Tag: Roman Empire

In 88 BC the activities of king Mithridates of Pontus called for urgent action. The king had invaded the province of Asia and massacred 80'000 Roman and Italian citizens. Sulla, as elected consul and as the man who had won the Social War, expected the command, but Marius wanted it, too. The senate a...

by Plutarch Marcus Crassus, whose father had borne the office of a censor, andreceived the honor of a triumph, was educated in a little housetogether with his two brothers, who both married in their parents'lifetime; they kept but one table amongst them; all which,perhaps, was not the least reason o ...

In 54 BC Pompey's young wife had died and with her death had disappeared the personal link between him and his father-in-law Caesar. Crassus had started for the east to take up governorship of Syria. Meanwhile Pompey did little. He simply watched with growing jealousy the successive triumphs of Caes...

Two important events marked the reign of Constantine the Great, the first Christian emperor of Rome. He made Christianity a lawful religion in Roman society, and he founded the city of Constantinople, the brilliant capital of the Eastern Roman Empire. Flavius Valerius Constantinus was born in the Ro...

By July 47 BC Caesar was back in Rome, and was formally appointed dictator for the second time.In Spain the legions were in mutiny. And in Africa the Pompeians were scoring victories.He also found the legions in Campania in mutiny, demanding to be discharged. But what they really wanted was not a di...

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Pompey the Great (106-48BC), Roman general and statesman, the erstwhile ally and son-in-law of Julius Caesar, but later his arch-rival for power. Pompey was born Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus in Rome on September 29, 106BC, into a senatorial family; his father, Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo, was consul in 89BC. ...

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b. Sept. 15?, AD 53, Italica, Baetica [now in Spain]d. Aug. 8/9, 117, Selinus, Cilicia [now in Turkey] Latin IN FULL CAESAR DIVI NERVAE FILIUS NERVA TRAIANUS OPTIMUS AUGUSTUS, also called ( 9798) CAESAR NERVA TRAIANUS GERMANICUS, ORIGINAL NAME MARCUS ULPIUS TRAIANUS, Roman emperor (AD 98-117), the f...

In 55 BC Crassus had, during his consulship, in the aftermath of the conference at Luca, managed to secure himself the governorship of Syria. Phenomenally rich and renowned for greed, people saw this as yet another example of his appetite for money. The east was rich, and a governor of Syria could h...

The Roman Empire in A.D. 69 was in a state of chaos. The previous emperor, Nero, had committed suicide in June of that year, and four different men had claimed the throne in the months that followed. The first to claim the throne was Galba, the governor of Hispania. He was proclaimed emperor by his ...

In 133 BC king Attalus III of Pergamum died without heirs. The dynasty had been loyal to Rome through all the shifting policies of the last seventy years. And Attalus, dying, bequeathed his kingdom to the Roman people, if only to solve the problem of succession. His only demand was that Pergamum an...