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Ancient Rome for Teachers Roman Empire & Emperors
Roman emperors - which emperor would you choose to be your leader.
Time Frame: 1-2 class periods
Preparation:
- You will need: Whatever you need to make posters Biographies: Nero, Trajan, Diocletian, Constantine, Valens – (one copy cut up to hand out one biography per group) , and then one per student at the end for class discussion (bios can be cut down at that point; this per student handout is to remind them of who's who for discussion.)
START CLASS:
Say: In ancient Rome, the government was very different during the Empire than it was under the Republic. There was still a Senate, but the current emperor could take away or give power to the Senate. The Assembly was gone. It was never a building. The Assembly was the right of the common man to assembly in the forum and vote. Vote for what? They did not pick the emperor, and the emperor was all-powerful. During the 500 years that Rome was an Empire, there were lots of emperors, some good, and some bad. Some took power by force. Some inherited the job from their fathers. Some emperors died by natural causes. Some were killed in wars. Some were murdered.
Ask: What makes a good leader. (Quick discussion.)
Say: Let's take a look at one Roman Emp eror, Emperor Nero, and see if you think he was a good leader based on the information provided in these two short, cartoon, PowerPoints. Show presentations: Nero at the Circus Maximus Nero Goes Insane
Ask: Would you say that Emperor Nero was a good leader?
Say: Today, we’re going to run political campaigns, working in groups. I am going to give you a biography of one Roman emperor. Your group's job is to get your candidate elected as emperor – not by the people of Rome, because the vote is gone. The people in this class will vote with a show of hands for their favorite candidate based on the campaigns. Majority rules. You may choose to work against your assigned candidate, because you believe he would make a very bad emperor. But be careful. In these dangerous times, you would not want your candidate to know you are working against him. Your campaign promises must sound positive on the surface. You will need to create two things - a campaign poster and a short speech with campaign promises. For example, a slogan might be Nero’s Our Hero. To go along with that, you would create a couple of campaign promises in your speech that supported Nero as a hero. Good Luck in the elections!
Divide your class into four groups. Give each group a biography of a real Roman emperor. Give students time to create their campaign based on the information in the biography they were handed. If some of your students wish to take Nero as their candidate, divide the class into five groups, but tell the Nero group that their slogan cannot be Nero is a Hero. They have to create their own slogan.
Allow each group time to present their candidate. Once all candidates have been presented, have the class vote with a show of hands. Tally their votes accurately. Announce the totals accurately. Then award the election to a candidate not of their choosing. For example, if Constantine gets the most votes, announce Nero as the new emperor, even if he is not running Remind students that the common man had no voice in government.
Read each biography aloud to the class. Compare the election promises with the biography as presented in the handout. Was the candidate presented accurately?
CLASS DISCUSSION: Suggested Handout, shortened bios. One per student. (See below.)
Does it make sense to classify the emperors as good or bad?
Which emperor was the hardest to judge?
Which system of government do you think worked better for the ancient Romans, the Republic or the Empire?
What do we expect from our leaders today?
Suggested Handout, shortened bios
NERO - He started out as a good ruler, but he went insane. He murdered his mother and his wife. He threw thousands of Christians to the lions. He ordered some members of the Senate to kill themselves. The Senate ordered his execution. Nero heard about it, and killed himself.
TRAJAN - He was the first emperor who was not from Italy. He was Spanish. He was a great conqueror. Under his rule, the empire grew, and covered more geography than at any other time.
DIOCLETIAN - He split the Roman Empire in half. The Western Roman Empire (Europe) included the city of Rome. The Eastern Roman Empire (Arab countries) included the city of Byzantium. Each half had an emperor, but one was the senior emperor, in charge.
CONSTANTINE - He was the first Christian emperor. He chose to live in the Eastern Roman Empire, and chose his capital to be the small town Byzantium, which he renamed Constantinople. Rome became less and less important to the Eastern Roman Empire.
VALENS - He allowed the Visigoths (Goths) to settle in the Danube region of the Western Roman Empire. He promised these settlers that Rome would help with food and shelter. He did not keep his promises. The Visigoths rebelled. It was the beginning of the end of Rome.
For more classroom activities, see: Our Classroom Activities for Ancient Rome
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This page contains our 100% free stand-alone printables on the leading empire of the ancient European world, Rome. There are readings with questions, charts, DBQs, pop quizzes, and more. These free Student Handouts worksheets are valuable tools for junior and senior high school students learning about ancient Rome, by providing structured activities and exercises that reinforce their understanding of historical facts, concepts, and events. Here are some ways in which our free printable worksheets can assist students in learning about ancient Rome. : Worksheets can include questions or fill-in-the-blank exercises that help students memorize essential facts about ancient Rome, such as key dates, emperors, important events, and geographic locations. : Worksheets with map-based activities can challenge students to label and identify important geographical features, cities, provinces, and trade routes within the Roman Empire, improving their understanding of the empire's scope and geography. : Students can use timelines on worksheets to sequence and organize historical events. This helps them develop a sense of historical chronology and the cause-and-effect relationships between events. : Worksheets can include vocabulary exercises that introduce students to Roman terms, names, and concepts. This enhances their historical literacy and comprehension. : Worksheets can incorporate critical thinking questions that require students to analyze primary and secondary sources related to ancient Rome. This helps them evaluate the reliability and bias of historical information. : Students can engage in comparative exercises where they compare and contrast aspects of ancient Roman society, politics, culture, and technology, with those of other civilizations or contemporary societies. : Worksheets with passages or excerpts from historical texts or Roman literature can improve students' reading comprehension skills. Questions related to the readings assess their understanding. : Worksheets can encourage students to explore Roman culture through activities related to art, architecture, daily life, and mythology. They can analyze images of Roman artifacts, answer questions about famous Roman artworks, or engage in creative writing exercises. : Assignments that require students to research specific topics related to ancient Rome and present their findings in a structured format on worksheets promote research and information-gathering skills. : For older students, worksheets can incorporate mathematical problems related to Roman numerals, Roman measurements, or calculations involving historical data, helping to integrate math skills into the study of history. : Worksheets can include project-based tasks, such as designing a Roman mosaic, creating a timeline of Roman emperors, or writing a fictional journal entry from the perspective of a Roman citizen. : Worksheets can serve as assessment tools to evaluate students' knowledge and comprehension of specific topics. They can also be used for review before quizzes or exams. : Worksheets can be adapted to accommodate various learning styles and abilities, providing opportunities for students to work at their own pace and level. : Worksheets can be assigned as homework or used for independent study, allowing students to reinforce what they've learned in the classroom. : Well-designed worksheets with visually appealing graphics and engaging activities can make learning about ancient Rome more enjoyable and interactive. While creating these free worksheets on the ancient Romans, we have striven to strike a balance between structured learning and fostering critical thinking skills. Our printable worksheets align with the junior and senior high school curricular learning objectives and provide opportunities for students to deepen their understanding of ancient Rome while developing historical thinking skills. |
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Roman Empire
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The Roman Empire , at its height (c. 117), was the most extensive political and social structure in western civilization . Building upon the foundation laid by the Roman Republic , the empire became the largest and most powerful political and military entity in the world up to its time and expanded steadily until its fall, in the west, in 476.
By 285, the empire had grown too vast to be ruled from the central government at Rome and so was divided by Emperor Diocletian (r. 284-305) into a Western and an Eastern Empire. The empire began when Augustus Caesar (r. 27 BCE-14 CE) became the first emperor of Rome and ended, in the west, when the last Roman emperor , Romulus Augustulus (r. 475-476), was deposed by the Germanic King Odoacer (r. 476-493). In the east, it continued as the Byzantine Empire until the death of Constantine XI (r. 1449-1453) and the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. The influence of the Roman Empire on western civilization was profound in its lasting contributions to virtually every aspect of western culture .
The Early Dynasties
Following the Battle of Actium in 31 BCE, Gaius Octavian Thurinus, Julius Caesar 's nephew and heir, became the first emperor of Rome and took the name Augustus Caesar. Although Julius Caesar is often regarded as the first emperor of Rome, this is incorrect; he never held the title `Emperor' but, rather, `Dictator', a title the Senate could not help but grant him, as Caesar held supreme military and political power at the time. In contrast, the Senate willingly granted Augustus the title of emperor, lavishing praise and power on him because he had destroyed Rome's enemies and brought much-needed stability.
Augustus ruled the empire from 27 BCE until 14 CE when he died. In that time, as he said himself, he "found Rome a city of clay but left it a city of marble." Augustus reformed the laws of the city and, by extension, the empire's, secured Rome's borders, initiated vast building projects (carried out largely by his faithful general Agrippa (l. 63-12 BCE), who built the first Pantheon ), and secured the empire a lasting name as one of the greatest, if not the greatest, political and cultural powers in history. The Pax Romana (Roman Peace), also known as the Pax Augusta, which he initiated, was a time of peace and prosperity hitherto unknown and would last over 200 years.
Following Augustus' death, power passed to his heir, Tiberius (r. 14-37), who continued many of the emperor's policies but lacked the strength of character and vision which so defined Augustus. This trend would continue, more or less steadily, with the emperors who followed: Caligula (r. 37-41), Claudius (r. 41-54), and Nero (r. 54-68). These first five rulers of the empire are referred to as the Julio-Claudian Dynasty for the two family names they descended from (either by birth or through adoption), Julius and Claudius.
