For most of this period, emperors were not chosen on the basis of their ability or honesty, but simply because they were born in the right family. What’s more, the empire started through ...

What was life like in ancient Rome? Find out how Rome began, learn about different Roman emperors and discover what people in Rome did for fun. What was life like in the Roman army? Learn about ...

Following the initial invasion of Britain, the Roman emperor, Claudius, arrived to symbolically lead his army to victory. In August, the Romans captured Camulodunum (Colchester), the capital of ...

Historians record that the unified Roman Empire was ruled by 69 emperors between the first emperor Augustus (who reigned from 27 B.C. to A.D. 14) and Theodosius (ruled from A.D. 379 to 395), but ...

It was also very successful. As emperor, Trajan expanded the Roman Empire to become larger than ever before. He conquered Dacia (now part of Romania), which provided land for Roman settlers and ...

Emperor Theodosius I dies. The Roman Empire is divided into two parts: the Eastern Empire, governed by his son Arcadius, and the Western Empire, by his son Honorius. Barbarian peoples—Swabians ...

This story appears in the January/February 2017 issue of National Geographic History magazine. The emperor Hadrian was well known for building monuments across the Roman Empire, a territory that ...

a period known as the Year of the Five Emperors saw five different claimants vying for control of the Roman Empire. Commodus, who actually did fight as a gladiator for shiggles, was assassinated ...