How many emperors were there in rome

Hadrian had a different vision. He believed the empire was becoming overextended militarily, and immediately upon taking office he focused on consolidating Roman control of the territories that had already been conquered.

He withdrew from a few Eastern territories conquered by his predecessor, Trajan, and he negotiated peace agreements with rivals such as the Parthians. Over time, similar fortifications would be built all around the edges of the empire, transforming what had been a fluid frontier into a clearly defined border.

The new wall was only manned for a few years before the Romans were forced to abandon the new territory and retreat to the border Hadrian had chosen. The Roman empire provided its subjects with a reliable and standardized system of currency. Uniform money brings major economic benefits because cash transactions are a lot more efficient than those done by barter. This map, drawn from a database of amateur archeological finds, shows where Roman coins were found between and As Rome was rising in the West, the Han dynasty was consolidating power in China.

These two great empires were too far apart to have a direct relationship. But they became linked together indirectly through trade networks. This map, based on geographical data recorded by a Greek writer in the early years of the Roman Empire, shows the trade route from Rome to India.

Elites in India and China prized Roman-made glass and rugs, while Roman aristocrats enjoyed purchasing silks made in the Far East. For the first two centuries after Augustus became emperor in 27 BC, the Roman Empire experienced a period of unprecedented political stability and economic prosperity. But the situation deteriorated rapidly in the third century AD. Between and , Rome had more than 20 emperors, and as this map shows, most died violent deaths. Some were murdered by their own armies.

Others died in civil wars against rival claimants to the throne. One died in battle against foreign foe; another was captured in battle and died in captivity.

But in , Emperor Diocletian took power and managed to get the empire out of its tailspin. In a year reign, he temporarily ended the cycle of bloodshed and instituted reforms that allowed the empire to endure until the late s. He wanted to provide more localized leadership for an empire that had become too sprawling and complex for any one man to manage. He created a new imperial capital at Byzantium and renamed it Constantinople, laying the foundations for an Eastern Roman Empire that would endure long after the West fell.

When he took the throne, he began the transformation of Rome into a Christian empire. While some of his subjects resisted Christianity, the change ultimately stuck. As a result, Christianity became the dominant religion of Europe for the next 1, years. Constantine ruled over a unified Roman empire, but this would be increasingly rare. This cycle would repeat itself several times over the next half-century. It became clear that the empire was too big for any one man to rule.

The last emperor to rule a united empire, Theodosius, died in This map shows the result: an empire permanently divided between east and west. Why had the empire become too big to govern? The empire never fully recovered from the political crisis of the third century, or from a plague that began in and killed millions of people.

As its financial health deteriorated, the empire became increasingly vulnerable to invasion. That started a vicious cycle. Frustrated provincials began fortifying their towns and organizing their own local militias for self-defense.

People were increasingly forced to stay close to fortified towns for safety, making them less productive and more dependent on local lords. And so the Roman army grew weaker, and the empire as a whole became more vulnerable to barbarian attack. A symbolic turning point came in , when Aleric, king of the barbarian Visigoth tribe, sacked Rome for the first time in years.

It was a psychological blow from which the Western Empire would never really recover. Probably the most famous of the barbarian invaders was Attila the Hun, who built an empire in Eastern Europe between and Their style of warfare centered on mounted archers, who could fire arrows with deadly accuracy while on horseback.

They prized speed and the advantage of surprise. The Romans proved unable to defeat Attila on the battlefield, and the Huns even forced the Romans to pay them tribute for several years.

However, the Huns were unable to sustain prolonged sieges, which made them incapable of taking large cities such as Constantinople or Rome. Nor could they consolidate their gains and build a long-lived empire. When Attila died in , his sons squabbled over how to divide his empire, which quickly disintegrated. Historians generally date the end of the Western Empire to AD.

The last few emperors before Romulus Augustulus were increasingly emperors in name only. Starved of the tax revenues they needed to raise a serious military, their control over nominally Roman territory was increasingly tenuous. When Odoacer and other barbarian generals carved the Roman Empire up into kingdoms, they were largely just formalizing the de facto reality that the emperors had little actual power over their distant domains.

This map looks dramatically different from the map of the Western Roman Empire as it existed a few decades earlier. Western Europe was populated by largely the same ethnic groups in as they had been a century earlier.

Long before it finally collapsed, manpower shortages had forced the empire to incorporate barbarian peoples into the legions. So the barbarian tribes who carved up the old empire — the Franks, Visigoths, Ostrogoths, the Vandals, and so forth — were much more Romanized than the tribes that had menaced Rome centuries earlier. The rulers of these new kingdoms generally sought to co-opt Roman elites that still held significant wealth and power across the former Western Empire.

So while Romans certainly found it jarring to be suddenly ruled by outsiders, Western Europe in was not so different from how it had been in People in the Byzantine Empire continued to think of themselves as Romans, and their empire as the Roman Empire, for centuries after In , the Emperor Justinian took power in the Byzantine Empire and began a campaign to reconquer the Western half of the empire.

By his death in , he had made significant progress, retaking Italy, most of Roman Africa, and even some parts of Spain. Between and , it would control most of modern-day Germany and portions of modern-day France, Italy, and Central Europe. The empire was ruled by Germans rather than Italians, lacked traditional Roman institutions such as the Senate, and was more decentralized than the Roman Empire had been at its height. After Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire, religion and state were closely aligned — just as they had been under earlier pagan emperors.

