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What was the most important year in history? We asked 9 experts – and this is what they said
Our crack team of historians, broadcasters and authors offer their takes on a conundrum that continues to divide opinions
AD 1000 Norse power: when worlds collide This moment is surely imbued with the most global symbolism. It was when, according to the Old Norse-Icelandic sagas, adventurers sailed across the north Atlantic from settlements on the west coast of Greenland to the edge of the North American continent. There they met inhabitants of coastal regions of what’s now Canada: ancestors of peoples such as the Beothuk and Algonquin. The circle of humanity was closed for the first time in recorded history. In the 1960s, archaeologists found a Norse overwintering site at L’Anse aux Meadows, at the northern tip of Newfoundland. This backed up what the sagas had already described: a series of voyages west from Greenland, the discovery of new lands and resources, and increasingly violent encounters with the people they called Skrælingar – an unpleasant name meaning ‘wretched ones’. These cross-cultural encounters began promisingly enough, with red cloth and dairy products traded for animal pelts. Eventually, though, relations disintegrated into distrust, violence and murder – an uneasy foreshadowing of what would follow centuries later. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/2RA49CHwebready-675b6fb-e1772549042852.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A cluster of reconstructed Viking buildings with sod-covered roofs sits inside a white wooden fence near a rocky coastline. The turf-walled structures vary in size and line a central dirt path, with wooden beams and tools displayed outside. Low hills and open water frame the background, evoking the historic Norse settlement at L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland." title="Viking dwellings reconstructed at L’Anse aux Meadows in northern Newfoundland, likely the site of the first Norse settlement in North America (Image by Alamy)" /> This is, of course, a moment of retrospective significance. Those voyagers didn’t realise that they had reached an entirely new continent. Their expeditions did not make big news around the world. For me, that makes this moment in history even more interesting. Because when we’re being carried along by the churning currents of time, it’s not always possible to tell which events and dates will mean the most to those looking back. Eleanor Barraclough, historian, broadcaster and author of Embers of the Hands: Hidden Histories of the Viking Age (Profile, 2024) 1066 Conquest, castles, class shifts and chivalry For British history, at least, the answer is 1066. This might seem surprising to people who remember only the battle of Hastings, the death of King Harold and the accession of William the Conqueror, but the regime change that followed the Norman takeover went far beyond just a new royal dynasty. As Domesday Book shows, by 1086 the old ruling class of Anglo-Saxon England had been replaced almost entirely, and more than 90 per cent of the land was now held by continental newcomers. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/HYH4NP-CMYK-04891b5-e1772549396426.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A scene from the Bayeux Tapestry shows soldiers attacking a fortified structure. Armoured figures with spears and shields climb ladders toward battlements, while others fight at the gate below. The stylized medieval architecture frames the action, and a line of Latin text runs above the figures." title="A scene in the Bayeux Tapestry depicts a motte-and-bailey. The proliferation of castles was among the major changes that swept England after the Norman conquest (Image by Alamy)" /> This had an immediate effect on the country’s physical appearance. Castles, which had hardly existed in England at all before 1066, were constructed in their hundreds. Cathedrals and abbeys were ripped down and rebuilt in a new Romanesque style. Notoriously, the north was brutally harried into submission and turned into a desert. Less perceptibly, but even more importantly in the long run, the Conquest also introduced new ideas about how society should be regulated. Slavery, which had been commonplace among the Anglo-Saxons, disappeared over the next half-century. The custom of sparing the life of a defeated opponent became the new norm among the ruling elite. The rapid adoption of these new attitudes by the English set them apart from their insular neighbours, who continued to slaughter their enemies and practise war as slave-hunt. The novel perception of the Welsh, Scots and Irish as uncivilised barbarians was a direct result of the Norman conquest, and fuelled the aggressive English colonisation of those countries in the centuries that followed. Marc Morris, medieval historian, writer and broadcaster Read more | Conquest? What conquest? The other dramatic events that really mattered in 1066 1945 World war, international aftermath At a global scale, the Second World War was the most momentous period in history. So it follows that the year of its conclusion – 1945 – was the most important year. The list of transformations that took place because of that war is truly astonishing. There were massive advances in computer technology, radio technology, plastics research, jet planes, rocket science and the production of antibiotics. Nuclear power quite literally exploded into our consciousness in 1945. Super Glue was discovered during the war, as was the technology behind microwave ovens. And it was the final victory in 1945 that allowed such innovations to be released from the secrecy of wartime and into the wider world. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/GettyImages-2161195064webready-ac6bc7d-e1772538184798.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A black‑and‑white photograph of a man seated at a large round table signing a document while several men in formal military and civilian attire stand behind him. Numerous national flags hang in the background along with a large United Nations emblem." title="Delegates from 50 nations gather in San Francisco in 1945 to agree and sign the United Nations Charter, part of a postwar process to restore international order (Image by Getty Images)" /> Alongside new technologies came huge social and geopolitical changes. It was in 1945 that today’s map of Europe was drawn during the Yalta and Potsdam conferences. At the same time, the communist takeover of eastern Europe began. This was the year when the nations of Asia and Africa, inspired by wartime rhetoric, began their final push towards decolonisation. The international order was reborn with the establishment of the United Nations that summer, and a whole network of affiliated organisations followed. The list goes on. The Second World War cast a shadow on the world so long that it still affects us to this day. The memory of 1945, and of all that it represents, is preserved in our culture of storytelling, movie-making and novel writing, and we still commemorate it annually. No other single year in history has ever held such power over us – nor is ever likely to do so again. Keith Lowe, author of The Fear and the Freedom: How the Second World War Changed Us (Viking, 2017) 31 BC Actium: turning the tide of Roman history At noon on 2 September 31 BC, Marcus Agrippa stood aboard his flagship and gazed towards the Greek promontory of Actium. Some 60 of his enemy’s warships were speeding over the Ionian waves in the direction of the 400 vessels led by him and Octavian, who was watching from an advantageous point on land. Those approaching were part of the fleet of 230 led by Mark Antony, Octavian’s former Roman ally, and Cleopatra, queen of Egypt. As they reached the melee, Cleopatra’s ships sailed straight into the middle of the battle line – and for a moment it seemed as if the tide might turn. Instead, they surged straight through and into the open sea: Cleopatra was escaping. Panicked, Mark Antony abandoned his flagship and followed her with several smaller vessels, leaving their remaining fleet to face the onslaught alone. Surrender followed. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/E75F2Xwebready-cd56f0d-e1772549167562.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A carved marble relief shows several ancient ships packed with soldiers in battle. Warriors hold shields and weapons as the vessels move through stylized waves. One ship carries a large horse, and fortified walls and towers rise behind the fighting, suggesting a coastal city under attack." title="Octavian’s forces triumph at the battle of Actium, shown in a first-century AD Roman relief (Image by Alamy)" /> At the time of the battle, the Roman empire was divided between Octavian in the west and Mark Antony in the east. With the suicides of Cleopatra and Mark Antony in 30 BC following their defeat at Actium, Octavian became sole ruler of Rome and conqueror of Egypt. Three years later, the Roman senate conferred on Octavian the title Augustus, officially marking the end of the Republic and the start of the Roman empire. Had Antony prevailed, Rome’s centre might have shifted eastwards. Alexandria might have become a second capital, Rome’s ambitions would likely have turned towards Mesopotamia and Persia rather than Germania and Britannia, and today Europe might instead have a Greek rather than Latin language base. Jess Venner, ancient historian, presenter and author 1453 Bye bye Byzantines, all hail the Ottomans It is, of course, an impossible task to select one specific year. Momentous happenings do occur, but they’re made possible by structural changes – political, economic, cultural – over many decades or even centuries. Having said that, I’d pick 1453. That was the year in which the Hundred Years’ War ended – but also, even more significantly, when Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks. That marked the end of the Byzantine empire – the last remnant of the Roman realm – which had lasted for more than 1,000 years. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/JR3129webready-fd2997a-e1772549266648.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="An illustrated battle scene shows two opposing armies fighting outside a fortified city. In the foreground, soldiers in turbans and bright clothing wield curved swords, while behind them a dense line of armored troops with helmets advances. Domed buildings and towers rise in the background, suggesting the clash is taking place at a city’s walls." title="A 19th-century illustration shows Ottoman troops surging into Constantinople, sealing the fall of the Byzantine empire (Image by Alamy)" /> The city became the capital of the growing Ottoman empire, which endured until 1922 as a major global power. The religious make-up of the region changed dramatically, though it remained a melting pot of peoples of different cultures and faiths. The fall of Constantinople led to an influx of Greek scholars to Europe, who brought deep learning and fresh ideas that added extra stimulus to the Renaissance. It also represented a tectonic shift in global geopolitics, changing the balance of power in the Middle East and radically reconfiguring trade routes between Europe and Asia. Some argue that growing complications involved in trading along overland routes through Eurasia stimulated European Atlantic exploration. It also contributed to a reconfiguration of the medieval slave trade. As it became harder for European traders to traffic people via the Black Sea, they turned increasingly to the coast of west Africa – fuelling the growth of one of the most appalling and tragic phenomena in human history. Hannah Skoda, associate professor of medieval history at the University of Oxford 1533 The wedding that reshaped England’s religious, social and political life It’s for good reason that the dawn of the Tudor era has widely been considered to mark the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the Early Modern age. The 118 years when this celebrated dynasty occupied the throne witnessed unprecedented change in every aspect of English life. And no single year was more transformative than 1533. In 1527, Henry VIII had first petitioned the pope for an annulment from wife number one, Catherine of Aragon. He was driven by his all-consuming desire for a son and his obsession with Anne Boleyn, a woman of his wife’s household who had told him that if he wanted her, he’d have to put a ring on it. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/GettyImages-463925937webready-63091c6-e1772538301249.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A painted portrait of a woman in Tudor‑style dress, shown from the waist up. She wears a dark gown with a square neckline, a pearl necklace with a gold pendant shaped like the letter B, and a black headdress trimmed with pearls. She faces forward against a dark background." title="Henry VIII's determination to marry Anne Boleyn (above) had lasting consequences (Image by Getty Images)" /> Henry eventually took matters into his own hands by breaking with Rome and setting up a new Church of England, with himself as the supreme head. On 25 January 1533, he married Anne Boleyn. In May, his marriage to Catherine of Aragon was formally annulled and Anne was confirmed as his legitimate queen by the archbishop of Canterbury. She was crowned at Westminster Abbey on 1 June, by which time she was visibly pregnant. On 7 September, the new queen gave birth – not to the hoped-for son but to a daughter, the future Elizabeth I. This proved to be the beginning of the end for Anne. But her marriage to Henry had sparked a seismic shift in England’s religious, political and social life that would reverberate down the centuries. It also produced a monarch who ruled for longer than any of her Tudor predecessors and blazed a trail for future queens regnant. Tracy Borman, author, historian and broadcaster Read more | Elizabeth I and Anne Boleyn: the Tudor queen’s undying love for her mother 1858 Dawn of the Information Age On 16 August 1858, Queen Victoria sent a message to US president James Buchanan. Ordinarily, it would have taken about 10 days for such a communication to cross the Atlantic by ship – but this one arrived in only 16 hours. It was sent to mark the connection of the first transatlantic telegraph cable – a direct line between the Old World and the New. Shorter connections had already been completed between Britain and mainland Europe, including a cross-channel line in 1850, but the Atlantic presented a tougher challenge. For years, engineers including Samuel Morse had debated whether it was possible to lay 2,500 miles of cable beneath the ocean. The first attempt in 1857 failed when the line snapped. But now, at last, it was done. Some commentators hailed it as the Eighth Wonder of the World. An excited newspaper in Boston announced simply: “THERE IS NO MORE SEA!” <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/GettyImages-90739586webready-a414067-e1772538374282.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A wooden display case with a blue background holds several cross‑sections of thick telegraph cables and related components. Each piece is mounted with a small printed label, and the items are arranged in two rows, including cable segments from different years and a metal grapnel model used for cable recovery." title="Submarine cables and grapnels used in 19th-century attempts to lay transatlantic telegraph lines (Image by Getty Images)" /> This first transatlantic cable failed after only three weeks, and it wasn’t until 1866 that a permanent line was established. But a precedent had been set: it would now be possible to connect every corner of world in an ever more extensive network of telegraph cables, eventually allowing huge volumes of information to pulse around the globe at previously unimaginable speeds. It was many years later before this vision was fully realised, but in 1858 we see the beginning of the new Information Age – a recognisably modern moment that culminated in the arrival of the internet. Bob Nicholson, writer, broadcaster and historian at Edge Hill University 1917 When revolution reshaped alliances, identities and ambitions In this pivotal year, Russia stopped fighting in the First World War and the US entered it. Neither country ranked much as a world power at the time, but wartime actions sparked global transformations. President Woodrow Wilson’s championing of international cooperation and American-style democracy (universal in rhetoric but deeply racialised in practice) signalled US ambitions for the world stage. But the big story was Russia: its economy shattered by the war, its people toppled the tsar in March (February in the Julian calendar then in use), setting the stage for the Bolsheviks to seize power in November (Julian: October). The Russian Revolution – the most important event of the 20th century – was complete by the end of 1917, and the Soviet Union was secured by 1922. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/GettyImages-526928472webready-bdd9558-e1772538521653.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A stylized poster shows a red figure raising a large hammer above their head, standing over broken black chains. The figure wears clothing marked “1917.” Red star shapes around them contain English and Russian words including “Socialism,” “Democracy,” and “Peace.” The background is light with bold graphic contrasts." title="A Soviet poster celebrates the Russian Revolution of 1917, which inspired anticolonial struggles in Asia and Africa (Image by Getty Images)" /> Neither the civil rights movement nor decolonial struggles would have unfolded as they did without the Soviet Union, whether as foil or ally. In the US, for example, communist organising and Soviet propaganda forced segregationists to either justify or modify their system of racial division. In the world subject to European empire, Soviet communism offered intellectual and material resources to anticolonial nationalists. Cold War historians tend to focus on the ascendant US and its Soviet nemesis duking it out for global hegemony via conflicts in Latin America, Africa and Asia. More salient are the ways in which the revolutionary model and the revolutionary challenge pushed communities, groups and nations to articulate who they were and who they wished to be. The Russian Revolution helped remake the world – and we live out its legacy. Adriane Lentz-Smith, associate professor of history at Duke University Read more | Why does Putin think Ukraine should be Russian? It’s all to do with the Vikings 490 BC Marathon: a victory for democracy Six decades after Cyrus the Great had founded the Achaemenid empire, the Persian forces of King Darius I – also ‘the Great’ – were pushing west to conquer all of Greece. Their primary aim was to lay waste to Athens, which had had the temerity to support a revolt against the empire that by then controlled swathes of the region. But they hadn’t banked on the determination and tactical nous of their opponents. By September 490 BC, the Persian fleet had landed on the coast of Attica about 17 miles north-east of Athens, its troops disembarking onto the plain of Marathon. Around 10,000 Athenian men mustered in the surrounding hills, joined by 1,000 from Plataea – but were still vastly outnumbered. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/GettyImages-475596641webready-ac6297a-e1772538584504.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A carved stone relief showing several human figures in a crowded, dynamic scene. At the center, an older bearded man sits upright while other figures around him lift, support, or carry objects resembling large torches or cornucopias. A reclining figure appears at the lower right. The relief is detailed with drapery, musculature, and expressive poses, and a decorative frieze of circular and floral motifs runs along the top edge." title="The battle of Marathon, in a sarcophagus relief from the second century BC (Image by Getty Images)" /> On learning that the Persian cavalry was absent, Greek warriors led by Athenian general Miltiades swept down on the enemy. Against the odds, the Persian troops were routed – reputedly at the cost of only 192 Athenian dead. This was a critical moment in ancient history: it gave confidence to the Greeks that they could stand up to the mighty Persian empire and, thanks to their part in the victory, the Athenians emerged as the most important polis in Greece. It also provided momentum for Athens’ emerging democracy. In the mid-19th century, English philosopher John Stuart Mill claimed that “as an event in English history, the battle of Marathon was more important than the battle of Hastings” because Greek (and, particularly, Athenian) victory in that clash was so linked to the development of democracy. Michael Scott, professor in classics and ancient history at the University of Warwick This article was first published in the February 2026 issue of HistoryExtra Magazine
How do civilisations collapse? That was the question at the heart of Edward Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Two hundred and fifty years after it was published, Guy de la Bédoyère argues that Gibbon’s magnum opus remains a landmark in the writing of history
Sometimes, a single narrative comes to dominate how we remember a year. So it is with 1776. This, as every history lover knows, was the date that the American colonies declared their independence, beginning the history of the United States. But back in the old world, another, rather more modest event would have a profound influence on cultural history. For 1776 was also the year that the first volume of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire was published in London. And though it may not have spawned a nation, there’s little doubt that the book’s release was a landmark moment in the writing of history. Authored by Edward Gibbon, an essayist and, at this time, Whig MP for Liskeard, this epic work eventually grew to encompass the story of the Roman empire from the accession of the emperor Trajan in AD 98 through to 1453, when the Ottomans captured Constantinople and the rump of the Eastern empire fell. The last of its six volumes appeared in 1788 just before another tumultuous year in global history, 1789, when the opening salvos were fired in the French Revolution. What, in the year of its 250th anniversary, are we to make of Decline and Fall? Is it coincidental that a book written at a time of rebellion, and where so much of the narrative is about political intrigues and the loss of power, connected with 18th-century readers? And how did a history based on limited resources that few scholars would refer to today escape its time to become a classic? <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/GettyImages-122219029webready-2206e03-e1771851490986.