Although Caligula has become notorious for his depravity and apparent insanity, his early rule was commendable as was that of his successor, Claudius, who expanded Rome's power and territory in Britain ; less so was that of Nero. Caligula and Claudius were both assassinated in office (Caligula by his Praetorian Guard and Claudius, apparently, by his wife). Nero's suicide ended the Julio-Claudian Dynasty and initiated the period of social unrest known as The Year of the Four Emperors.
These four rulers were Galba , Otho , Vitellius , and Vespasian . Following Nero's suicide in 68 , Galba assumed rule (69) and almost instantly proved unfit for the responsibility. He was assassinated by the Praetorian Guard. Otho succeeded him swiftly on the very day of his death, and ancient records indicate he was expected to make a good emperor. General Vitellius, however, sought power for himself and so initiated the brief civil war which ended in Otho's suicide and Vitellius' ascent to the throne.
Vitellius proved no more fit to rule than Galba had been, as he almost instantly engaged in luxurious entertainments and feasts at the expense of his duties. The legions declared for General Vespasian as emperor and marched on Rome. Vitellius was murdered by Vespasian's men, and Vespasian (r. 69-79) took power exactly one year from the day Galba had first ascended to the throne.
Vespasian founded the Flavian Dynasty which was characterized by massive building projects, economic prosperity, and expansion of the empire. Vespasian's reign was prosperous as evidenced by his building projects which included initial construction of the Flavian Amphitheatre (the famous Coliseum of Rome) which his son Titus (r. 79-81) would complete. Titus' early reign saw the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 which buried the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum .
![roman emperor assignment Roman Emperor Domitian, Louvre](https://www.worldhistory.org/img/r/p/500x600/1154.jpg?v=1717358224)
Ancient sources are universal in their praise for his handling of this disaster as well as the great fire of Rome in 80. Titus died of a fever in 81 and was succeeded by his brother Domitian (r. 81-96). Domitian expanded and secured the boundaries of Rome, repaired the damage to the city caused by the great fire, continued the building projects initiated by his brother, and improved the economy of the empire. Even so, his autocratic methods and policies made him unpopular with the Roman Senate , and he was assassinated in 96.
The Five Good Emperors
Domitian's successor was his advisor Nerva who founded the Nervan-Antonin Dynasty which ruled Rome 96-192. This period is marked by increased prosperity owing to the rulers known as The Five Good Emperors of Rome. Between 96 and 180, five exceptional men ruled in sequence and brought the Roman Empire to its height:
- Nerva (r. 96-98)
- Trajan (r. 98-117)
- Hadrian (r. 117-138)
- Antoninus Pius (r. 138-161)
- Marcus Aurelius (r. 161-180)
Under their leadership, the Roman Empire grew stronger, more stable, and expanded in size and scope. Lucius Verus and Commodus are the last two of the Nervan-Antonin Dynasty. Verus was co-emperor with Marcus Aurelius until his death in 169 and seems to have been fairly ineffective. Commodus (r. 180-192), Aurelius' son and successor, was one of the most disgraceful emperors Rome ever saw and is universally depicted as indulging himself and his whims at the expense of the empire. He was strangled by his wrestling partner in his bath in 192, ending the Nervan-Antonin Dynasty and raising the prefect Pertinax (who most likely engineered Commodus' assassination) to power.
![roman emperor assignment Pompeii and Mt. Vesuvius](https://www.worldhistory.org/img/r/p/750x750/301.jpg?v=1718023928-1695642227)
The Severan Dynasty
Pertinax governed for only three months before he was assassinated. He was followed, in rapid succession, by four others in the period known as The Year of the Five Emperors, which culminated in the rise of Septimus Severus to power. Severus (r. 193-211), founded the Severan Dynasty, defeated the Parthians, and expanded the empire. His campaigns in Africa and Britain were extensive and costly and would contribute to Rome's later financial difficulties. He was succeeded by his sons Caracalla and Geta, until Caracalla had his brother murdered.
![roman emperor assignment Roman Beach Attack](https://www.worldhistory.org/img/r/p/750x750/5173.jpg?v=1722097863)
Caracalla ruled until 217, when he was assassinated by his bodyguard. It was under Caracalla's reign that Roman citizenship was expanded to include all free men within the empire. This law was said to have been enacted as a means of raising tax revenue, simply because, after its passage, there were more people the central government could tax. The Severan Dynasty continued, largely under the guidance and manipulation of Julia Maesa (referred to as "empress"), until the assassination of Alexander Severus (r. 222-235) in 235 which plunged the empire into the chaos known as The Crisis of the Third Century (lasting from 235-284).
Two Empires: East & West
This period, also known as The Imperial Crisis, was characterized by constant civil war, as various military leaders fought for control of the empire. The crisis has been further noted by historians for widespread social unrest, economic instability (fostered, in part, by the devaluation of Roman currency by the Severans), and, finally, the dissolution of the empire which broke into three separate regions. The empire was reunited by Aurelian (270-275) whose policies were further developed and improved upon by Diocletian who established the Tetrarchy (the rule of four) to maintain order throughout the empire.
Even so, the empire was still so vast that Diocletian divided it in half in c. 285 to facilitate more efficient administration by elevating one of his officers, Maximian (r. 286-305) to the position of co-emperor. In so doing, he created the Western Roman Empire and the Eastern Roman Empire (also known as the Byzantine Empire). Since a leading cause of the Imperial Crisis was a lack of clarity in succession, Diocletian decreed that successors must be chosen and approved from the outset of an individual's reign. Two of these successors were the generals Maxentius and Constantine. Diocletian voluntarily retired from rule in 305, and the tetrarchy dissolved as rival regions of the empire vied with each other for dominance. Following Diocletian's death in 311, Maxentius and Constantine plunged the empire again into civil war.
Constantine & Christianity
In 312, Constantine defeated Maxentius at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge and became sole emperor of both the Western and Eastern Empires (ruling from 306-337 but holding supreme power 324-307). Believing that Jesus Christ was responsible for his victory, Constantine initiated a series of laws such as the Edict of Milan (313) which mandated religious tolerance throughout the empire and, specifically, tolerance for the faith which came to known as Christianity.
![roman emperor assignment The Colossus of Constantine](https://www.worldhistory.org/img/r/p/500x600/3632.jpg?v=1723596366)
In the same way that earlier Roman emperors had claimed a special relationship with a deity to augment their authority and standing (Caracalla with Serapis , for example, or Diocletian with Jupiter ), Constantine chose the figure of Jesus Christ. At the First Council of Nicea (325), he presided over the gathering to codify the faith and decide on important issues such as the divinity of Jesus and which manuscripts would be collected to form the book known today as The Bible . He stabilized the empire, revalued the currency, and reformed the military, as well as founding the city he called New Rome on the site of the former city of Byzantium (modern-day Istanbul) which came to be known as Constantinople.
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He is known as Constantine the Great owing to later Christian writers who saw him as a mighty champion of their faith but, as has been noted by many historians, the honorific could as easily be attributed to his religious, cultural, and political reforms, as well as his skill in battle and his large-scale building projects. After his death, his sons inherited the empire and, fairly quickly, embarked on a series of conflicts with each other which threatened to undo all that Constantine had accomplished.
His three sons, Constantine II, Constantius II , and Constans divided the Roman Empire between them but soon fell to fighting over which of them deserved more. In these conflicts, Constantine II and Constans were killed. Constantius II died later after naming his cousin Julian his successor and heir. Emperor Julian ruled for only two years (361-363) and, in that time, tried to return Rome to her former glory through a series of reforms aimed at increasing efficiency in government.
As a Neo-Platonic philosopher, Julian rejected Christianity and blamed the faith, and Constantine's advocacy for it, for the decline of the empire. While officially proclaiming a policy of religious tolerance, Julian systematically removed Christians from influential government positions, banned the teaching and spread of the religion , and barred Christians from military service. His death, while on campaign against the Persians, ended the dynasty Constantine had begun. He was the last pagan emperor of Rome and came to be known as `Julian the Apostate' for his opposition to Christianity.
![roman emperor assignment Byzantine Empire c. 460 CE](https://www.worldhistory.org/img/r/p/500x600/7704.png?v=1706415428)
After the brief rule of Jovian, who re-established Christianity as the dominant faith of the empire and repealed Julian's various edicts, the responsibility of emperor fell to Theodosius I. Theodosius I (r. 379-395) took Constantine's and Jovian's religious reforms to their natural ends, outlawed pagan worship throughout the empire, closed the schools and universities, and converted pagan temples into Christian churches after proclaiming Christianity Rome's state religion in 380.
It was during this time that Plato 's famous Academy was closed by Theodosius' decree. Many of his reforms were unpopular with both the Roman aristocracy and the common people who held to the traditional values of pagan practice. The unity of social duties and religious belief which paganism provided was severed by the institution of a religion which removed the gods from the earth and human society and proclaimed only one God who ruled from the heavens.
This new god, unlike the gods of old, had no special interest in Rome - he was the god of all people - and this distanced the religion of Rome from the state of Rome. Previously, Roman religious belief was state-sponsored and the rituals and festivals went to enhancing the status of the government. Theodosius I devoted so much effort to promoting Christianity that he seems to have neglected other duties as emperor and would be the last to rule both Eastern and Western Empires.
![roman emperor assignment The Fall of the Western Roman Empire, c. 480 CE](https://www.worldhistory.org/img/r/p/750x750/17289.png?v=1706415483-1683018147)
The Fall of the Roman Empire
From 376-382, Rome fought a series of battles against invading Goths known today as the Gothic Wars. At the Battle of Adrianople , 9 August 378, the Roman Emperor Valens (r. 364-378) was defeated, and historians mark this event as pivotal in the decline of the Western Roman Empire. Various theories have been suggested as to the cause of the empire's fall but, even today, there is no universal agreement on what those specific factors were. Edward Gibbon has famously argued in his The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire that Christianity played a pivotal role, in that the new religion undermined the social mores of the empire which paganism provided.
