Roman Empire

A new online resource opens up possibilities for interpreting the infrastructure of the Roman world, says Jasmine Pui.

C.E. Stevens explains how, two thousand years ago, by crossing the Rubicon, Julius Caesar challenged the power of the Roman Senate, and opened the way for the foundation of the Roman Empire.

Hent Kalmo considers the roots of sovereignty and the changing basis determining the authority of a state to govern itself or another state at the expense of local or individual liberties.

Charles Seltman presents the discovery and patronage of Herculaneum as a classical drama.

Michael Grant asks whether Caesar Augustus, sole ruler for forty-five years, was honest and sincere, or a “hypocrite of genius”?

A great historian of an age he disliked, Harold Mattingly shows how Tacitus has given posterity an incomparable picture of the early Roman Empire.

The battle of the Milvian Bridge in October 312 has attained legendary status as the moment when the Emperor Constantine secured the future of Christianity in Europe. But the real turning point, argues Michael Mulryan, took place a few months earlier.

The Emperor Constantine won a great victory on October 28th, 312.

The future emperor was born on August 31st, AD 12.

Ann Natanson reports on a new scheme to restore the Roman Colosseum to its former gory glory.

Christopher B. Krebs considers Irene Coltman Brown’s article on the ambivalent and ironic Roman historian Tacitus, first published in History Today in 1981.

The discovery of a letter written by the great physician sheds new light on one of the most dramatic events in Roman history, as Raoul McLaughlin explains.

A series of archaeological discoveries off the coast of Sicily reveal how Rome turned a piece of lethal naval technology pioneered by its enemy, Carthage, to its own advantage, explains Ann Natanson.