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A life‑sized marble statue of a Roman leader stands upright against a carved stone wall. The figure wears ornate armor decorated with reliefs, including a central face and small mythological scenes. A heavy cloak drapes over the left shoulder and arm, adding a sense of movement to the otherwise rigid pose. The right arm is raised, holding a scroll that suggests authority or command. The statue’s expression is calm and formal, and the smooth, pale marble contrasts with the textured architectural backdrop" title="Trajan’s reign marked the beginning of a time when, wrote Gibbon, the Roman empire presided over the “most civilised portion of mankind” (Image by Getty Images)" /> Young and lonely To begin to answer these questions, it helps to know a little about Decline and Fall’s author. Gibbon was born in Putney in 1737 to a family of considerable means. But for all his privilege, there’s more than a suggestion of loneliness in his early life. His relationship with his mother was troubled. None of his six siblings survived to adulthood. He attended Westminster School and Magdalen College, Oxford, but is better understood as someone who was largely self-educated as a result of his extensive reading. His decision to convert to Catholicism in 1753 brought his time at Oxford to an abrupt end, but under threat of being disinherited by his father, he swiftly returned to Protestantism. There’s a sense at this stage of Gibbon failing to find a purpose in life. Or perhaps, bearing in mind his bookish creativity, a failure to find the right project. This would not arrive until 1764 when, travelling around Europe on a Grand Tour, Gibbon reached “the great object of [my] pilgrimage”, Rome. In Decline and Fall, he would famously note, “It was among the ruins of the Capitol that I first conceived the idea of a work which has amused and exercised near 20 years of my life”. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/1649172Gibbonwebready-365c81c-e1771851649321.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A photograph of six books standing side by side, with their spines facing the viewer. Each book is brown, red and green in colour with gold lettering" title="The six volumes of Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall were published in the 12 years between the American and French revolutions. The author declared that the book itself documented “a revolution which will ever be remembered and is still felt by the nations of the Earth” (Image by Peter Harrington)" /> Gibbon had found his calling. By the end of the 1760s, he had begun the work that would define him. His preface suggested he knew exactly what he was doing as he explained how he intended to cover the 13 and a half centuries from AD 98 to 1453 by dividing his subject into different periods. He began by explaining: “The first of these periods may be traced from the age of Trajan and the Antonines, when the Roman monarchy, having attained its full strength and maturity, began to verge towards its decline; and will extend to the subversion of the Western empire, by the barbarians of Germany and Scythia, the rude ancestors of the most polished nations of modern Europe. This extraordinary revolution, which subjected Rome to the power of a Gothic conqueror, was completed about the beginning of the sixth century.” From there, Gibbon planned to move on to a second period starting with Justinian (reigned 527–65), who was emperor for close to four decades, and lasting to the reign of Charlemagne, who founded the Carolingian empire in AD 800. A third period would take the story from this Frankish revival of the Western empire to the fall of Constantinople in 1453. Read more | Meet the “grossly underappreciated” Roman emperor who became the enemy of the ancient world Blind faith Gibbon baulked at the prospect of completing the massive task he had set himself. “I dare not presume to give any assurances,” he warned his readers. Yet for all his modesty, there was a sense of purpose about his writing. From the off, he wanted to argue that the Roman empire fell due to a combination of Christianity’s corrosive influence, which eroded civic ambition and responsibilities, and barbarian invasions, which acted as the final blow to an already weakened state. He believed that Christianity redirected the focus of citizens from worldly concerns to the afterlife, diminishing their commitment to the state. He also suggested that other internal factors – like despotism, corruption and military weakness – contributed to the empire’s internal decay before the external pressures became overwhelming. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/BAL206171webready-bdcce3f-e1771852336666.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="“A painted portrait of an 18th‑century man wearing a red coat with gold buttons, a white cravat, and a powdered wig. He faces slightly to the side against a dark background, which highlights his pale face, formal clothing, and the refined style typical of the period" title="Edward Gibbon shown in a portrait from c1779. “He deserves to be admired for as long as there is anyone around to read him,” writes Guy de la Bédoyère (Image by Bridgeman Images)" /> Gibbon didn’t think he was writing about a remote and arcane subject. He believed that, “In the second century of the Christian era, the empire of Rome comprehended the fairest part of the Earth, and the most civilised portion of mankind”, neatly brushing over the total dependence of the Roman empire on slavery. The empire’s decline and fall was, Gibbon said, “a revolution which will ever be remembered, and is still felt by the nations of the Earth”. Here lay his central point. The collapse of the Roman empire, however long it had taken, had a decisive effect on the world that followed. It was, therefore, a lesson for all time in how civilisations can fall to pieces and what this might mean for those who follow. Although there are countless observations that could be made about Gibbon’s use of ancient sources, and the limitations both of his technique and the evidence he had to hand, it would be difficult to quarrel with his interest in trying to understand why and how a state could fail. This shouldn’t blind us to Decline and Fall’s limitations. One of those limitations emerges during Gibbon’s discussions of the invasion of Britain in the first century AD (in which the author looked back to see how the Roman empire grew to become the dominant force of the second century). Of the British tribes, he noted that “while they fought singly, they were successively subdued”. This is an instantly identifiable line borrowed and translated from Agricola – written by the Roman historian Tacitus and named after the general who helped mastermind the conquest of northern Britain. Read more | Roman invasion of Britain: did the Britons ignore them? Unattributed borrowings like this were commonplace at the time. In one sense, they were homages, but they also served to showcase the author’s learning and easy familiarity with classical texts. Gibbon may have expected, even wanted, his readers to notice this kind of copying and pasting, but it also illustrates an uncritical approach to his source material. A few lines on, Gibbon discussed the recall of Agricola, despite “his superior merit”, from his post as governor of Britain in the AD 80s. Agricola was Tacitus’s father-in-law, and the biography Tacitus wrote was an unashamed hagiography. Gibbon simply copied Tacitus’s very evident bias and accepted the criticisms of the last Flavian emperor, Domitian (ruled 81–96). Happy days? Gibbon was prone to making sweeping judgments. Among the most famous lines in the entire book is his assertion that, “If a man were called to fix the period in the history of the world, during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous, he would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus”. This statement may be well known but that doesn’t mean it was correct. As I alluded to earlier, we now have a far more graphic understanding of the reality of Roman slavery. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/GettyImages-2181025710webready-7b1c152-e1771851899984.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A marble statue of a man with curly hair and a beard, looking down towards the left with a serious expression on his face" title="Gibbon saw in the second-century emperor Commodus a man unable to cope with the colossal responsibilities of imperial power (Image by Getty Images)" /> Yet Gibbon could also be astute. His stance on Commodus – the much-maligned emperor assassinated in a palace coup on the last day of 192 – showed an understanding of the vulnerability of the imperial system when the emperor lacked the personal resources to cope with the enormous demands of the job. “Commodus was not, as he has been represented, a tiger born with an insatiate thirst of human blood, and capable, from his infancy, of the most inhuman actions,” observed Gibbon. “Nature had formed him of a weak rather than a wicked disposition.” Gibbon’s descriptions of Commodus also reveal a pithiness and a joy in the use of language that helps explain Decline’s and Fall’s initial success. There are many examples of Gibbon’s meticulous turns of phrase but only room here to highlight a small number. Commodus’s downfall was precipitated by him having “discovered an aversion to whatever was rational or liberal, and a fond attachment to the amusements of the populace” since childhood. When Emperor Septimius Severus died at York on campaign in 211, Gibbon described the moment thus: “The declining health and last illness of Severus inflamed the wild ambition and black passions of [his son] Caracalla’s soul.” We might choose different words today, but Gibbon’s meaning remains obvious. He was foreshadowing what came next. Caracalla, “the common enemy of mankind”, now embarked on a tyrannical rule that lasted until his own murder in 217. The only historical figure whom Caracalla admired, Gibbon tells us, was Alexander the Great. But “in no one action of his life did Caracalla express the faintest resemblance of the Macedonian hero, except in the murder of a great number of his own and of his father’s friends”. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/GettyImages-464435571webready-2521f5e-e1771851785523.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A marble bust of a bearded man with thick, curly hair, shown from the chest up. His expression is intense, with furrowed brows and a slightly turned head that gives a sense of movement. The sculpted curls, textured beard, and draped garment are finely detailed, highlighting the craftsmanship of the classical style" title="Gibbon reserved some of his most stinging criticisms for the emperor Caracalla, whom he labelled “the common enemy of mankind” (Image by Getty Images)" /> Maxims of persecution Gibbon also had sharp words for Constantine I, who famously converted to Christianity and issued an edict banning the persecution of Christians in 313. What this shift meant in practice, Gibbon contended, was that Christians themselves became oppressors: “The emperor imbibed the maxims of persecution; and the sects which dissented from the Catholic church were afflicted and oppressed by the triumph of Christianity.” Like so many passages of Decline and Fall, Gibbon’s writings on the impact of Christianity on Rome were phrased beautifully. But that didn’t stop them triggering a firestorm of criticism. Leading the charge was the theologian George Travis, who outlined his grave objections to the book in a series of letters published in 1785. Travis’s condemnation centred on a specific passage in the Bible known as the Johannine Comma. This was a phrase affirming the unity of the Holy Trinity that appeared in the Epistles of John, but was absent from ancient Greek manuscripts. Travis defended the Comma as authentic scripture. Yet, in his discussion of the conversion of “barbarians” to Christianity in Decline and Fall, Gibbon labelled it a “pious fraud”. Travis wrote to Gibbon to say: “It will become one who wishes to live to posterity as a historian, to consider well how he can justify himself either in literary candor [sic] or Christian charity, for accusing men so evidently conscientious… of the complicated crime of the falsification of Scripture!” Travis went on to accuse Gibbon of “bigotry” because of his “perverse adherence to any opinion of any kind, without giving to the evidence on the contrary part, an open hearing”. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/GettyImages-1336622679webready-094aff8-e1771852165870.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A circular mosaic showing the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan River. At the centre, John the Baptist pours water over Jesus, who stands waist‑deep in the river. A white dove descends above them, symbolizing the Holy Spirit. The scene is surrounded by brightly colored, gold‑accented figures of angels with halos arranged in a radial pattern, creating a sense of sacred ceremony and ornate Byzantine style" title="A fifth-century mosaic shows Jesus Christ being baptised in the river Jordan, which is depicted as a pagan god. Edward Gibbon noted the ease with which early Christians made the transition from the oppressed to the oppressors (Image by Getty Images)" /> Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the Travis story is how the affair might have inspired Jane Austen. As he dashed off his pen to slate Gibbon, Travis included the phrases “partiality and prejudiced” and “certain truths which you affirm to be now universally acknowledged”. In her History of England (1791), a piece of juvenilia poking fun at school history books, the 15-year-old Austen referred to herself as a “partial, prejudiced, and ignorant historian”. In addition, Austen’s celebrated words “pride and prejudice” can be found in Decline and Fall when Gibbon refers to them as a cause of slavery. Read more | Divided they fell: how war, revolution and sectarianism led to the end of the Ottoman empire In the knives-out scholarly argument that followed the clash between Gibbon and Travis, Gibbon’s view prevailed with the support of an ancient Greek scholar called Richard Porson, who produced evidence suggesting that the Comma was a later insertion. But the episode demonstrates how, in its time, Decline and Fall was hugely controversial. Gibbon was believed by many, especially the clergy, to be attacking the very institution of the church. Resentment of Gibbon’s perceived criticism of Christianity proved enduring. The Rev HH Milman edited an 1845 edition of Decline and Fall and contributed a foreword in which he warned the reader: “We may deplore the bias of his mind; we may ourselves be on our guard against the danger of being misled, and be anxious to warn less wary readers against the same perils.” While he was gracious enough to acknowledge that Gibbon “leaves us the materials for forming a fairer judgment”, Milman insisted “that great misrepresentation which pervades his history” was a “false estimate” of the influence of Christianity. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/GettyImages-566460025webready-1a85702-e1771852243572.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A pencil sketch depicting a woman dressed in a white dress and cap, with her arms crossed. She has dark curly hair escaping out the front of the cap and is looking towards the left" title="A c1810 portrait of Jane Austen. Was the title of her bestselling novel inspired by Edward Gibbon’s prose? (Image by Getty Images)" /> Churchillian praise If conservative religious voices criticised Gibbon, Conservative politicians have often expressed their admiration. Winston Churchill, who was inspired by Gibbon’s self-education, said he had “devoured Gibbon”. He praised Decline and Fall and “was immediately dominated by both the story and the style”. In more recent times, Gibbon appeared at the centre of another controversy. In a 2021 interview, Boris Johnson claimed the fall of Rome was “largely the result of uncontrolled immigration”, an argument derived ultimately from Gibbon. Johnson’s warning that Europe was itself not immune to a similar fate was widely criticised for being over-simplistic, outdated and provocative. Where, then, does all this leave Edward Gibbon? If he did wish “to live to posterity as a historian”, he succeeded. Does it matter that he is now regarded as being out of date? Of course not. Decline and Fall is a valuable artefact of its own time, as is every history book. Glibly criticising works for such a failing is the last refuge of idle academics indulging the conceit that they have themselves pulled off the impossible feat of eternal and indisputable objectivity. If there was no subjectivity or bias in history there would be no history, and instead merely a series of statements of fact. Decline and Fall is also a magnificent monument to a pre-digital era when assembling a book of such epic complexity and range had all to be done by hand and in person. That Gibbon both managed this – and to do so with a memorable use of his native language – means he deserves to be admired for as long as there is anyone around to read him. As so often with the creators of great works, Gibbon’s life after Decline and Fall was an anti-climax compounded by serious ill-health and loneliness. He had never married, his father obstructing the one union – with the salon host and writer Suzanne Curchord – Gibbon had wished to pursue. Gibbon died in 1794, aged only 56 and afflicted with gout and several other ailments. He is buried in Fletching, East Sussex. When he laid down his pen in 1787, Gibbon said in his final paragraph that he hoped his readers would be excited by “a History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; the greatest, perhaps, and most awful scene in the history of mankind”. He acknowledged his own imperfections, and the inadequacy of the book compared to his own wishes but delivered it “to the curiosity and candour of the public”. And there it has remained ever since. Guy de la Bédoyère is a historian and writer with numerous books to his credit, many about the Roman world. His latest book is The Confessions of Samuel Pepys: His Private Revelations (Abacus, 2025) This article was first published in the February 2026 issue of HistoryExtra Magazine
Who is the most overrated person in history? 9 experts reveal their choices
In the first of a new monthly series, we asked an expert team of historians to tackle one of the big questions about the past
Homer Composite figment of imaginations The writer credited with composing the Iliad and the Odyssey, and often regarded as one of the most important authors of all time, is to my mind the most overrated historical figure. That’s mostly because it’s likely that there was no one person called Homer. Careful study of those works, as well as other surviving epic fragments, has shown that they weren’t written at a single time by one person. Instead, it is likely that the Iliad and Odyssey were composed over generations by poetry performers known as rhapsodes. Each of these improved on the work of their predecessors, curating these epics and honing them to a point of perfection. From that time, probably around 700 BC, these works started to be transmitted in a more stable format. By around 550–500 BC, they were written down for the first time. By then, the belief was circulating that their genesis lay with one particular poet, Homer – not least because the idea of a single, genius author is simpler and more attractive than a slow process of evolution involving hundreds. A whole narrative was woven about the likely fictitious Homer: that he lived on Chios, that he was blind, even that he may have had some divine parentage. In fact, the notional Homer became so popular that later rhapsodes, doing performances of these now ‘finished’, stable poems, liked to claim themselves as ‘sons of Homer’ to give themselves more gravitas and fame. Ancient historians even wrote biographies of Homer as a historical figure, and busts were created of him. Yet, as a single man, he probably never existed at all. Michael Scott, professor in classics and ancient history at the University of Warwick Charles Dickens Verbose Victorian who distorted views of his era At the risk of being tarred and feathered next time I show my face at a Victorian history conference, I’d have to say that Dickens is overrated. It’s not that I dislike his work. Critics usually object to his long-winded prose, or baulk at the mawkish sentimentality of characters such as Little Nell, but I enjoy his writing. The callous way he treated his wife is harder to forgive – but his claim to greatness never rested on his qualities as a husband. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/GettyImages-171097572webready-65ad489-e1770634197183.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="A black and white photograph of a middle aged man with a beard, wearing a three piece suit, and sitting at a desk. He is facing the camera, with one arm resting on the back of his chair and the other on the desk" title="“Many people see the 19th century purely through a Dickensian lens: as a world of cruel workhouses, smoke-filled factories and desperate poverty,” says Bob Nicholson (Image by Getty Images)" /> No, my objection to Dickens is one that he – always a relentless self-publicist – might actually enjoy. He is simply too famous. Dickens is often feted as the greatest English writer since Shakespeare. Great Expectations, Oliver Twist and A Christmas Carol have been inflicted on generations of schoolchildren and adapted into endless period dramas (the best of which feature Muppets). As a result, many people see the 19th century purely through a Dickensian lens: as a world of cruel workhouses, smoke-filled factories and desperate poverty. I’ve spent my career as a historian trying to reveal the lighter sides of Victorian life – to prove that things weren’t as miserable as some of Dickens’ more pointed critiques suggest. Dickens was just one of many great writers who made their names in the Victorian era. I’m not suggesting that we consign him to the dustbin of history – but perhaps the time has come to stop him from hogging all of the limelight. Bob Nicholson, writer, broadcaster and historian at Edge Hill University Mary, Queen of Scots Unwise architect of her own downfall Some historical figures, such as Richard III and Anne Boleyn, attract a cult following. Mary is another. She’s typically presented as a tragic heroine: a woman of courage who battled against adversity throughout her life, only to have it savagely cut short by her cold-hearted cousin, Elizabeth I. Yet the truth is far removed from this beguiling image. Yes, Mary was dogged by tragedy in her life, but much of it could have been avoided if she had shown greater wisdom and restraint. Instead, she made a series of catastrophic decisions that eventually lost her the crown – and her life. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/gr0174359Hwebready-fecd19a-e1770634443642.