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The Roman Empire
A triumph for the new democrats over the old guard, Augustus (27 BC-14 AD) - as Octavian became known - was the first true Roman emperor, in firm control of Rome and its dominions. Responsible more than anyone for heaving Rome into the Imperial era, he was determined to turn the city - as he claimed - from one of stone to one of marble, building arches, theatres and monuments of a magnificence suited to the capital of an expanding empire. Perhaps the best and certainly the most politically canny of Rome’s many emperors, Augustus reigned for forty years. He was succeeeded by Tiberius (14-37), who ruled from the island of Capri for the last years of his reign, and he in turn by Caligula (37-41), who was assassinated after just four years in power. Claudius (41-54), his uncle, followed, at first reluctantly, and evidenced to be a wise ruler, only to be succeeded by his stepson, Nero (54-68), whose reign became more notorious for its excess than its prudence, and led to a brief period of warring and infighting after his murder in 68 AD. Rome’s next rulers, the Flavian emperors , restored some stability, starting with Vespasian (69-79), who did his best to slur all traces of Nero, not least with an enormous ampitheatre in the grounds of Nero’s palace, later known as the Colosseum, and ending with the emperor Trajan (98-117), under whose rule the empire reached its maximum limits. Trajan died in 117 AD, giving way to Hadrian (117-138), who continued the grand and expansionist agenda of his predecessor, and arguably provided the empire’s greatest years. The city swelled to a population of a million or more, its people housed in cramped apartment blocks or insulae; crime in the city was rife, and the traffic problem apparently on a par with today’s, leading one contemporary writer to complain that the din on the streets prefabricated it impossible to get a good night’s sleep. But it was a time of peace and prosperity, the Roman upper classes living a life of indolent luxury, in sumptuous residences with proper plumbing and central heating, and the empire’s borders being ever more extended.
The decline of Rome is hard to date precisely, but it could be said to have started with the emperor Diocletian (284-305), who assumed power in 284 and divided the empire into two parts, easterly and west, while becoming known for his relentless persecution of Christians. The first Christian emperor, Constantine (312-337), shifted the seat of power to Byzantium in 330, and Rome’s heady period as capital of the world was over, the wealthier members of the population moving easterly and a series of invasions by Goths in 410 and Vandals about forty years later only serving to quicken the city’s ruin. By the sixth century the city was a devastated and infection-ridden shadow of its former self, with a population of just 20,000.