The theory that Christianity was a root cause in the empire's fall was debated long before Gibbon, however, as the theologian Orosius (l. c. 5th century) argued Christianity's innocence in Rome's decline as early as 418. Orosius claimed it was primarily paganism itself and pagan practices which brought about the fall of Rome. Other contributing factors to Rome's fall include:
- Political instability due to size of empire
- The self-interest of the two halves of the empire
- Invasion of barbarian tribes
- Government corruption
- Mercenary armies
- Over-reliance on slave labor
- Massive unemployment and inflation
The ungovernable vastness of the empire, even divided in two, made it difficult to manage. The Eastern Empire flourished while the Western Empire struggled and neither gave much thought to helping the other. Eastern and Western Rome saw each other more as competitors than teammates and worked primarily in their own self-interest. The growing strength of the Germanic tribes and their constant incursions into Rome could have been dealt with more effectively if not for government corruption, especially among provincial governors, and fair treatment of the Goths by the Romans overall.
The Roman military , manned largely with barbarian mercenaries who had no ethnic ties to Rome, could no longer safeguard the borders as efficiently as they once had nor could the government as easily collect taxes in the provinces. Further, the debasement of the currency, begun under the Severan Dynasty, had steadily encouraged inflation while widespread slave labor deprived lower-class citizens of jobs and increased unemployment levels. The arrival of the Visigoths in the empire in the third century, fleeing from the invading Huns , and their subsequent rebellions has also been cited as a contributing factor in the decline.
![roman emperor assignment Invasions of the Roman Empire](https://www.worldhistory.org/img/r/p/500x600/4131.png?v=1721861103)
The Western Roman Empire officially ended 4 September 476, when Emperor Romulus Augustulus was deposed by the Germanic King Odoacer (though some historians date the end as 480 with the death of Julius Nepos). The Eastern Roman Empire continued on as the Byzantine Empire until 1453, and though known early on as simply "the Roman Empire", it did not much resemble that entity at all. The Western Roman Empire would become re-invented later as The Holy Roman Empire (962-1806), but that construct, also, was far removed from the Roman Empire of antiquity and was an "empire" in name only.
Legacy of the Roman Empire
The inventions and innovations which were generated by the Roman Empire profoundly altered the lives of the ancient people and continue to be used in cultures around the world today. Advancements in the construction of roads and buildings, indoor plumbing, aqueducts , and even fast-drying cement were either invented or improved upon by the Romans.
The calendar used in the West derives from the one created by Julius Caesar, and the names of the days of the week (in the romance languages) and months of the year also come from Rome. Even the practice of returning some purchase one finds one does not want comes from Rome whose laws made it legal for a consumer to bring back some defective or unwanted merchandise to the seller.
Apartment complexes (known as insula ), public toilets, locks and keys, newspapers, even socks all were developed by the Romans as were shoes, a postal system (modeled after the Persians), cosmetics, the magnifying glass, and the concept of satire in literature . During the time of the empire, significant developments were also advanced in the fields of medicine , law, religion, government, and warfare .
The Romans were adept at borrowing from, and improving upon, those inventions or concepts they found among the indigenous populace of the regions they conquered. It is therefore difficult to say what is an "original" Roman invention and what is an innovation on a pre-existing concept, technique, or tool. It can safely be said, however, that the Roman Empire left an enduring legacy which continues to affect the way in which people live in the present day.
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Ancient Rome in 8 Infographics
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Bibliography
- Adkins, L. & Adkins, R. A. Handbook to Life in Ancient Rome. Oxford University Press, 1998.
- Durant, W. Caesar and Christ. Simon & Schuster, 1980.
- Gibbon, E. The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Penguin, 2000.
- Grant, M. Readings in the Classical Historians. Scribner, 1993.
- Grant, M. The Climax of Rome. Weidenfeld, London, 1993.
- Harvey, B. K. Daily Life in Ancient Rome. Focus, 2016.
- Herwig, W. History of the Goths. University of California Press, 1988.
- Kelly, C. The Roman Empire. Oxford University Press, 2006.
- Lewis, J. E. The Mammoth Book of Eyewitness Ancient Rome. Running Press, 2003.
- Mellor, R. The Historians of Ancient Rome. Routledge, 2012.
- Polybius. The Rise of the Roman Empire. Penguin Classics, 1980.
- Tacitus. Annals of Tacitus. Cambridge University Press, 2001.
- The Roman Empire , accessed 1 Dec 2016.
- Titus Livy. Livy's Histories. Penguin Classics, 2002.
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Mark, Joshua J.. " Roman Empire ." World History Encyclopedia . Last modified March 22, 2018. https://www.worldhistory.org/Roman_Empire/.
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Roman Emperor Assessment (Bailey): Details of the Assignment
- Details of the Assignment
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Assignment Handout
Roman Emperor Assessment
Use at least 2 actual print sources and at least 2 highly reputable web-based sources, which might include ABC-Clio and/or Facts On File. Include a bibliography as well (created in Noodletools .... see the tab on this guide for help).
Write a short (2 to 3 page TYPED) analytical essay about your of this emperor in which you address the following questions. Include a thesis statement.
Did he make the empire stronger? If so, how? Did he weaken or damage the empire? If so, how? Did he uphold and carry forth the concept of Princeps as defined by Augustus Caesar? What are the 3 most important developments during his reign?
You will also be expected to give a short (3 minute) oral presentation. Presentations will be in class.
- Trajan
- Antoninus Pius
- Marcus Aurelius
- Septimus Severus
- Caracalla
Roman Emperors
ROMAN EMPERORS
Julio-Claudians
(31 or) 27 B.C. - 14 A.D. Augustus 14 - 37 Tiberius 37 - 41 Caligula 41 - 54 Claudius 54 - 68 Nero
Flavian Dynasty
69 - 79 Vespasian 79 - 81 Titus 81 - 96 Domitian
5 Good Emperors
96 - 98 Nerva 98 - 117 Trajan 117 - 138 Hadrian 138 - 161 Antoninus Pius 161 - 180 Marcus Aurelius
177/180 - 192 Commodus 193 Pertinax 193 Didius Julianus 193 - 194 Pescennius Niger 193 - 197 Clodius Albinus
193 - 211 Septimius Severus 198/212 - 217 Caracalla 217 - 218 Macrinus 218 - 222 Elagabalus 222 - 235 Severus Alexander
(Emperors in pd. of decline/ upheaval)
235 - 238 Maximinus 238 Gordian I and II 238 Balbinus and Pupienus 238 - 244 Gordian III 244 - 249 Philip the Arab 249 - 251 Decius 251 - 253 Gallus 253 - 260 Valerian 254 - 268 Gallienus 268 - 270 Claudius Gothicus 270 - 275 Aurelian 275 - 276 Tacitus 276 - 282 Probus 282 - 285 Carus Carinus Numerian
Tetrarchy
285-ca.310 Diocletian
295 L. Domitius Domitianus 297-298 Aurelius Achilleus 303 Eugenius
306-07 Constantine
(CONSTANTINE 306-07)
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By: History.com Editors
Updated: June 12, 2023 | Original: November 9, 2009
![roman emperor assignment Augustus Caesar](https://assets.editorial.aetnd.com/uploads/2009/11/augustus-caesar-587488458.jpg?width=3840&height=1920&crop=3840%3A1920%2Csmart&quality=75&auto=webp)
As the first Roman emperor (though he never claimed the title for himself), Augustus led Rome’s transformation from republic to empire during the tumultuous years following the assassination of his great-uncle and adoptive father Julius Caesar. He shrewdly combined military might, institution-building and lawmaking to become Rome’s sole ruler, laying the foundations of the 200-year Pax Romana (Roman Peace) and an empire that lasted, in various forms, for nearly 1,500 years.
Augustus: Birth and Inheritance
Of Augustus’ many names and honorifics, historians favor three of them, each for a different phase in the emperor’s life. From his birth in 63 B.C. he was Octavius; after his adoption was announced in 44 B.C., Octavian; and beginning in 26 B.C. the Roman Senate conferred on him the name Augustus, the august or exalted one. He was born Gaius Octavius Thurinus in Velletri, 20 miles from Rome. His father was a senator and governor in the Roman Republic. His mother Atai was Caesar’s niece, and the young Octavius was raised in part by his grandmother Julia Ceasaris, Caesar’s sister.
Did you know? In 8 B.C. Augustus had the Roman month of Sextilius renamed after himself—as his great-uncle and predecessor Julius Caesar had done with July. August was the month of several of the emperor's greatest victories, including the defeat and suicide of Antony and Cleopatra. He did not increase the month's length, which had been 31 days since the establishment of the Julian calendar in 45 B.C.
Octavius donned the toga, the Roman sign of manhood, at age 16, and began taking on responsibilities through his family connections. In 47 B.C. he went to Hispania (modern-day Spain) to fight alongside Caesar. He was shipwrecked along the way, and had to cross enemy territory to reach his great-uncle—an act that impressed Caesar enough to name Octavius his heir and successor in his will.
Augustus: The Path to Power
The 17-year-old Octavius was at Apollonia (in present-day Albania) when the news of Caesar’s death and his own inheritance arrived. The dead ruler’s allies, including many in the senate, rallied around Octavian against their powerful rival Mark Antony . But after Octavian’s troops defeated Antony’s army in northern Italy, the future emperor refused an all-out pursuit of Antony, preferring an uneasy alliance with his rival.
