Explore the history of Ancient Rome — from the founding of the Republic to the fall of the Empire. Politics, warfare, culture, and legacy.
On August 9, 378 AD, the Eastern Roman emperor Valens led his army against a Gothic force near Adrianople in Thrace — modern Edirne in northwestern Turkey — and was killed along with roughly two-thirds of his army. The Battle of Adrianople was not the largest Roman defeat in …
Alexandria was not a Roman city. It was a Greek city under Roman administration, founded by Alexander the Great in 331 BC and designed from its …
Antioch on the Orontes — modern Antakya in southern Turkey near the Syrian border — was the third city of the Roman Empire and the capital of its …
René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo began publishing Asterix in the French magazine Pilote in 1959, and the series has been introducing children to Roman …
Gaius Octavius was eighteen years old when Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 BC, and nobody thought he mattered. He was Caesar’s great-nephew, …
Ben-Hur won eleven Academy Awards in 1959, a record it shared with Titanic and The Lord of the Return of the King for decades, and it is the film …
The Byzantine Empire called itself Rome. Its citizens called themselves Romans. Its emperor held the title that Augustus had held. Its laws were Roman …
Caesarea Maritima was built by Herod the Great on a site with no natural harbor, no fresh water source, and no existing urban infrastructure, over a …
On August 2, 216 BC, on a flat plain near the Aufidus River in southern Italy, the Carthaginian general Hannibal Barca destroyed a Roman army of …
Carthage must be destroyed. The phrase — Carthago delenda est — was reportedly repeated by Cato the Elder at the end of every Senate speech he gave, …
