Explore the history of Ancient Rome — from the founding of the Republic to the fall of the Empire. Politics, warfare, culture, and legacy.
In a case in the Altes Museum in Berlin, ten painted wooden panels are arranged across two shelves: five on the upper row, five below. They show men, women, and children. The youngest is perhaps eight or nine years old. The oldest appears to be in his fifties, though age is …
The bronze is perhaps eight centimeters tall and has been in Hannover’s Museum August Kestner for longer than most living people can account for. It …
Rome was not original in its theology, and it did not pretend to be. The Romans were systematic borrowers of divine power, operating on the practical …
Rome fed a significant portion of its population for free, and had been doing so, in various forms, for over five centuries by the time the Western …
The city of Rome at its height had a population of somewhere between half a million and a million people — the estimates vary and the ancient census …
The Pantheon is the best-preserved ancient building in the world, and it is better preserved than most medieval buildings, because it has been in …
The Praetorian Guard killed four emperors, elevated at least five more to power, and constituted the single most politically destabilizing institution …
Rome did not conquer its empire and then build roads to administer it. The roads and the conquest advanced together, each enabling the other in a …
The Roman bath was not primarily about hygiene. That framing, which modern people find intuitive, misses what made the baths central to Roman urban …
The calendar you use today is a Roman calendar. The twelve months, the seven-day week borrowed from Near Eastern sources and transmitted through Rome, …