In 43 B.C. Octavian, Antony and Marcus Aemilus Lepidus established the Second Triumvirate, a power-sharing agreement that divided up Rome’s territories among them, with Antony given the East, Lepidus Africa and Octavian the West. In 41 B.C. Antony began a romantic and political alliance with Cleopatra , queen of Egypt, which continued even after a Senatorial decree forced his marriage to Octavian’s sister Octavia Minor. Lepidus remained a minor figure until Octavian finally had him ousted after the triumvirate’s renewal in 37 B.C.
Antony’s affair with Cleopatra continued, and in 32 B.C. he divorced Octavia. In retaliation, Octavian declared war on Cleopatra. In the naval battle of Actium a year later, Octavian’s fleet, under his admiral Agrippa, cornered and defeated Antony’s ships. Cleopatra’s navy raced to aid her ally, but in the end the two lovers barely escaped. They returned to Egypt and committed suicide, leaving Octavian as Rome’s undisputed ruler.
Augustus: Emperor in All but Name
Historians date the start of Octavian’s monarchy to either 31 B.C. (the victory at Actium) or 27 B.C., when he was granted the name Augustus. In that four-year span, Octavian secured his rule on multiple fronts. Cleopatra’s seized treasure allowed him to pay his soldiers, securing their loyalty. To mollify Rome’s Senate and ruling classes, he passed laws harkening back—at least on the surface—to the traditions of the Roman Republic. And to win over the people, he worked to improve and beautify the city of Rome.
During his 40-years reign, Augustus nearly doubled the size of the empire, adding territories in Europe and Asia Minor and securing alliances that gave him effective rule from Britain to India. He spent much of his time outside of Rome, consolidating power in the provinces and instituting a system of censuses and taxation that integrated the empire’s furthest reaches. He expanded the Roman network of roads, founded the Praetorian Guard and the Roman postal service and remade Rome with both grand (a new forum) and practical gestures (police and fire departments).
Augustus: Family and Succession
Augustus married three times, although his first union, to Mark Antony’s stepdaughter Clodia Pulchra, was unconsummated. His second wife, Scribonia, bore his only child, Julia the Elder. He divorced in 39 B.C. to marry Livia Drusilla, who had two sons—Tiberius and Drusus—by her first husband, Mark Antony’s ally Tiberius Claudius Nero . The family tree became more complicated after Augustus had his stepson Tiberius briefly marry his daughter, and then adopted Tiberius outright as son and successor in A.D. 4.
Augustus Caesar died in A.D. 14, his empire secured and at peace. His reported last words were twofold: to his subjects he said, “I found Rome of clay; I leave it to you of marble,” but to the friends who had stayed with him in his rise to power he added, “Have I played the part well? Then applaud me as I exit.” Soon after that acknowledgement of human frailty, the Roman Senate officially declared their departed emperor, like Julius Caesar before him, to be a god.
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HISTORY Vault: Ancient Rome: Rise and Fall of an Empire
History of the ancient Roman Empire.
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The establishment of the principate under Augustus
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![roman emperor assignment Nero (Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus) (ad 50-54) the fifth Roman emperor (ad 54-68), stepson and heir of the emperor Claudius.](https://cdn.britannica.com/70/146770-131-8A2F36CC/Bust-emperor-Roman-Nero.jpg?w=200&h=200&c=crop)
The Early Roman Empire (31 bc – ad 193)
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The consolidation of the empire under the Julio-Claudians
Actium left Octavian the master of the Roman world. This supremacy, successfully maintained until his death more than 40 years later, made him the first of the Roman emperors. Suicide removed Antony and Cleopatra and their potential menace in 30 bc , and the annexation of Egypt with its Ptolemaic treasure brought financial independence. With these reassurances Octavian could begin the task of reconstruction.
Roman emperors* | |
---|---|
*For a list of the Eastern emperors after the fall of Rome, see Byzantine Empire. | |
(Augustus Caesar) | 27 BC–AD 14 |
(Tiberius Caesar Augustus) | 14–37 |
(Gaius Caesar Germanicus) | 37–41 |
(Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus) | 41–54 |
(Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus) | 54–68 |
(Servius Galba Caesar Augustus) | 68–69 |
(Marcus Otho Caesar Augustus) | 69 |
(Aulus Vitellius) | 69 |
(Caesar Vespasianus Augustus) | 69–79 |
(Titus Vespasianus Augustus) | 79–81 |
(Caesar Domitianus Augustus) | 81–96 |
(Nerva Caesar Augustus) | 96–98 |
(Caesar Divi Nervae Filius Nerva Traianus Optimus Augustus) | 98–117 |
(Caesar Traianus Hadrianus Augustus) | 117–138 |
(Caesar Titus Aelius Hadrianus Antoninus Augustus Pius) | 138–161 |
(Caesar Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus) | 161–180 |
(Lucius Aurelius Verus) | 161–169 |
(Caesar Marcus Aurelius Commodus Antoninus Augustus) | 177–192 |
(Publius Helvius Pertinax) | 193 |
(Marcus Didius Severus Julianus) | 193 |
(Lucius Septimius Severus Pertinax) | 193–211 |
(Marcus Aurelius Severus Antoninus Augustus) | 198–217 |
(Publius Septimius Geta) | 209–212 |
(Caesar Marcus Opellius Severus Macrinus Augustus) | 217–218 |
(Caesar Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus) | 218–222 |
(Marcus Aurelius Severus Alexander) | 222–235 |
(Gaius Julius Verus Maximinus) | 235–238 |
(Marcus Antonius Gordianus Sempronianus Romanus) | 238 |
(Marcus Antonius Gordianus Sempronianus Romanus Africanus) | 238 |
(Marcus Clodius Pupienus Maximus) | 238 |
(Decius Caelius Calvinus Balbinus) | 238 |
(Marcus Antonius Gordianus) | 238–244 |
(Marcus Julius Philippus) | 244–249 |
(Gaius Messius Quintus Trianus Decius) | 249–251 |
(Gaius Valens Hostilianus Messius Quintus) | 251 |
(Gaius Vibius Trebonianus Gallus) | 251–253 |
(Marcus Aemilius Aemilianus) | 253 |
(Publius Licinius Valerianus) | 253–260 |
(Publius Licinius Egnatius Gallienus) | 253–268 |
(Marcus Aurelius Claudius Gothicus) | 268–270 |
(Marcus Aurelius Claudius Quintillus) | 269–270 |
(Lucius Domitius Aurelianus) | 270–275 |
(Marcus Claudius Tacitus) | 275–276 |
(Marcus Annius Florianus) | 276 |
(Marcus Aurelius Probus) | 276–282 |
(Marcus Aurelius Carus) | 282–283 |
(Marcus Aurelius Carinus) | 283–285 |
(Marcus Aurelius Numerius Numerianus) | 283–284 |
(Gaius Aurelius Valerius Diocletianus) East only | 284–305 |
(Marcus Aurelius Valerius Maximianus) West only | 286–305 306–308 |
(Gaius Galerius Valerius Maximianus) East only | 305–311 |
(Marcus Flavius Valerius Constantius) West only | 305–306 |
(Flavius Valerius Severus) West only | 306–307 |
(Marcus Aurelius Valerius Maxentius) West only | 306–312 |
(Valerius Licinianus Licinius) East only | 308–324 |
(Flavius Valerius Constantinus) | 312–337 |
(Flavius Claudius Constantinus) | 337–340 |
(Flavius Julius Constans) | 337–350 |
(Flavius Julius Constantius) | 337–361 |
(Flavius Magnus Magnentius) | 350–353 |
(Flavius Claudius Julianus) | 361–363 |
(Flavius Jovianus) | 363–364 |
(Flavius Valentinianus) West only | 364–375 |
(Flavius Valens) East only | 364–378 |
Procopius East only | 365–366 |
(Flavius Gratianus Augustus) West only | 375–383 |
(Flavius Valentinianus) West only | 375–392 |
(Flavius Theodosius) | 379–395 |
(Flavius Arcadius) East only | 395–408 |
(Flavius Honorius) West only | 395–423 |
East only | 408–450 |
West only | 421 |
(Flavius Placidius Valentinianus) West only | 425–455 |
(Marcianus) East only | 450–457 |
(Flavius Ancius Petronius Maximus) West only | 455 |
(Flavius Maccilius Eparchius Avitus) West only | 455–456 |
(Leo Thrax Magnus) East only | 457–474 |
(Julius Valerius Majorianus) West only | 457–461 |
Libius Severus (Libius Severianus Severus) West only | 461–467 |
(Procopius Anthemius) West only | 467–472 |
(Anicius Olybrius) West only | 472 |
West only | 473–474 |
West only | 474–475 |
East only | 474 |
East only | 474–491 |
(Flavius Momyllus Romulus Augustulus) West only | 475–476 |
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Law and order had vanished from the Roman state when its ruling aristocrats refused to curb their individual ambitions, when the most corrupt and violent persons could gain protection for their crimes by promising their support to the ambitious, and when the ambitious and the violent together could thus transform a republic based on disciplined liberty into a turbulent cockpit of murderous rivalries. Good government depended on limits being set to unrestrained aspirations , and Octavian was in a position to impose them. But his military might, though sufficiently strong in 31 bc to guarantee orderly political processes, was itself incompatible with them; nor did he relish the role of military despot . The fate of Julius Caesar, an eagerness to acquire political respectability, and his own esteem for ancestral custom combined to dissuade Octavian from it. He wished to be, in his own words, “the author of the best civilian government possible.” His problem was to regularize his own position so as to make it generally acceptable, without simultaneously reopening the door to violent lawlessness. His pragmatic responses not only ensured stability and continuity but also respected republican forms and traditions so far as possible.
