Explore the history of Ancient Rome — from the founding of the Republic to the fall of the Empire. Politics, warfare, culture, and legacy.
The bust in the Altes Museum in Berlin is one of the more technically striking Roman portrait pieces in any German collection. The head is Carrara marble — white, fine-grained, the standard material for imperial portraiture — but the drapery is carved from a deeply veined …
Frederic Leighton, Lord Leighton, President of the Royal Academy from 1878 until his death in 1896, was the dominant figure in British academic …
Ridley Scott’s Gladiator arrived in 2000 and revived the sword-and-sandal epic as a commercially viable genre after a forty-year hiatus. It won the …
Hadrian spent more time away from Rome than any emperor before or after him. In twenty-one years of rule, from 117 to 138 AD, he made two extended …
HBO’s Rome ran for two seasons from 2005 to 2007, cost approximately one hundred million dollars to produce, was cancelled before completing its …
Roman naming conventions are among the more counterintuitive aspects of the culture for modern readers, and the confusion they generate is not merely …
The Roman legion was designed for open battle, but Rome won its empire through sieges as much as through field engagements. The ability to take …
The Roman Republic is frequently invoked and rarely understood. Politicians cite it as a model of balanced governance. Historians treat it as the …
I, Claudius was broadcast by the BBC in 1976, produced on a budget that would not cover the catering costs of a modern prestige television production, …
The Roman legion was not a fixed thing. It evolved over seven centuries from the early Republic’s tribal levies to the late Empire’s frontier garrison …
