguished general.His career to fame and phenomenal wealth began as he started purchasing the houses of Sulla's victims. Had Sulla confiscated all their belongings he sold them off cheap. And Crassus bought and made sensational profits when selling them...

The Carthaginians had not lost everything, though they had been driven out of waters where they had collided with Greeks and increasingly with Italian traders also. There were two paths still open to them. their original exploitation of Africa, both the mountainous north and the oases and caravan r...

...

Publius Aelius Hadrianus, called Hadrian, was Roman emperor from AD 117 until 138. He regarded his 20-year reign as a golden age of peace and prosperity, comparable to that of his great predecessor Augustus more than 100 years earlier (see Augustus). Monuments to Hadrian's reign are the Tivoli villa...

...

...

After the violent death of Tiberius Gracchus, the Gracchus family wasn't finished yet.Gaius Gracchus, a flamboyant and powerful public speaker, was to be a far more formidable political force than his brother. The legacy of Tiberius Gracchus, the agrarian law, was being applied in a manner which cre...

...

If Rome had suffered heavily in the war, Carthage was almost ruined. and the peace brought worse disasters still. First, the vast mercenary forces which had been levied, but not yet transported to Sicily, mutinied for not having been paid. And for three years the Carthaginians carried their lives in...