![roman emperor assignment roman emperor assignment](https://cdn.britannica.com/10/196710-050-83358F44/Augustus-statue-Rome.jpg?w=300)
Large-scale demobilization allayed people’s fears; regular consular elections raised their hopes. In 29–28 bc Octavian carried out, with Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa , his powerful deputy, the first census of the Roman people since 70; and this involved drawing up an electoral roll for the Centuriate Assembly. Elections followed, and Octavian was inevitably chosen consul. Then, on Jan. 13, 27 bc , he offered to lay down his powers. The Roman Senate rejected this proposal, charging him instead to administer (besides Egypt) Spain, Gaul , and Syria for the next 10 years, while it itself was to supervise the rest of the empire . Three days later, among other honours, it bestowed upon him the name by which he has ever since been known, Augustus.
As most of the troops still under arms were in the regions entrusted to Augustus’ charge, the arrangements of 27 bc hardly affected his military strength. Moreover, so long as he was consul (he was reelected every year until 23 bc ), he was civilian head of government as well. In other words, he was still preeminent and all-powerful, even if he had, in his own words, placed the res publica at the disposal of the Senate and the Roman people. Augustus particularly wished to conciliate the senatorial class, without whose cooperation civilian government was impossible. But his monopolization of the consulship offended the Senate, making a different arrangement clearly necessary. Accordingly, in 23 Augustus made a change; he vacated the consulship and never held it again (except momentarily in 5 bc and again in 2 bc , for a limited, specific purpose). In its place he received the tribunician power ( tribunicia potestas ). He could not become an actual plebeian tribune , because Julius Caesar’s action of making him a patrician had disqualified him for the office. But he could acquire the rights and privileges pertaining to the office; and they were conferred upon him, apparently by the Senate, whose action was then ratified by the popular assembly. He had already been enjoying some of a tribune’s privileges since 36; but he now acquired them all and even some additional ones, such as the right to convene the Senate whenever he chose and to enjoy priority in bringing business before it. Through his tribunician power he could also summon the popular assembly and participate fully in its proceedings. Clearly, although no longer consul, he still retained the legal right to authority in civilian affairs.
The arrangement of 23 entailed an additional advantage. The power of the plebeian tribune was traditionally associated with the protection of citizens, and Augustus’ acquisition of it was therefore unlikely to rouse resentment. Indeed, Augustus thenceforth shrewdly propagated the notion that, if his position in the state was exceptional (which it clearly was), it was precisely because of his tribunician power. Although he held it for only one year at a time, it was indefinitely renewable and was pronounced his for life. Thus, it was both annual and perpetual and was a suitable vehicle for numbering the years of his supremacy. His era (and this is true also of later emperors) was counted officially from the year when he acquired the tribunician power.
The year 23 likewise clarified the legal basis for Augustus’ control of his provincia (the region under his jurisdiction) and its armed forces. The Senate invested him with an imperium proconsulare (governorship and high command), and, while this had a time limit, it was automatically renewed whenever it lapsed (usually every 10 years). This proconsular imperium , furthermore, was pronounced valid inside Italy , even inside Rome and the pomerium (the boundary within which only Roman gods could be worshiped and civil magistrates rule), and it was superior ( majus ) to the imperium of any other proconsul. Thus, Augustus could intervene legally in any province , even in one entrusted to someone else.
The network of favours owed him that Augustus had cultivated within the state, among people of the greatest authority over their own networks, made his position virtually unassailable, but he avoided provoking this high class of his supporters, senatorial and equestrian, by not drawing attention to the most novel and autocratic of the many grants of power he had received, the imperium proconsulare majus . Instead, he paraded the tribunician power as the expression of his supreme position in the state.
After 23 no fundamental change in Augustus’ position occurred. He felt no need to hold offices that in republican times would have conferred exceptional power (e.g., dictatorship, lifetime censorship, or regular consulship), even though these were offered him. Honours, of course, came his way: in 19 bc he received some consular rights and prerogatives , presumably to ensure that his imperium was in no particular inferior to a consul’s; in 12, when Lepidus died, he became pontifex maximus (he had long since been elected into all of the priestly colleges); in 8 bc the 8th month of the year was named after him; in 2 bc he was designated pater patriae (“father of his country”), a distinction that he particularly esteemed because it suggested that he was to all Romans what a paterfamilias was to his own household. He also accepted special commissions from time to time: e.g., the supervision of the supply of grain and water, the maintenance of public buildings (including temples), the regulation of the Tiber, the superintendence of the police and fire-fighting services, and the upkeep of Italy’s roads. Such behaviour advertised his will and capacity to improve the lives of people dependent on him. Of that capacity, manifest on a grand scale, his tribunician power and proconsular imperium were only the formal expression. He was a charismatic leader of unrivaled prestige ( auctoritas ), whose merest suggestions were binding.
Like an ordinary Roman, he contented himself with three names. His, however, Imperator Caesar Augustus, were absolutely unique, with a magic all their own that caused all later emperors to appropriate them, at first selectively but after ad 69 in their entirety. Thereby they became titles, reserved for the emperor (or, in the case of the name Caesar, for his heir apparent); from them derive the titles emperor, kaiser, and tsar. Yet, as used by Augustus and his first four successors , the words Imperator Caesar Augustus were names, not titles—that is, respectively, praenomen, nomen (in effect), and cognomen. One title that Augustus did have was princeps (prince); this, however, was unofficial—a mere popular label, meaning Rome’s first citizen—and government documents such as inscriptions or coins do not apply it to Augustus. But because of it the system of government he devised is called the principate .
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The making of a roman emperor, course description.
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World History: Ancient to Renaissance – Week 4 Assignment
The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire
Using the textbook and at least two additional sources (books, journal entries, articles) , please write a expository essay of at least 750 words to answer the question(s) below. Avoid using Wikipedia, dictionaries, encyclopedias or casual websites as sources.
1. How did the Romans manage to expand and maintain peace across such a large empire?
2. Discuss the fall of the Western Roman Empire. How did it effect the Eastern Roman Empire? How did it effect Western Europe?
For this and all writing assignments for the course, use APA format. This includes proper in-line citation s, r eference page , and properly formatted references. APA resources, including a template, are provided in the Supplemental Materials folder.
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You are here, hist 210: the early middle ages, 284–1000, - transformation of the roman empire.
The Roman Empire in the West collapsed as a political entity in the fifth century although the Eastern part survived the crisis.. Professor Freedman considers this transformation through three main questions: Why did the West fall apart – because of the external pressure of invasions or the internal problems of institutional decline? Who were these invading barbarians? Finally, does this transformation mark a gradual shift or is it right to regard it as a cataclysmic end of civilization? Professor Freedman, as a moderate catastrophist, argues that this period marked the end of a particular civilization rather than the end of civilization in general.
Lecture Chapters
- Introduction
- Catastrophe
- The Roman Army and the Visigoths
- Another Kind of Barbarian: The Huns
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Today we’re going to talk about the transformation of the Roman Empire. And I use the somewhat neutral and undramatic word “transformation”. It can be “fall of the Roman Empire,” “collapse of the Roman Empire…” It’s clear that we’re talking about the fall of the Western Empire. Next week we’ll talk about the survival of the Eastern Empire. From 410 to 480, the Western Roman Empire disintegrated. It was dismembered by barbarian groups who were, except for the Huns, not really very barbarian. That is, they were not intent on mayhem and destruction. All they really wanted to do was to be part of the Empire, to share in its wealth and accomplishments, rather than to destroy it. Nevertheless, 476 is the conventional date for the end of the Western Empire, because in that year, a barbarian chieftain deposed a Roman emperor. Nothing very new about this for the fifth century. What was new is that this chieftain, whose name is spelled all sorts of different ways, but in Wickham, it’s Odovacer. Sometimes he’s known as Odacaer, Odovacar, Odovacer. We aren’t even sure what so-called tribe he belonged to. A barbarian general deposed the child emperor Romulus Augustulus, who by an interesting coincidence, has the names of both the founder of the city of Rome and the founder of the Roman emperor [correction: Empire]. The “-us” on the end is little. It’s a diminutive. So a man with this grandiose name, a child, deposed in 476. And instead of imposing another emperor, Odovacer simply wrote to Constantinople and said, “We’re going to be loyal to you. We will recognize you as the sole emperor.” Constantinople, however, was far away. And while of symbolic significance, this pledge of loyalty by Odovacer had no practical significance. For all intents and purposes, the Western Empire had, in 476, become a collection of barbarian kingdoms. A kingdom is smaller than an empire. We use the term empire to mean a multi-national, very large state ruled from one center, but consisting of many different kinds of pieces. Kings, and the term and title “king”, is of German origin. Kings are very powerful, but over a more limited territory. So there was a king of Italy now. There would be a king of the Franks, or Francia, the former Roman Gaul. There would be a king of the Lombards later in northern Italy. A king of the Visigoths, first in southern France and Spain. And we’ll go over who is where at the beginning of next class. For now, we’re going to talk about this collapse and its consequences. And we’re going to orient ourselves around three big questions. One– why did the west fall apart? And as a corollary to that question, was this because of the external pressure of invasions or the internal problems of institutional decline. Did it fall of its own accord or was it pushed, in other words? Question number two. Or big question number two. Who were these barbarians? And how Romanised or how different from Rome were they? And that’s what we’re going to talk about more on Wednesday, next class. And three, does this transformation mark a gradual shift to another civilization, or is it the cataclysmic end of the prevailing form of civilization, ushering in a prolonged period of what used to be called The Dark Ages? The Dark Ages– roughly the sixth to eleventh century. This is a term we don’t like to use. It implies a value judgment that is not only not necessarily accurate, but also expresses a certain kind of point of view of what are good periods in history and what are bad periods in history.