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A painting showing a woman in a black dress with a white ruff and gold chains, holding a small child dressed in red and gold. Both are staring at the viewer" title="A 16th-century painting of Mary with her infant son, later King James VI & I. “She made a series of catastrophic decisions that eventually lost her the crown – and her life,” says Tracy Borman (Image by Topfoto)" /> After a pampered upbringing in France, Mary returned to her native Scotland in 1561, aged 18. She then married Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, one of the most unsuitable consorts in history, before eloping with the chief suspect in his murder, James Hepburn, Lord Bothwell. Read more | Mary, Queen of Scots: your guide to her life and times Having lost all credibility, and been forced to abdicate in favour of her infant son, James, Mary fled to England, naively expecting that Elizabeth would help her regain her throne. She spent almost 19 years a prisoner there, during which time she was involved in numerous plots against the English queen, finally leaving a paper trail exposing her parts in conspiracies. Mary’s execution in 1587 propelled her to the status of Catholic martyr and tragic heroine. In truth, she was not the hapless victim of circumstance but the architect of her own downfall. Tracy Borman, author, historian and broadcaster Petrarch Painted a dim picture of the Middle Ages The writing of early Italian Renaissance poet Francesco Petrarch (1304–74) is certainly not overrated. He was responsible for an exquisite body of lyric poetry, an extraordinary scholar who rediscovered the letters of Cicero, and one of the greatest contributors to the Italian language. Reading or listening to his poetry truly feeds the soul. As a medieval historian, though, I am bound to take issue with Petrarch’s comments on the nature of history – because these truly are overrated. His remarks have long misled and deceived, producing a vision of world history that has become embedded in the European and American historiographical imagination. It was Petrarch who came up with the idea of the ‘Dark Ages’. He described the Middle Ages as a period of intellectual obscurity in which the glories of the great Roman empire had been forgotten, inhabited by benighted and stupid people. “This sleep of forgetfulness will not last forever,” he opined. “When the darkness has been dispersed, our descendants can come again in the former pure radiance.” This condemnation of 800 years of history was taken up by 16th-century Protestants and then 18th-century Enlightenment thinkers. It’s still common today, with the Middle Ages often dismissed as poorly documented, boring and dogmatic. It’s just not true! These were centuries of extraordinary intellectual discovery, of philosophical thinking about the nature of the self and society, of artistic vibrancy and sophisticated political theory. The Middle Ages matter: we study them to challenge our assumptions and better understand our common humanity. Hannah Skoda, associate professor of medieval history at the University of Oxford Cicero Rome’s most shameless self-promoter The first-century BC Roman statesman and writer is often hailed as the voice of Republican virtue and a defender of democracy, justice and reason in a corrupt age. But this reputation owes more to his own words than to his actual achievements. In truth, Marcus Tullius Cicero was one of history’s most successful self-publicists. Cicero was elected consul in 63 BC. It was a remarkable achievement for a novus homo (‘new man’ without aristocratic ancestry) – and he never stopped reminding people of it. That same year, he crushed a conspiracy to overthrow the Republic, and had several citizens executed without trial – an act he later declared showed moral courage. In reality, it was a serious abuse of power, and deeply divisive. Despite his modest background, Cicero consistently sided with Rome’s conservative elite, opposing reforms that might have redistributed wealth or power to the poor. He praised virtue, yet defended the clearly guilty Milo on a murder charge. He was undeniably a gifted speaker and writer, but as a statesman he was relatively irrelevant. He had no army, no loyal faction and little influence over the major figures of his time, such as Caesar, Pompey and Octavian (later Augustus). More than 800 of his letters and 58 speeches survive, far more than those left by any contemporary, giving his version of events an over-amplified voice. Through them he cast himself as the Republic’s moral guardian – but without them he’d be remembered as what he truly was: a gifted lawyer with more bluster than power. Jess Venner, ancient historian, presenter and author Winston Churchill A flawed leader who could never live up to his idealised image Churchill is one of Britain’s greatest heroes. He’s the subject of countless movies and television shows. His statue stands in Parliament Square. In a nationwide poll in 2002, he was voted the greatest figure in British history. Ever. Though I have great respect for Churchill as a symbol of British courage and determination during the Second World War, the man himself cannot possibly live up to this image. In many ways, he was a terrible politician. Even by the standards of the time, his views were objectionable. He actively opposed equal rights for women, and he frequently made racist comments – particularly about Indians, calling them a “beastly people with a beastly religion”. During most of the 1930s he was shunned by the political establishment, including many in his own party. He was often drunk on the job. There is no question that Britain needed a leader with Churchill’s energy to see it through the war. Yet his own Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Alan Brooke, claimed that Churchill often made it impossible for the armed forces to do their work. He came up with ridiculous plans, then acted “like a spoilt child” when military experts pointed out that they were impossible. Read more | Winston Churchill: is he still the greatest Briton in history? Churchill was certainly a heroic figure. He was one of the very first to oppose Hitler, and his inspiring speeches galvanised the country in its hour of need. But can he live up to our idealised image of him? Of course not. How could anyone? Keith Lowe, author of The Fear and the Freedom: How the Second World War Changed Us (Viking, 2017) Erik Bloodaxe Spectacular nickname, underwhelming legacy I love a Viking-Age hero with a dramatic nickname as much as the next person, but let’s not kid ourselves: they were masters of their own propaganda. Look for the men behind the myths (and we are mostly talking men here) and the historical reality can be a little… underwhelming. Take Erik Bloodaxe, twice ruler of Northumbria in the mid-10th century. Most of what we think we know about his colourful life comes from the Old Norse-Icelandic sagas, recorded long after his lifetime. In these, he’s portrayed as a larger-than-life character: favourite son of King Harald Fairhair, slayer of his own brothers, locked in a bitter feud with Icelandic poet Egill Skallagrimsson. His wife, Gunnhild, is depicted as a shapeshifting, murderous sorceress said to have commissioned another source for Erik’s life – or, rather, afterlife – the poem Eiríksmál (‘The Lay of Erik’), in which the god Odin orders his warriors and Valkyries to prepare Valhalla for the arrival of this great hero. But beyond the vivid details of his legend, what do we know about the historical figure? Coins and chronicles tell us that he was a key political player in 10th-century Northumbria. But his brief reigns (947–48 and 952–54) were turbulent, to say the least, challenged by Anglo-Saxon Wessex to the south and Viking Dublin to the west. In 954, he came to a sticky end, driven from York and ambushed in the wilds of Cumbria. His death brought an end to Viking rule in the north of England. So, not a brilliant legacy. But still a great nickname. Eleanor Barraclough, historian, broadcaster and author of Embers of the Hands: Hidden Histories of the Viking Age (Profile, 2024) Ronald Reagan Seemingly a candidate for sainthood – but with questionable principles Making heroes out of historical figures requires some selective forgetting. In the US, where the cult of Ronald Reagan has many adherents, forgetting is almost an art form. Popular writing treats Reagan as a principled example of free-market rectitude who ended the Cold War and heralded morning in America. Critics of the contemporary Republican Party often invoke Reagan to signal how far his heirs have gone astray. The GOP is “no longer the party of Reagan”, critics lament in publications such as The Washington Post, Time or USA Today. Rhetorically, harking back to Reagan makes a claim of legitimacy and ideological fidelity. To invoke Reagan is to touch the hem of the saints. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/GettyImages-515176604webready-fb0e4e7-e1770638568611.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A photograph of a man in a grey suit and red tie, standing alongside a woman in a black and white checked dress. They are holding a series of papers between them, looking at a speech" title="Ronald and Nancy Reagan prepare a 1986 speech. Modern rhetoric “gives Reagan too much credit for accomplishments that were not his”, says Adriane Lentz-Smith (Image by Getty Images)" /> This gives Reagan too much credit for accomplishments that were not his, and overlooks wrongdoing that was. Did Reagan end the Cold War? Many would argue that dynamics within the USSR – Mikhail Gorbachev’s embrace of democratic socialism, for example – sparked the transformation of the Soviet Union more than any external force did. Was Reagan’s administration principled? Anyone recalling the manipulative illegality of the Iran–Contra Affair might marvel at the question. Read more | Did Ronald Reagan 'Make America Great Again'? Did Reagan mean “morning in America” to apply to all Americans? As candidate, he gave a speech celebrating “states’ rights” in Neshoba County, Mississippi near where three voting rights activists had been murdered in 1964. For years, he publicly ignored the decade-defining public health crisis that was the HIV epidemic. He scaled back on social programmes while intensifying the war on drugs. He busted unions while preaching ‘trickle-down’ economics. Without selective forgetting, the Reagan era feels less like the antithesis of our present and more like its progenitor. Adriane Lentz-Smith, associate professor of history at Duke University Simon de Montfort A history of violence Some 760 years after his death, Simon de Montfort still enjoys a fairly sturdy reputation as a social reformer – the man who summoned what’s claimed to have been the first English parliament. A portrait of him is carved above the doors of the US House of Representatives, among a pantheon of democratic worthies. An English university was named after him as recently as 1992. But this reputation rests almost entirely on modern myth. Kings of England had been summoning consultative assemblies for hundreds of years before Montfort did so in 1265, and were calling them parliaments as early as 1236. Montfort’s contribution was long reckoned to have been the introduction of representation by including knights and townsmen, but both these groups had already been attending parliaments for several decades. Montfort was undoubtedly a skilled politician – clever, persuasive and quick-witted – but his preferred method of getting things done was usually violence. He had put himself into power in 1263 by leading attacks on the supporters of his brother-in-law, Henry III, and he reduced Henry to a puppet the following year by defeating him in battle. Montfort was also a pioneering antisemite. As soon as he became Earl of Leicester in 1231, he expelled all of the Jews from that town – the first such expulsion in England – and in the 1260s he led violent massacres of other Jewish communities. A capable warrior and a charismatic leader, Montfort was expert at exploiting the grievances of others for his own ends. A founder of parliamentary democracy he was not. Marc Morris, medieval historian, writer and broadcaster This article was first published in the January 2026 issue of HistoryExtra magazine
Nero's doomed love affair: did a failed romance trigger his descent into madness?
