Explore the history of Ancient Rome — from the founding of the Republic to the fall of the Empire. Politics, warfare, culture, and legacy.
Ninety percent of the people in the Roman Empire worked the land. This is the number that most discussions of Rome skip past in their attention to the legions and the Colosseum and the philosophical schools, but it is the number that actually determined the empire’s …
The augurs were among the most important religious officials in Rome, and their function was specific: they observed and interpreted signs — auspices …
The popular image of Roman battlefield tactics consists largely of the testudo — the tortoise formation with interlocked shields — and the general …
Romans played games everywhere. Game boards scratched into the steps of the Colosseum, carved into the pavements of the Roman Forum, incised into the …
The Romans built bridges the way they built everything: systematically, durably, and in sufficient quantity that their combined effect transformed the …
The Roman legion was an infantry force, and the Romans knew it. This was not a limitation they were ignorant of — it was a structural fact of their …
Roman citizenship was, for most of Roman history, a restricted status that conferred concrete legal advantages and carried genuine political weight. …
Roman concrete has been underwater for two thousand years in some locations and is stronger now than when it was poured. This is not a figure of …
Roman contract law was the legal infrastructure of the Mediterranean economy. The capacity to make binding agreements enforceable by courts — across …
The Romans buried their dead outside the city. This was law and custom simultaneously — the Twelve Tables prohibited burial within the city limits, …