But I’d like to just probe this third question first. That is, how severe a catastrophe was this? So is it the end of civilization à la or or any of those apocalyptic image we have? Or is it merely a shift in power and the survival of Roman institutions such as the Church, while Roman political infrastructure– the emperor, the consoles, the praetorian prefects, and so forth– while that collapses? A medieval historian named Roger Collins in a book called writes, “The fall of the Roman Empire in the west was not the disappearance of a civilization. It was merely the breakdown of a governmental apparatus that could no longer be sustained.” The key word here is “merely”. The destruction of the Roman political apparatus may simply mean that the Roman state ceased to function, but that everything else continued. But really, the question is, could everything else continue in the absence of a state and of a political order? The destruction of the political order also means, after all, the destruction of the military system. When we opened this class, we talked about a civilization built on such things as the rule of law and the maintenance of peace. These are no longer possible if there is no military governmental structure. As we’ll say a little later, to some extent people didn’t know that it was the end. Because for a while, things seemed to go on as before. People were speaking Latin, they were living in cities, the cities were much less populated, but nevertheless, they were still there; there were still rich people; there were still poor people. In retrospect, though, we can see that things really did change. How much they changed is the subject of a lot of historical controversy. The world of the late Roman historians is divided, roughly speaking, between catastrophists and continuists. As you may guess, the catastrophists think the fall of the Roman Empire – whether we date it 476 or there’s some reasons to date it, really, 550 for reasons we’ll learn in next week. Between 450 and 550, a catastrophe happened. A civilization was wiped out. And really, if not literally a Dark Ages, a more primitive, more war-like, more illiterate, and more rural period was ushered in. The disappearance of ancient texts, things that the Romans knew from that lost Hortensius dialogue of Cicero that Augustine was so fond of to many other kinds of works that had been known to the Roman world, right? I can’t remember exactly how many plays Aeschylus wrote, but it’s something on the order of 60, and we have three. So the disappearance of text. The end of literacy, except for a very small portion of the Christian clergy. A more primitive architecture. The end of grand civic projects like aqueducts, coliseums, theaters, baths. A more isolated society without these urban centers. A diminished population spread across the countryside, mostly engaged in subsistence. Hence, the, if not end of trade, the radical diminution of trade. The continuists, people like Collins whom I just quoted, see the political changes as dramatic all right, but as essentially surface phenomena based partly on archaeology and partly on a more sympathetic understanding of Christian practices. In other words, they don’t think that the proliferation of churches, saints, cults, is necessarily a sign of primitiveness. So based on both archaeology and an understanding of Christianity, these continuists point to the survival of trade, the role of bishops and other church officials, as replacing the Roman governors. The Roman political order may have collapsed in terms of staffing by lay people and military people, but the bishops were now the rulers of the city. The bishops would now do things like ensure the food supply, rally the local population against barbarian invasions, educate the populace. And the barbarian kings themselves try, with some success, to perpetuate the Roman order. They collect taxes, for example– that may or may not be a good thing. They engage in some kind of public works, some kind of maintenance of order. The civilization of the sixth and seventh centuries in what comes to be considered Western Europe, rather than the Western Roman Empire, is not radically more barbarized or primitive than the late Roman Empire. Thus, the continuists. My own position, but I don’t hold to it dogmatically, is that of a moderate catastrophist. I think something really happened; I think it’s pretty radical; and it didn’t happen all at once, however. 476 is not the year of collapse. It is a process. I’m fascinated by the degree to which people were and were not aware of the cataclysm, but I believe there is a cataclysm. Wickham, the author of this book that we’re starting now Chris Wickham, straddles the fence, as you’ve seen. His chapter that you were to read for today is entitled, “Crisis and Continuity: 400 to 550” I would never use a chapter title like that, because it’s really frustrating. Which is it, dude? He’s the leading medieval historian in the English-speaking world. He is Chichele Professor at All Souls, Oxford. And if that doesn’t sound impressive, well, it takes a lot to impress you. He’s a very great historian, but I don’t like that chapter title. As I said, I would emphasize crisis or cataclysm. Well, let’s ask what happened, beginning with the gradual involvement of the barbarians in the military and their entrance into the empire. We’re using the term “barbarians”, which goes back to the Greek term applied to outsiders. People outside but threatening. The Greeks defined barbarians as uncivilized by reason of their speech, which sounded to them incoherent, and by reason of the fact that they’re nomads. People who lead settled lives don’t trust nomads. Nomads, almost extinct in our world, once dominated many geographical regions and were frightening, because they moved to around to people who liked order and familiarity. They didn’t live in cities, whether they were nomadic or not. Barbarians were illiterate. This is the Greek idea of barbarians. In the case of Rome, there is no single definition of barbarian society. We can say that Rome was overthrown by a war-like, but not very fierce, group of enemies. And I use enemies in a very mild sense. The Romans perceived them as enemies; the barbarians perceived Rome as simply a nicer place to live. But there is no Mongol horde kind of event here. They’re not that frightening. The Romans had known them for centuries. Most of them were even Christians. Heretical Christians, OK. They’re Arians, A-R-I-A-N-S, I remind you, but they’re not unfamiliar, again, even in their religion. They’ve been at the borders of the Roman empire forever. Like most empires, Rome was at the one hand, very aggressive, and on the other hand thought of itself is peace-loving. It maintained the Danube-Rhine frontier as a kind of natural frontier, every so often crossing those rivers to punish German tribes who were probing the frontiers of the empire. But generally speaking, the Romans were not interested in what they perceived, somewhat inaccurately, as endless forests inhabited by primitive people. The continuists argue, with some justice, that between 250 and 600 what changed was not that primitive warriors conquered a civilized state, in the way that say, the Mongols conquered China in the thirteenth century but that the ancient world became the medieval world. That is, an urban culture became more rural. A Latin culture became amalgamated to a German one. Pagan society became Christian. Having said this, it’s nevertheless true that the most dramatic event to the fifth century is that people who had been outside the empire were now in it. If we ask why the Western Empire collapsed, the simple, most immediate answer is it was taken over by German confederations, tribes. They came not so much as conquerors as military recruits, or as allies, or as refugees. So rather than as guys with knives in their teeth hacking and slashing and burning, they came as pathetic refugees, maybe doing some hacking, slashing, and burning; as military recruits; and as military allies. Again, not without a certain amount of H. S. B.: (hacking and slashing and burning). But not a cataclysmic amount. They admired Rome. They wanted to continue its institutions. They regarded Rome as a rich and as civilized. The last thing they wanted was to still live in little huts in the forest. They were not the bringers of a revolution. They were not even that numerous, amounting to some tens of thousands. Nevertheless, they ended Roman government, accelerated the changes we’ve already described towards depopulation, decentralization, ruralization– a less cultivated, less literate, less Mediterranean-centered society.