He’s reviled as a cruel tyrant who killed his own mother and fiddled while Rome burned. But was Nero’s descent into madness triggered by his failed romance with a former slave? Edward J Watts tells a story of murder, incest and political intrigue
It is difficult to feel empathy for the emperor Nero, a man who did such unquestionably terrible things that he has become a prototype for the monstrous Roman ruler. During his lifetime he was labelled a matricide, an arsonist and a persecutor of Christians who also killed his pregnant wife by kicking her in the stomach. After his death, these stories grew into terrifying legends about his cruel madness. By the Middle Ages, chroniclers even detailed a tale in which Nero commanded doctors to make him give birth. Fearing for their lives, the terrified doctors “made up a potion in which they put a frog and gave it to the emperor to drink”, while prescribing him a special diet that would cause his stomach to expand. When Nero vomited the animal out, he “commanded that the foetus be fed and kept in a domed chamber” as his imperial heir. Some manuscripts even featured an image of Nero on a birthing chair beside his frog-child to illustrate his “evil madness”. And yet it is not hard to imagine a different life for Nero. This is because, before Nero became a monster, he was a heartbroken boy prohibited from marrying Acte – his one true love. Family trauma The tragic history of Nero’s family made it all the more surprising that he found such a romantic partner. His mother, Agrippina, was the daughter of Germanicus – the man whom Rome’s second emperor, Tiberius, hoped would assume imperial power following his planned retirement. When Germanicus predeceased Tiberius, however, his wife and children became potential rivals and were ultimately arrested. Agrippina’s mother starved to death in captivity, while her brother took his own life by eating the mattress in his cell. Their fates taught the princess that real financial and political security came only from a strong connection to some devoted, powerful male figure. She married thrice, each time to a rich and powerful suitor. Her first marriage, which was celebrated in AD 28 when she was just 13 years old, joined Agrippina to her 30-year-old cousin, Domitius Ahenobarbus. Nero was born to the couple in AD 37, and the child not only inherited his father’s fortune when Ahenobarbus died in AD 41, but also that of Agrippina’s second husband, Passienus Crispus, who died six years later. In AD 49, Agrippina wed her uncle, the elderly emperor Claudius. She persuaded Claudius to name Nero as his heir and to marry his natural-born daughter Octavia to Nero in AD 53. Between her husband and her son, Agrippina finally seemed to have the security she had long craved. Read more | Monsters of Rome: do emperors such as Nero and Caligula deserve their reputations? As Claudius’s natural-born son Britannicus entered adolescence, however, the emperor began to reconsider Nero’s appointment as successor designate. But Claudius suddenly died on 13 October AD 54, poisoned by a mushroom that Agrippina may or may not have arranged for him to eat. The 16-year-old Nero was now Roman emperor. Britannicus would be dead within a year. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/12/7-NeronyAgripina-6f8fc45-e1766490879177.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A marble statue showing a woman crowning a man. Both are dressed in Roman clothes" title="A relief shows Agrippina crowning Nero with a laurel wreath. The 16-year-old boy became emperor following the death of his mother's third husband (and uncle), Claudius (Image by Wiki Commons)" /> Acte enters the scene Everyone in Rome, except perhaps for Nero himself, understood that Nero’s status as Claudius’s legitimate heir derived in large part from his marriage to Octavia. It was then essential for the young couple to remain together. Nero, however, found his wife physically repulsive, and began searching for more attractive and interesting sexual partners. This is how Acte entered his life. The girl, who had been bought as a slave in the Roman province of Asia, was seen by the men around Nero as someone who “could fulfil his desires without harm to anyone” since, as the historian wrote, “it was feared that he might rush into scandalous behaviour with noble ladies, if he were not permitted this indulgence”. Tacitus’s words reflect the Roman idea that enslaved people like Acte were, in a sense, disposable commodities whose bodies could be used by noble men to fulfil the urges their wives could not. When the men tired of “the debaucheries… that vice made overwhelmingly attractive”, they were supposed to dispose of the slaves who had serviced them. This is how elite men often behaved, but no one anticipated that, instead of using and dismissing the girl, Nero would fall in love with Acte. Not only had she quickly won Nero’s affections, but their intense connection would lead to her emancipation and talk of Nero’s desire to marry her. Agrippina was incensed when she learned that this sexual dalliance had evolved into a genuine romance. Tacitus says that she “raved with a woman’s fury about having… a slave girl for a daughter-in-law”, but that “the fouler her reproaches, the fiercer the passion Nero felt”. Read more | One of ancient Rome’s most notorious emperors murdered his own mother, and there's a dark reason why Finally, Agrippina snapped and yelled at her son: “It was I who made you emperor!” This entirely true but extremely unwise outburst was too much for the headstrong teenage emperor to bear. It was at that point, writes Tacitus, that Nero “threw off all respect for his mother”. Rise of the sycophants Sensing an opportunity, men like the future emperor Otho and the senator Seneca stepped forward to exploit the emperor’s hurt feelings and growing estrangement from Agrippina. Otho, a fashionable party boy from an aristocratic family, offered emotional support to Nero during wild drinking sessions, in which the emperor confessed to Otho far more than was wise. Meanwhile, Seneca offered more practical aid by enlisting an associate who was willing to pretend to be in love with Acte, so he could “serve as the ostensible giver of the presents secretly sent by the emperor to the girl”. The appreciative emperor was too naïve to realise that these men encouraged his love affair precisely because it weakened his bond with Agrippina and made him more likely to reward them in the future. Agrippina was not so foolish. “Changing her tactics,” Tacitus writes, she went to her son and “pleaded guilty to an ill-timed strictness”. She even “offered the seclusion of her chamber” for Nero and Acte to use so that their activities did not further embarrass Octavia. This shift in Agrippina’s attitude was sensible politics and good parenting, but Nero’s “most intimate friends… begged him to beware of the arts of a woman” who, they claimed, “was always daring and was now lying”. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/12/8-gettyimages-1157131481-594x594-528e6a8-e1766491080872.jpg" width="579" height="413" alt="A painting showing a group of Roman" title="An 1881 book illustration imagines Nero participating in a bacchanal. The young emperor indulged in marathon drinking sessions, in which he told acquaintances of his desires for Acte (Image by Getty Images)" /> As Agrippina’s views softened, Nero’s sycophants became even more strident in their support of Nero’s relationship with Acte. According to the historian Suetonius, one group of senators even “perjured themselves by swearing that she [Acte] was of royal birth”, so she would quickly become a suitable imperial spouse. The senators were rewarded by Nero, even though it is not clear if anyone besides Nero expected their claim to be persuasive. Murder, intrigue and incest Not long after the predictable failure of this gambit, Nero realised that despite his love for Acte, the gulf between their social statuses was too great for them to ever wed. The affair then ended and both people moved on. Inscriptions from Italy reveal that Acte had a good, productive life, in which she used the profits from some of Nero’s gifts to become a wealthy patron of several towns. Nero’s story, of course, has a much sadder ending. As the years passed, the emperor grew ever more estranged from his mother and became enmeshed in the intrigues of sycophants like Otho, who enticed the emperor into a scandalous love affair with his wife, Poppaea. Tacitus reports that Otho embarked on the scheme “to inflame Nero's passion, in the hope of adding to his own influence by the further tie which would arise out of possession of the same woman”. The affair led Nero to divorce Octavia and force the dissolution of Otho’s marriage so that he could marry Poppaea – the wife he is later rumoured to have killed while she was pregnant with his child. This chapter in the emperor’s romantic life was, of course, much more shocking and tragic than his relationship with Acte. Meanwhile, the senator and Neronian associate Cluvius Rufus reports an even more appalling sexual incident that Nero only just escaped. He tells of how Agrippina tried seducing Nero “in her eagerness to retain her influence”. Seneca then hurried in Acte, who told Nero that the incest was “notorious” and that the soldiers would never endure the rule of an “impious sovereign”. While Rufus’s unreliability as a narrator ought to make one suspect whether Agrippina’s seduction really happened, his description of Acte as the one person who could be counted on to restrain Nero’s worst impulses rings true. She seemed capable of getting Nero to accept uncomfortable truths, because the emperor knew that she alone was genuinely concerned about his best interests. Read more | Think you know everything about ancient Rome? These 25 facts will prove otherwise Descent into madness Despite Nero’s increasingly poor decisions and unrestrained behaviour over the last decade of his life, it seems that Acte was never again summoned to the palace to check his worst impulses. She was not there when Nero arranged for Agrippina to be killed in AD 59, or when he burned Christians alive following a fire that devastated Rome in AD 64. She was not consulted before he went to Greece in AD 67 to compete in rigged Olympic competitions while popular anger boiled over at home. She seems not to have been involved as Nero bungled his response to the rebellion of the future emperor Galba, when he spent more time figuring out how to transport his water organ to the front than he did planning military strategy. Most heartbreaking of all, she was absent when Nero took his own life, virtually alone, after the senate stripped him of his imperial power in AD 68. And yet Acte clearly still loved Nero until the very end of his short life. After his death and public condemnation, Acte joined with the two nursemaids who had raised Nero as a baby to ensure that he had a proper burial. According to Suetonius, the ceremony cost “two hundred thousand sesterces”, an immense sum equal to the annual salary of more than 220 Roman soldiers. Nero was “laid out in white robes embroidered with gold” and, after his cremation, Acte and the two other women “deposited his ashes… in the family tomb of [his father’s family] the Domitii” in a “sarcophagus of porphyry, with an altar of Luna marble standing above it, and enclosed by a balustrade of Thasian stone.” We cannot know whether Acte’s affection, forthrightness and intelligence would have been enough to save Nero from infamy had the pair been permitted to marry. The emperor is fully deserving of the cruel reputation for which he is now remembered. What is certain, though, is that Nero’s descent into madness began when his relationship with Acte ended: the first woman he ever loved, and perhaps the only woman who ever loved him back. Edward J Watts is Alkiviadis Vassiliadis Endowed Chair and Distinguished Professor of History at the University of California, San Diego. He is the author of the book The Romans: A 2,000-Year History (John Murray Press/Basic Books, 2025)
Julius Caesar's hellraising youth: did he really defy tyrants and crucify pirates?