But that began to change after the Western Empire collapsed. Most of the barbarian kings who became the new masters of Western Europe were themselves Christians, and they recognized the authority of the church in Rome over religious matters. This set a precedent for the modern separation of church and state, and it allowed the church to thrive even as the Western Roman Empire crumbled.

Indeed, popes began stepping into the power vacuum Rome had created. This map shows the papal states, sovereign territory that was governed by the popes from the s until secular Italian authorities annexed most of it in the s. Today, the Catholic Church still operates in Latin from Vatican City, a tiny sovereign state inside the modern city of Rome. One of the most obvious ways Rome shaped the modern world is the languages people speak today.

This map shows where people speak Romance languages such as Spanish, French, Italian, and Romanian that are descended from Latin. Notice that the line between the French-speaking and German-speaking parts of Europe looks a lot like the line between those portions of Europe that were conquered by the Romans and those that remained beyond the Roman frontier.

The other notable thing about the map is that most people in what used to be the Eastern half of the Roman Empire do not speak Romance languages. While Latin became the language of government, commoners continued speaking Greek. And as the Western Roman Empire collapsed, Greek became the dominant tongue of the remaining Eastern provinces. Original developer Yuri Victor.

Editor Eleanor Barkhorn. Correction: The article originally stated that Constantinople fell in It actually fell in It originally stated that Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Roman empire, but he only began the process of Christianization.

And it originally stated that triremes have three rowers per oar, but in fact they have three banks of oars, with one rower per oar. I also tweaked my description of quinqueremes. The weird fixations of Caligula and Nero made them household names. But these stories have always raised a difficult question: If these emperors were really so deranged, how did they become leaders of one of the greatest empires the world has ever known?

To sort it out, I spoke with two historians: Clifford Ando , a professor of classics and author of Imperial Ideology and Provincial Loyalty in the Roman Empire , and Anthony Barrett , a professor of classics and author of Lives of the Caesars. Both cautioned that the most outrageous stories about Rome's emperors should be taken with a grain of salt.

Ancient historians often sought favor with a new emperor by slandering old ones. What's more, emperors themselves had good incentives to argue that individual nutty emperors of the past were Rome's biggest problem — rather than the imperial system. Even so, the tenure of the craziest emperors illuminates the big flaws in the Roman system — not least the fact that it relied on a succession system that rarely rewarded the best leaders.

It includes some great gossip, too. The best gossip: "He lived in the habit of incest with all his sisters; and at table, when much company was present, he placed each of them in turns below him, whilst his wife reclined above him.

How he got power: Caligula is Rome's most famously perverse emperor, in part due to popular portrayals that were fantastically salacious. But he also broke ground for the imperial system. As Barrett writes in Caligula: The Corruption of Power , Caligula enjoyed a complacent Senate and the support of the military, both of which set a pattern for power that lasted for centuries. He also set a precedent for inexperience: the adopted grandson of his political predecessor, Emperor Tiberius , Caligula was actually the son of the popular soldier Germanicus.

The Roman belief in strong bloodlines, which proved so problematic over the centuries, made Caligula emperor. In many ways, Caligula seems more incompetent than malicious.

It doesn't help that our perception of Caligula's incompetence is exaggerated by myth. Contrary to popular belief, Caligula did not make his horse consul or senator. Even the most extreme early historical sources are clear on this. Yes, he threatened to make his horse consul, but it was a commentary on his low opinion of the Senate — not his high opinion of his horse. The best gossip: "He at last invented an extraordinary kind of diversion; which was, to be let out of a den in the arena, covered with the skin of a wild beast, and then assail with violence the private parts both of men and women.

How he got power: Nero illustrated, once again, the overreliance in Roman culture on familial connections. To be clear, Nero's early reign as emperor actually wasn't so bad. That just wasn't the right skill for a leader. Even so, Nero's later incompetence is often exaggerated. Contrary to popular belief, Nero did not actually fiddle while Rome burned. He had buildings torn down to help stop the movement of the fire, and after the blaze had subsided, he instituted stricter building codes.

So where did the myth about the fiddle come from? The government of the Republic changed a lot over time, but it always involved the same three basic groups. First was the Senate, who acted as advisers and represented the nation.

The Senate was made up of esteemed members of the public. Senators were typically from prominent families or were formerly elected members of the government. Next to the Senate were the magistrates. The magistrates were government officials elected by the citizens of Rome, both the upper class patricians and the lower class plebeians.

The two highest ranked magistrates were the consuls, the supreme co-rulers of Rome who commanded the Roman army. Other important magistrates included the censors, who took the census and selected the senators. In times of crisis, this normal system could be overridden by appointing a dictator who would have total authority.

Lastly, there were the assemblies. Roman citizens would assemble vote on electing officials, enacting laws, and declaring war. Importantly, citizenship wasn't extended to all people under Roman rule, or even all Romans on the Italian peninsula. Citizenship was inherited from parents, or was offered to people by the government. The assemblies were assisted by the Tribunes, who were able to intervene on behalf of the plebeians as a safeguard against the senate and magistrates.

Over time, the assemblies became less and less influential. Power fluctuated within the Senate. By the end of the Republic, Roman generals, dictators, or the Senate itself chose the senators, and political power concentrated itself into fewer hands.

The early era of the Roman Empire is often called the Principate. The Principate was ruled by a single emperor known as the princeps. During the Principate, the emperors at least kept up the image of being a republic. The Senate continued to hold some political importance, and the Emperor was called princeps to indicate that he was merely the "first among equals"--the elected consuls were still officially the heads of state in the empire.