So I want to begin the description of this process by the changes in the Roman army. We saw that Diocletian, around 300 AD, militarizes Roman government, pays for the, perhaps, doubling of the military presence of the Roman army by changing the taxation system. So the twin pillars of the empire in the fourth century are army and taxation, the latter requiring a civilian governmental apparatus. The army was a problem in terms of the recruiting of soldiers. This may have to do with the population; it may have to do with the unattractive nature of military life, but nevertheless there was already, in the fourth century, a tendency to get the more familiar barbarians into the army as Roman soldiers. Because they were available, they were near the frontiers– this may seem odd. Why hire your potential enemy to be soldiers? But there’s a lot of precedent. Very often, empires don’t really want to supply their own manpower. And the people who are the best soldiers are also the people who may, in the future, be most threatening. I don’t want to pursue this simile, but the Afghan Mujahideen were trained by Americans, because at one time they were opposed to the Russian occupation of Afghanistan. As it happened, in retrospect, that had some bad consequences. But at the time, it seemed like a good idea. So in the 370s a group called the Visigoths asks to be admitted to the Roman Empire as an allied army. In other words, the whole group will be federated with the Romans. And is the term given for barbarian troops serving under the Roman Empire. Why were they on the move? These are not really nomadic people. They don’t live in yurts or travel across Central Asia. They tend to be settled in villages. They have dairy cattle rather than have some kind of nomadic sheep, or something like. They’re pretty settled. Nevertheless, in 378, they were on the move. And we don’t know why. Some enemy pushing them across the Danube into what’s now Romania? It may be the weakness of the Empire. They may have seen that the empire was not so strong and made a proposition, kind of like a takeover. You don’t seem to be doing so well in your stock or your finances, so we’re going to infuse some capital into you, i.e., our soldiers. They also may have been hungry. Certainly, once they crossed the frontier, the Romans were rather inept in feeding them, in supplying them, and the Visigoths rebelled. Thus far, nothing incredibly new. What really was new was that the emperor came with an army to suppress them. And rather to his surprise and everybody else’s, the emperor Valens was defeated at the battle of Adrianopole. Defeated by the barbarians. Yeah. So, being involved in this federati, what did they get from the Roman Empire? Did they agree to fight for them and then they’d get land? They agreed to fight for them and they got a combination of land, or supposed to get land or territory, and some kind of maintenance in kind and or money. The question was about what the Visigoths, as federati, got out of this deal. Or were supposed to get. The defeat at Valens was not immediately cataclysmic, because, even though he was killed at this battle, even though it sent shock waves throughout the empire, in fact, it would not be this area that succumbed to the barbarians– the East. Romania, or the Balkans would be part of the Eastern Empire. And indeed, both Adrianople the city, and Constantinople, the even greater city, would withstand Visigothic attempts to take them. In 382, the Visigoths were officially recognized, and they were allowed to settle in the Balkans as . And, in fact, they were reasonably useful troops to the Roman Empire in the 380s and 390s. What this does show, however, is the barbarization of the army. And another aspect of that is that the army tended to be commanded now more and more by barbarian generals. These barbarian generals, at the top, bore the title – master of the soldiers. So I’m using the term “general” as an anachronistic one, since that’s what we’re familiar with. These magistri were powerful leaders, charismatic leaders, of German or other tribal groups, who then ruled in the name of, or behind the throne of the emperor. They couldn’t be emperors themselves, at least in these years, it was impossible to envisage a barbarian emperor. But they held more power than the emperors. Two of these generals, war leaders, magistri, Stilicho and Alaric. Stilicho was a Vandal. Alaric was a Visigoth. Alaric wanted territory, food, treasure from Rome. The Visigoths were moving from the Balkans into Greece, eventually into Italy. Stilicho played a kind of game with Alaric, trying to keep him in check in the name of the Western emperor, but also negotiating with him. The emperors moved from Milan in the north to Ravenna, a little bit to the east. Ravenna, then, was in the marshes and impossible for a barbarian army to take. This is the last capital of the Western Roman Empire. Kind of romantic and mysterious, but strange as a place to end up. These are the Visigoths then, who are on the move in the 390s and the 400s. Eventually, Stilicho would be executed by the Roman emperor of the West, and Alaric would invade and plunder Rome in 410. It was the Visigoths who engineered the so-called Sack of Rome that so shocked Augustine and his contemporaries. Where, you might be asking in all of this, was the Roman army? Alaric was wandering around the Balkans and Italy for two decades before he sacked Rome. The army, which had consumed so much of the resources of the Roman Empire, is curiously absent in the history of the fifth century. This is not the Eastern Front in World War II. This is something altogether different: the collapse of an empire that expended huge amounts of treasure on its army. Its army seems to be invisible and supports, to some extent – or that fact supports to some extent, the argument that the Roman Empire collapsed of its own internal disorders, since we don’t see it losing pitched battles to outside barbarians. Or maybe the army doesn’t disappear, it becomes indistinguishable from the invaders. The army is the invaders. Creepier.
Now within this, there are some real barbarians– the Huns. The Huns are kind of nomadic. OK, they didn’t actually cook their meat by holding it between their thigh and the horse hide, and the sweat and heat of the horse heated up the meat. This is a widespread myth of nomadic peoples. The Chinese say this about the Mongols, the Romans about Huns. But they were pretty mean. They were interested in the Roman Empire mostly for plunder. And they didn’t care if that destroyed the economic base, because they weren’t thinking in such terms. And indeed, they may have frightened the rather nice German tribes that stood between them and the Roman Empire. In the 450s the Huns were united under the leadership of Attila. And Attila certainly threatened the Eastern Empire first, but the Eastern emperor defeated the Huns, discontinued tribute to them, and in a pattern that we’ll see repeated again and again, the Huns decided that Constantinople was too tough. That the Eastern Empire as a whole, access to which was more or less controlled by Constantinople, was too well-guarded. And they turned to the west instead. Not as rich maybe, but much easier pickings. They show up in Gaul in 450. They were defeated by an army of Visigoths allied with Romans. They then went to Italy. They went into the heart of the Empire, sacked cities in the northeast of Italy, and there’s no army. The emperor is holed up in Ravenna. basically shuts the door, gets under the bed, and waits for it to go away. The one power of Italy willing to try to deal with Attila is the Bishop of Rome, whom we haven’t heard of yet, but we’re going to be hearing about him a lot. And indeed, in the course that follows this, even more. The Bishop of Rome – the pope. Pope Leo I, along with two senators from the Roman senate, goes up to northern Italy to remonstrate with Attila, to visit the leader of this barbarian tribe in 453 to try to get him to stop plundering Italy. Whether they were successful or not doesn’t much matter, because Attila died shortly thereafter of a brain hemorrhage. And with his charismatic leadership, the Huns came to an end as a military force. That is, with the end of his leadership, the Huns no longer had as imposing a military force and quickly disintegrated. What’s significant is that it’s the pope who is taking over what we would think of as the Roman imperial responsibilities. And this will be a pattern, not only in the assertion of papal power, but in the way in which the Church starts to take over many of the roles abandoned by the empire. After this, the barbarian generals, in effect, take charge. The Huns are defeated, but the other groups now pour into the empire. The Vandals have taken over North Africa by this time, by 430, cutting off the grain supply to Rome. They are unusual among the barbarian groups in that they have a navy. They know how to use boats, and indeed, they plunder the city of Rome in 455 in a sack that might have been worse than that of 410. By 470, the Visigoths control southern Gaul, what’s now southern France; a group called the Suevi are in Spain; the Vandals in North Africa; a group called the Ostrogoths in what’s now Hungary; the Angles and the Saxons in Britain. All that effectively remained of the Western empire when Odovacer overthrew Romulus Augustulus was Italy. And in 476, that’s it. A little coda, however. In 493, the Eastern emperor in Constantinople convinced the Ostrogoths to get out of Hungary, stop threatening the Eastern Empire, and take Italy from Odovacer. Once again, the Eastern Empire is capable of deflecting barbarians into the west, because they’re too strong. So in 493, our friend Odovacer was overthrown by the Ostrogoths and their leader Theoderic.
So what’s the impact of all of this? On the ground, if you were looking around in 480s, 490s, you would see a kind of accommodation. The Roman elite accommodated themselves to, compromised with, negotiated with, their new rulers. So, for example, a member of a very wealthy Roman family, a man named Sidonius Apollinaris in southern France, was a bishop and a great landowner. And we have a lot of letters of his that tell us about his negotiations with the Visigothic king Euric. He found the Visigoths uncouth, hard to deal with, not knowledgeable of the Latin classics, but not very frightening, either. Not particularly formidable. So accommodation, improvisation. We have a saint’s life that is a biography of a saint, a man named– I’m sorry that I’m writing on the board so much today. Usually, as you know, I’m a little more in control. But these are great names. And some of them are good cats names or dog names, too. Severinus of Noricum. You know, “Stop scratching the furniture, Severinus.” That kind of thing. Severinus of Noricum. A saint in what’s now, more or less, Austria. His life tells us that he learned of the end of the Roman Empire this way: “At the time when the Roman Empire was still in existence, the soldiers of many towns were supported by public money to guard the frontier. When this arrangement ceased, the military formations were dissolved, and the frontier vanished. The garrison of Passau, which is still a town in modern Bavaria, the garrison of Passau, however, still held out. Some of the men had gone to Italy to fetch for their comrades their last payment.” This resembles a corporation– somebody, actually, was telling me yesterday they worked for Eastern Airlines, a company that went out of business in 1990. And so sudden was the collapse of Eastern, even though it had been predicted, that she was a flight attendant and had to get on another airline in order to get home. She lived in New York; she was in Florida; Eastern ceased to exist. So these soldiers are in the same position. They want to get their last paycheck. They were never heard from again. Nobody knew that they, in fact, were killed by barbarians on the way. “One day, when Saint Severinus was reading in his cell, he suddenly closed the book and began to sigh. The river, he said, was now red with human blood. At that moment the news arrived that the soldiers had been washed ashore by the current.” Interestingly enough, he doesn’t just stay in his cell and pray. He starts to organize this society. He is active, although some of it involves some miracles, in poor relief. He deals with the local barbarian king, the king of the Alamanni, remonstrates with him. He helps in diverting Odovacer into Italy. Again, like Pope Leo, we have a member of the church, and in this case somebody that you would think was a recluse, indeed had been living like a recluse, nevertheless taking over the responsibilities for a population abandoned by its civilian government. That is then one of the forms of accommodation.