Ancient accounts of Julius Caesar’s early life depict an all-action hero who outwitted tyrants and terrorised bandits. But can they be trusted? David S Potter investigates
The most celebrated of all ancient Romans almost met a watery end before he’d made his big splash in the vast ocean of history. In 75 BC, Julius Caesar – then in his mid-20s and yet to establish himself as the most powerful man in Rome – sailed to Rhodes to study with a famous Greek rhetorician. But on his journey east, he was kidnapped by Cilician pirates from southern Anatolia. There was nothing so unusual about this stroke of misfortune – the waters of the eastern Mediterranean were plagued by bandits all too willing to prey on Roman travellers. But there was certainly something unusual about what happened next. Seemingly oblivious to the danger in which he now found himself, Caesar decisively took control of the situation. According to his biographer, Plutarch, “when the pirates demanded 20 talents for his ransom, he laughed at them for not knowing who their captive was, and of his own accord agreed to give them 50”. While his agents set out to raise the ransom money, Caesar made the pirates listen to his speeches and poetry, assuring them that he would come after them as soon as he was freed. He was as good as his word. Having paid the ransom, Caesar raised a fleet from the cities of the Roman province of Asia (western Anatolia) and captured the pirates. Then, when he discovered that the corrupt governor of Asia was looking to make a profit from the captives, he “took the robbers out of prison and crucified them all, just as he had often warned them on the island that he would do, when they thought he was joking”. It was a brutal act of revenge – softened only slightly by the fact that he slit the pirates’ throats to spare them the agony that would have been their fate on the crosses. Origin stories Caesar’s pirate-slaying escapades represent a truly extraordinary tale. But what are we to make of it? We know a great deal about Julius Caesar in the ‘colossus’ phase of his career – that period stretching from his mid-thirties to his assassination in his mid-fifties when he was an established political and military powerhouse. But for the earlier part of his life – before his every act was performed in the full glare of the ancient world’s attention – it’s a different story. Caesar’s youth and young manhood is shrouded in mystery and conjecture. The tales of his formative years are subject to exaggeration, even outright invention. Yet that doesn’t make examining that early life any less worthwhile. Doing so gives us rich insights into not only the rise of one of the ancient world’s towering figures but also of the political motivations of those who wrote that history in the chaos that followed his death. Much of what we know about Caesar’s early life has come to us through his two biographers, Suetonius and the aforementioned Plutarch, both writing towards the beginning of the second century AD, around 150 years after his death. Their accounts of those early years are quite similar, which suggests that they drew on a common source. Based on quotations in Suetonius’s writings, that source can be identified as Gaius Oppius, one of Caesar’s most powerful lieutenants. When it came to setting the record straight, Oppius was more interested in a good story than the truth. The same was true of his colleague Aulus Hirtius, who was at work in the same months editing and updating notes that Caesar himself had left behind. Both men were working under the overall guidance of Cornelius Balbus, who had been Caesar’s chief of staff. Read more | Think you know everything about ancient Rome? These 25 facts will prove otherwise Oppius got to work soon after Caesar’s murder on the Ides of March 44 BC. He needed to set the record straight at a time when Caesar’s legacy was being challenged by two very different forces. First, and most predictably, there were the assassins, who presented the slain leader as a tyrant whose character was shaped by uncontrolled arrogance and ambition. The second was aspiring ruler Mark Antony – leading general and one of Caesar’s most powerful supporters – who was also shaping the dead dictator’s legacy to suppress the interests of his chosen heir, Octavian, the future emperor Augustus. So what do Oppius’s writings, communicated to us via Suetonius and Plutarch, tell us about Caesar’s earlier years? And do they contain any clues about how this product of a moderately successful patrician family rose to such dizzying heights of power? Classical education Caesar certainly seems to have benefited from a good eduction. His mother, Aurelia – whom Plutarch describes as “a woman of discretion” – saw to that. She found him an excellent tutor for his early teens, Marcus Antonius Gnipho, who went on to run his own well-regarded school. Gnipho had strong views on the Latin language, arguing that a word should only have a single meaning. This made quite an impression on his pupil: Caesar later wrote a book about this very subject, endorsing his tutor’s opinions. Another influence was an uncle, Caesar Strabo Vopiscus, who was famous for his wry sense of humour, which perhaps inspired the wit in Caesar’s writings. One person missing from any story of Caesar’s youth is his father, Gaius Julius Caesar. The biographies emphasise Caesar junior’s devotion to his mother, Aurelia, and make a great deal of his link to another uncle, Gaius Marius, who was renowned as the saviour of Rome from a barbarian invasion around the time of Caesar’s birth. His father, however, is nowhere to be seen. Was Caesar senior an absent dad? Or did he just not care? The marriages arranged for his offspring – to people who, while socially acceptable, lacked the drive to support the young Caesar – suggests the latter. The young Caesar’s first marriage, in his early teens, was to a girl named Cossutia, whose family hailed from well outside the political elite. Young Caesar’s status changed after his uncle Marius had himself installed as consul of Rome – the highest elected public official in the Republic – alongside Cornelius Cinna, following a civil war in 87 BC. To bolster this alliance, Marius had Caesar’s marriage to Cossutia dissolved so that the teenager could marry Cinna’s daughter, Cornelia. Caesar, we’re told, loved Cornelia deeply. If his father had any influence on the new match, the sources don’t mention it. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/12/J0A9PJwebready-7d9568a-e1764601866245.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A painting showing a large crowd surrounding soldiers, with people bowing down and others reaching out to the crowd" title="This 1789 painting, Marius Returning to Rome, imagines the homecoming of Caesar’s uncle, who rose to become consul – then became embroiled in a bitter civil war with a rival, Sulla (Image by Alamy)" /> Thanks to his family connections, the young Caesar was increasingly pulled into the orbit of political power. For his later biographers, though, that wasn’t enough: what was needed at this stage in his life were adventures providing context for the great events that came later. If these episodes included triumph over loss and oppression, all the better. And in Caesar’s interactions with the Roman general and dictator Lucius Cornelius Sulla Felix, that’s exactly what they got. Sulla’s dramatic arrival on the scene – seizing Rome, establishing a dictatorship and ruthlessly hunting down his enemies – shaped the politics of a generation. It also shaped the politics of Caesar himself. Sulla had become a major figure on the political stage when he was elected to one of Rome’s two consulships, in 88 BC. He was then awarded a campaign against Mithridates, ruler of the kingdom of Pontus, who had invaded Rome’s provinces in western Anatolia and encouraged the slaughter of Roman citizens. But then the command against Mithridates was taken from Sulla and awarded to Caesar’s uncle Marius. That’s when things turned ugly. Outraged, Sulla marched on Rome, stormed the city and declared that he had restored the rightful constitution. Marius was forced into hiding, but then returned with Cinna a year later, in 87 BC, winning the civil war mentioned earlier. Sulla then turned the tables on his enemies once again, launching a huge invasion of Italy in 83 BC. His military victory was complete by the end of the following year, at which point he posted up the names of his enemies – his notorious ‘proscription lists’ – around Rome. Read more | Caesar's funeral drama: anger and revenge after death Where did this leave Caesar? We can’t know for sure. Yet, as the nephew of Marius and son-in-law of Cinna, he may well have been at the top of those lists. Sulla certainly seems to have made life pretty uncomfortable for him. The sources claim that the dictator deprived Caesar of the post of flamen dialis (high priest of Jupiter) to which he had been – or was about to be – appointed. They also tell us of Sulla’s demand that Caesar divorce Cornelia – and that, when the young man refused, he was forced to flee. Marked man For Caesar’s biographers, there was no lack of drama in this period of their subject’s life. He was, they tell us, pursued into hiding by one of Sulla’s assassins, who soon caught up with the fugitive – and spared him only after he agreed to pay a large bribe. When Caesar did eventually appear before Sulla, accompanied by his mother’s brothers and the Vestal Virgins, Sulla reluctantly granted him a pardon. “Have your way and take him,” he reportedly declared, “only bear in mind that the man you are so eager to save will one day deal the death blow to the cause of the aristocracy, which you have joined with me in upholding; for in this Caesar there is more than one Marius.” At this point we must proceed with caution. Did Sulla really utter these portentous words? To many historians, they bear all the hallmarks of a dramatic device, injected into the story to add an extra layer of jeopardy. As for the claim that Sulla denied Caesar the priesthood, that appears to be even more unlikely – because the latter never would have held the position. Cornelius Tacitus, Rome’s greatest historian, states that the post of flamen dialis remained unoccupied for 75 years after the death of a priest called Merula in 87 BC. What’s more, a requirement for the post was that both of the priest’s parents be patricians – members of Rome’s archaic aristocracy. Aurelia was from a wealthy family, but she was no patrician. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/12/GettyImages-150338287webready-c05f822-e1764602100354.