Tag: Roman Empire

A great task faced Marcus Aurelius when he became the Roman emperor in AD 161, as successor to his uncle, Emperor Antonius Pius. Generations of luxury had made the patricians, or nobles, weak and selfish. The middle class was disappearing, and the working class was being reduced to a state of slaver...

Antonius versus Octavian No heavy engagement took place before the two battles on the plain of Philippi in Macedonia, fought with an interval of three weeks in the late autumn of 42 BC. The first battle actually went to Marcus Brutus, although Cassius mistakenly believing the day lost, ordered his s...

The twenty years following Sulla's death saw the rise of three men who, if Rome's founders were truly suckled by a she-wolf, surely had within them the stuff of wolves.The three were Marcus Licinius Crassus (d. 53 BC), one of Rome's richest men ever. Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (106-48 BC), known as Pom...

Caesar went on, after the the conference of Luca to reduce the whole of Gaul to submission in the course of three campaigns - justified by initial aggression from the barbarians. The two following years were occupied with expeditions and campaigns of an experimental kind. In 55 BC a fresh invasion ...

Romans borrowed their gods and goddesses from the Greeks and gave them new names. Below is a chart of the Greek and Roman names of the God or Goddess and a description of what they were believed to control. Greek NameRoman NameResponsibilitiesAphroditeVenusgoddess of beauty and loveAresMarsgod of wa...

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Sulla should arrive back in Italy in the spring of 83 BC and marched on Rome determined to restore his will upon the city. But the Roman government controlled greater troops than his own, more so the Samnites wholeheartedly flung themselves into the struggle against Sulla, who to them represented se...

Roman Law One of the greatest legacies of Rome is their legal system. The development of Roman law began with the Twelve Tables in the mid-fifth century B.C. During a period of over 1000 years, the Roman jurists created a rich literature about all aspects of law: property, marriage, guardianship and...

Lucius Aurelius Commodus on 31 August AD 161 at Lanuvium, roughly 14 miles south-east of Rome.Of the fourteen children of Marcus Aurelius and Faustina the Younger, Commodus was the tenth. He was born one of twins, though his twin brother died when he was only four years old. He was given the Commodu...

For the moment Caesar's fall produced sheer paralysis. The conspirators imagined that they were going to restore the senatorial republic mid general acclamation. The enemy they had most to fear was Marcus Antonius (Mark Antony, ca. 83-30 BC), consul designate and a favourite lieutenant of the murder...

In 74 BC Marcus Antonius, father of the famous Mark Antony, had been given special powers to suppress the large-scale piracy in the Mediterranean. But his attempts had ended in dismal failure. After Antonius' death, the consul Quintus Metellus was set upon the same task in 69 BC. Matters indeed did ...