Another aspect of this era, however, is decline. The urban population declines. The society and economy experienced what Wickham euphemistically calls, “a radical material simplification”. The term he uses, I believe, on page 95 and 105. “Radical material simplification” means that your standard of living plummets. Cruder ceramics. Instead of that nice, north African red slip ware, you’ve got mud that you baked at home. Fewer imports, no pepper. More homemade, crude building materials. Fewer luxury goods. The Vandal control of North Africa meant the end of the Roman wheat supply. The countryside of Rome had not grown enough wheat to feed the city since 200 BC. So for 600 years, minimum, Rome was dependent on other sources of supply. Southern Italy, Sicily, North Africa. The moment the Vandals cut the supply, the city could no longer support its massive population, could not feed everybody. When you multiply this phenomenon, it’s not a surprise that the city’s decline in population, and that the society becomes more rural, more agricultural, more subsistent. And here’s where I think Collins is naive to speak of merely a political decline. Without a government and military structure, trade could not take place on the scale it had before. And without that trade, cities could not survive. There is no denying a decline in culture, economy, and population. Let’s just look at Roman population figures, based on things like pork supply figures, public– well, I mean, nobody took a census in Rome. We don’t really know exactly how many people lived there at any given time. But historians and archaeologists looking at things like food supply, public welfare payments, water delivery figures, for aqueducts, and the abandonment of houses and of building sites. Probably in 5 BC, the Roman population was 800,000. That would be a fairly conservative estimate. Maybe as much as a million, but definitely 800,000. 5 BC. Yeah? This is just the city of Rome? Just the city of Rome. Yes, just the city of Rome. At the time of Constantine, sort of where we begin the course, more or less, in the early fourth century, the population had declined probably to 600,000. After the sack of Rome in 419, probably 300,000 to 500,000. Obviously, these are very rough figures. But after the sack of Rome, more than half of the population that had existed in 5 BC is gone. With the end of grain shipments from North Africa, we don’t really know immediately. We can estimate that by 590, there could not have been more than 150,000 people in Rome. This is after not only the Vandals, but after a catastrophic war in Italy launched by the Byzantine Emperor Justinian, who we’ll be talking about next week. In 800, on Christmas Day, Charlemagne was crowned in Saint Peter’s in Rome as Roman Emperor by the pope, an act whose implications we will be exploring towards the end of the class. On that day, Rome must’ve had maximum, maximum, most optimistic estimate, 30,000 people. This does not necessarily mean that they were primitive, but they were living in the Coliseum, for example. People built houses in there. They used the walls of the Coliseum as a fort. There is a certain quality, in fact. Rome, still to this day, is filled with picturesque ruins, even though it is a city of two and a half, three million people. As I said, people were not necessarily aware of this change. For example, lots of churches were built at this time, and some of them have mosaic pavements that have mottos about the grandeur of the Roman name, and the usual classical kind of mottos. But then again, people often aren’t aware of what’s happening to them. I mean, what if somebody in the future points to the fact that New Haven, in 1920, had far more people living in it than it does now? New Haven lost a third of its population between 1950 and 1980. What if some future historian is scandalized at the fact that in order to get into Yale a hundred years ago you had to know Greek and Latin. If you look at what those gentlemen C students had to study, or were responsible for, in say, 1925, it’s extraordinary. It’s not very impressive in the sciences, but the decline of the humanities, if by decline we mean things like knowledge of classical literature, is stunning. Somebody may decide in a few hundred years that the Dark Ages began in about 1950. And that those pathetic people in, say, 2011 impressed with their little technological toys, nonetheless didn’t know anything. Now I don’t actually believe that. There are some people who do. There’s a philosopher at Notre Dame named Alasdair MacIntyre who really believes that the Dark Ages began a long time ago, and we simply don’t know. We simply refuse to recognize this. I was impressed by an obituary for a man named Patrick Leigh Fermor, who died at the age of 96 earlier this year. This is the last of the great British characters of the twentieth century. He not only was classically trained, wrote a lot about Greece, lived in Greece, he, in World World II, disguised himself as a Greek shepherd in Crete, engineered the capture of a German general, and the delivery of that general after three weeks of hiking through the mountains of Crete to a British destroyer. It’s in a movie called if you ever want to check this out. Not a great movie, but— Patrick Leigh Fermor also wrote two books out of a projected three about walking from Holland to Constantinople or, Baghdad actually, I think, in the 1930s. But the obituary describes a conversation he had with this German general, whom he is trying to get across Crete. And the general at one point, over some fire in the wilderness, quotes a line from Horace, the Roman poet, that then Patrick Leigh Fermor finishes is for him, and indeed, quotes the next two stanzas. Well, that world is over. That world is over. I don’t pretend to be part of that world, either. And that’s a world that would have existed in the time of Horace, or the years after Horace, who lives at the time of Augustus. This would have existed in 300 A D. It would have existed, at least, in a few monasteries in 800 AD. It would have flourished in the Britain of the eighteenth and nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. So again, I don’t think that civilization came to an end. What came to an end was a civilization, a certain kind of society. It has some heirs, however, like all dead entities. There are four heirs to the Roman Empire. One is the Byzantine Empire, the Eastern Roman Empire, which calls itself the Roman Empire. It doesn’t call itself the Eastern, doesn’t call itself the Byzantine, it calls itself the Roman Empire, even though it does so in Greek. The second heir are the barbarian kings. We’ll be talking about them on Wednesday. They are attempting to prop up the remnants of Roman culture, civilization, and material society. The third heir in some ways, is Islam, which we meet in the seventh century, the century of its invention. And the fourth heir is the Church. Even though the Church grew up in opposition to the Roman Empire, it will preserve Latin, cities, learning, classical civilization. OK. So barbarians on Wednesday. [end of transcript] |
HIEU 322 Roman Civilization
- Course Description
A history of the Roman state and culture from Romulus to Justinian, emphasizing territorial expansion, the republic, the Roman revolution, maintenance of autocracy, the thrust of Christianity into the Roman world, the fall of the empire and the heirs of Rome.
For information regarding prerequisites for this course, please refer to the Academic Course Catalog .
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This course provides the student with an understanding of the history of Roman civilization from the founding of Rome to the fall of the Empire.
Course Assignment
Textbook readings and lecture presentations/notes.
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Course Requirements Checklist
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Discussions (4)
Discussions are collaborative learning experiences. Therefore, the student is required to create a thread in response to the provided prompt for each discussion. Each thread must be at least 300 words and demonstrate course-related knowledge. In addition to the thread, the student is required to reply to 2 other classmates’ threads. Each reply must be at least 150 words.
Reflection Paper Assignment
The student will write a 3-page research-based paper in current Turabian format that focuses on the causes and origins of the Second Punic War as discussed by the ancient historians Polybius and Livy. The paper must only reference the works of these two historians.
Research Paper: Bibliography Assignment
The student will identify at least 2 primary sources and at least 4 secondary sources for use in the Research Paper Assignment later this term. The paper will focus on the portrayal of the Roman Emperor Commodus and/or the state of the Roman Empire during his reign in film versus his portrayal by contemporaries and scholars. For each source the student identifies in this assignment, the student must provide a substantive synopsis of the source’s content and how it applies to the topic of the Research Paper Assignment
Research Paper Assignment
The student will write a 4–6-page research-based paper in current Turabian format that focuses on the portrayal of the Roman Emperor Commodus (and/or the state of the Roman Empire during his reign) in film versus his portrayal by contemporaries and scholars. The paper must include at least 2 primary sources and 4 secondary sources (e.g., monographs, scholarly journal articles, etc.).
Quizzes (12)
Each Textbook Quiz will cover the Learn material for the module in which it is assigned. Each quiz will: be open-book/open-notes; contain 40 multiple-choice and true/false questions as well as 1 short answer question; and have a 1-hour and 30-minute time limit.
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We’re Still Thinking About the Roman Empire
September 5, 2024 | ceb95 | Ancient History , Ancient Lives Series , Biography , History , Philosophy , Politics
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Archaeologists discover elaborate 1,700-year-old grave of ‘barbarian’ who lived near Roman Empire’s frontier
Man, 60, likely belonged to alemanni germanic tribes that played a role in rome’s downfall, article bookmarked.
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Archaeologists have unearthed the grave of a “barbarian” who died on the frontier of the Roman Empire in the fourth century AD.
The man, about 60 years old, was buried 1,700 years ago along with valuable goods such as pottery, glassware, and a small fine-tooth comb.
Researchers found the burial during the construction of homes at the village of Gerstetten, 65km east of Stuttgart in Germany .
The elaborately built grave was enclosed in a wooden chamber and was situated at a prominent, solitary location, they said.
![roman emperor assignment Grave unearthed at Gerstetten village in Germany](https://static.independent.co.uk/2024/09/06/05/csm_240827_Kammergrab_01_e4e9ad2e17-2.jpg)
The Romans called Germanic tribal people “ barbarians ”, literally meaning “people who speak differently”, a term they also used for non-Roman people living outside the empire’s territories.
Archaeologists said the man likely belonged to the Alemanni Germanic tribes that lived on the Upper Rhine river.
Germanic barbarians invaded the Western Roman Empire to the south towards the end of the fifth century, causing its downfall.
![roman emperor assignment Archaeologists say it is rare to find graves from this time in the region](https://static.independent.co.uk/2024/09/06/05/csm_240827_Kammergrab_05_a504dfef53.jpg)
The period from the 4th to 8th centuries was a time of major socioeconomic and cultural transformation in Europe. But not much is known about it in the absence of reliable written accounts.
![roman emperor assignment Researchers inspect a grave belonging to the Germanic Alemanni federation tribe](https://static.independent.co.uk/2024/09/06/05/csm_240827_Kammergrab_02_a94234c149.jpg)
Archaeological studies of barbarian cemeteries provide valuable insights into this time, called the Migration Period, which laid the foundation of modern European society, but few early German graves have previously been discovered.
Most of the graves uncovered so far are in the southwestern German state of Baden-Württemberg bordering France and Switzerland.
![roman emperor assignment Ceramic vessels unearthed at site](https://static.independent.co.uk/2024/09/06/05/csm_240827_Kammergrab_03_55163f6c11.jpg)
Archeologists said finding more graves would shed further light on this epoch of history.
“The excavation on Bismarckstraße, where the burial was discovered, was completed a week after the tomb was discovered at the beginning of May,” the Stuttgart Regional Council said in a statement.
![roman emperor assignment Small comb found in ‘barbarian’ grave](https://static.independent.co.uk/2024/09/06/05/csm_240827_Kammergrab_04_87adaad6c0.jpg)
Two ceramic vessels found at the site have been restored by the State Office for Monument Preservation at the Stuttgart Regional Council.
A rib from the grave, sampled for carbon dating, confirmed that he died between 263 and 342 AD.
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Archaeologists discover elaborate 1,700-year-old grave of 'barbarian' who lived near Roman Empire's frontier. Man, 60, likely belonged to Alemanni Germanic tribes that played a role in Rome ...