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A large stone relief shows a line of people doing different activities, including holding a child and riding on a horse-drawn carriage" title="depict events in a child’s life. Caesar’s youth was shaped by his mother, while his father seems to have been largely absent – or disinterested – during the boy’s early years (Image by Getty Images)" /> Some historians have also speculated that Sulla’s antipathy towards Caesar has been overstated. Light is shed on this point by Caesar’s first post, an appointment to the Roman province of Asia, where he served under one of Sulla’s most trusted lieutenants. Would this man really have taken on a youth whom his boss hated? It seems unlikely. Caesar’s service in Asia was notable for two events. One was the award he won for valour, having saved the life of a fellow soldier in combat. The other was his dispatch to the kingdom of Bithynia in the north-west corner of Anatolia, where he convinced the ruler, Nicomedes IV, to lend Rome naval reinforcements. A story that has swirled for 2,000 years – that Caesar had a sexual relationship with Nicomedes (Suetonius writes that “he dawdled so long at the court of Nicomedes that he was suspected of improper relations with the king”) – appears to be baseless. What does seem certain is that Caesar’s experience of persecution by Sulla – deprived of office and property, pursued by homicidal thugs – moulded his later career. After his rise to power in the 60s BC, Caesar repeatedly drew contrasts between the mercy he showed his defeated foes and Sulla’s mass murder of political rivals. And though he came from a noble family – descended, so the story goes, from Rome’s founder, Aeneas – he took the ‘popular’ path to the political summit in a bid to undo Sulla’s conservative constitution, which was designed to keep wealth in the hands of Sulla’s friends and prevent ambitious people from challenging the status quo. Sulla died in 78 BC, and Caesar returned to Rome soon afterwards. A year later he embarked on a career in law, prosecuting two of Sulla’s most prominent lieutenants for corruption in provincial offices. That wasn’t an act of anti-regime revenge: young men routinely drew attention to themselves by serving as prosecutors. Caesar’s speech in one of these cases, prosecuting a man named Antonius, was so effective that the officials in charge of maintaining the citizen roll quoted it when they banished the convicted man. Caesar’s eloquence was soon attracting more attention among the ranks of Rome’s elite. In the words of Plutarch: “It is said that Caesar had the greatest natural talent for political oratory, and cultivated his talent most ambitiously.” Even Cicero, who opposed Caesar, later stated that the latter could have become the greatest orator of his generation. But that wasn’t good enough for Oppius. He needed to burnish Caesar’s story with one more escapade showcasing his subject’s courage, resilience and resourcefulness. The tale of his capture by pirates did just that. Read more | The shockingly simple question historian Tom Holland would ask Julius Caesar Unlikely anecdotes So, to return to an earlier question, what are we to make of this tale? Caesar may well have been captured by pirates, but details in the story ring alarm bells. A ransom of 50 talents appears extremely high in a region that was largely bankrupt. And at the time, Caesar held no public office and, therefore, no authority to kill anyone, even a pirate. Perhaps, then, we should reassess this episode by considering what Oppius was trying to say about his former boss. The story was, perhaps, an attempt to contrast the ‘mercy’ of Caesar with the brutality of Crassus, who crucified thousands of Spartacus’s followers a few years later – and didn’t cut their throats to spare them protracted suffering. It also establishes Caesar as a foe of piracy years before Pompey – his one-time ally, later bitter enemy – took on a command to purge pirates from the seas. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/12/GettyImages-122316356webready-1ab06c2-e1764602006327.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A large mosaic depicting two ships with groups of men on them, fighting each other" title="A Roman mosaic depicts the god Bacchus fighting pirates. Julius Caesar’s encounter with sea-going bandits may have been embellished to emphasise his courage and resilience, writes David S Potter (Image by Getty Images)" /> No matter how extravagantly the stories of Caesar’s dealings with Sulla and his capture by pirates were embellished, it’s not hard to join the dots between the young Caesar and the icon. He was a brilliant student of literature, shaped by excellent role models. His relationship with Aurelia, a strong character in her own right, may have influenced his own attraction to smart, powerful women, including his long-term mistress Servilia and later, Cleopatra. And he was courageous. The man who stood in the front line during crises in Gaul and the civil war against Pompey was the same person who had saved a fellow soldier’s life in Asia. Caesar the politician, however, was more the product of the dysfunctional Rome of his adulthood than of any event in his youth. When all’s said and done, it was his meticulous attention to detail and supreme ability to think on his feet that powered his incredible rise. And it seems that these were talents with which he was born, rather than ones honed through the adventures of youth. David S Potter is a professor of Greek and Roman history at the University of Michigan. His latest book, Master of Rome: A Life of Julius Caesar (OUP, 2025) This article was first published in the December 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
Think you know everything about ancient Rome? These 25 facts will prove otherwise
Edward J Watts, author of The Romans: A 2,000-Year History, shares 25 things you need to know about one of the greatest civilisations of the ancient world – from their incredible feats of engineering to their sporting spectacles
1. The Romans lived in an independent state for more than 2,200 years According to tradition, Rome was founded in 753 BC, shortly after the beginning of the Italian Iron Age. Its inhabitants were Latin-speaking pagans who lived along the river Tiber in what is now central Italy. The empire of Trebizond, the last independent Roman kingdom descended from that state, was captured in 1461 by an Ottoman army equipped with gunpowder weapons. The people living in Trebizond also called themselves ‘Roman’, but they were Christians who lived in a city on the Black Sea coast of modern Turkey and spoke a language they called Romeika (which translates as 'Roman', but which we now call Greek). 2. The Roman empire once included all, or part of, nearly 50 countries At the empire’s greatest extent in AD 117, Roman territory stretched from what is now the Atlantic coast of Portugal to the Persian Gulf beaches in Kuwait, from southern Egypt near the current Sudanese border to northern England, and from just south of Casablanca in Morocco to the Caspian Sea shores of Azerbaijan. The land area of the Roman empire was smaller than Australia, but if one included the territorial waters controlled by Rome (as is customary with modern states) the empire would rank as the fifth-largest country on earth if it existed today. 3. As much as one-third of the world’s population lived under Roman control Late during the reign of the emperor Trajan (ruled AD 98–117), it is thought that the Roman empire reached a population of 80 million, out of a total world population of around 230 million. In modern terms, Rome’s share of the world population at that moment would be nearly equivalent to a country with the combined populations of India and China. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/2GettyImages-1369193411-fa1bfb0-e1764241964618.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A yellow, blue and red map showing the Roman empire" title="The Roman empire reached its maximum territorial extent in the early second century AD, during the reign of the emperor Trajan. The empire would rank as the fifth-largest country in the world if it existed today (Image by Getty Images)" /> 4. Rome was the first city in the world with a million residents Rome reached a population of 1 million during the first century BC, and aside from temporary population decreases caused by plagues or natural disasters, did not fall below that level until the end of the fourth century AD. This is even more remarkable considering that poor sanitation and crowded conditions meant that the city lost as much as 3 per cent of its population each year to disease – a number far greater than the birthrate. Rome’s massive population was sustained through large-scale migration from other parts of the empire, nearly every year, for five centuries. 5. Hadrian’s Wall was NOT the longest Roman wall – and nor was it the most northern Almost everyone has heard of Hadrian’s Wall, the defensive structure that once stretched 73 miles across what is now northern England. However, an even longer fortification built under Hadrian and his successor, Antoninus Pius, extended nearly 190 miles across southern Germany. It began roughly where the Rhine turns west at Mainz, and extended to meet the Danube near Regensburg. Antoninus Pius also ordered the construction of the empire’s northernmost wall – the eponymous Antonine Wall – which stretched 39 miles across what is now Scotland, from the Firth of Clyde to the Firth of Forth. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/3GettyImages-639158628-7d65967-e1764242013260.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A modern illustration depicting Hadrian’s Wall as it may have appeared during the second century AD. The 73-mile-long fortification stretched from what is now Bowness-on-Solway in Cumbria to Wallsend in Tyne and Wear (Image by Getty Images)" title="A modern illustration depicting Hadrian’s Wall as it may have appeared during the second century AD. The 73-mile-long fortification stretched from what is now Bowness-on-Solway in Cumbria to Wallsend in Tyne and Wear (Image by Getty Images)" /> 6. The Romans produced more than 25 million coins each year Following a reform instituted by joint emperors Diocletian and Maximian in AD 294, the Romans established a network of 15 mints across the empire – all the way from Londinium (London) to the Egyptian city of Alexandria. Although production slowed around 100 years later, no state in the world would again match Rome’s numismatic productivity until the 19th century. Read more | How the Romans "reversed circumcision" and 5 other shocking medical realities from the ancient empire 7. Rome’s ‘eighth hill’ is a load of old rubbish… literally The Testaccio region of Rome is now famous for its nightlife, but it takes its name from Monte Testaccio, an artificial hill that is 35 metres tall and created from the remains of ceramic shipping containers offloaded from barges along the Tiber. Most of the pottery has been dated to the period between AD 140 and 250, though the base of the hill may be much older. Despite its unusual provenance, Monte Testaccio is sometimes described as Rome’s ‘eighth hill’, in addition to the seven other hills within the city walls: the Aventine, Caelian, Capitoline, Esquiline, Palatine, Quirinal and Viminal hills. WATCH | Dr David Musgrove finds out what the Romans really got up to on the loo View Green Video on the source website 8. The Pantheon is the oldest intact, continually used building in the world Originally created in the style of a conventional Roman temple in the first century BC, the Pantheon was rebuilt under the direction of the emperor Hadrian in the AD 120s. The ground level was originally much lower than it is today, and when one approached the structure from the front, it appeared to be a normal temple because the structure’s 43-metre-wide dome was obscured by its triangular pediment (gable). Nearly two millennia later, the Pantheon’s dome remains the largest of its kind in the world – its survival no doubt linked to the decision to convert the building into a Christian church in AD 609. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/4GettyImages-1211436528-b8e4a0d-e1764242052537.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="An aerial photograph of the Pantheon in Rome. It has a large dome roof with a hole in the top and is surrounded by several other red roofed buildings" title="Despite being nearly 2,000 years old, the Pantheon boasts the largest unreinforced concrete dome in the world (Image by Getty Images)" /> 9. There was once a giant city plan, carved on marble blocks, that showed every street and building in Rome Between AD 203 and 211, the emperor Septimius Severus ordered the creation of a 234-metre-square map of the city of Rome that included accurate renderings of the ground-floor architectural plans for every building in the city. Carved on marble blocks, the map was hung on a wall of the Temple of Peace, which now forms the northern exterior of the Basilica of St Cosmas and Damian. As of 2025, more than a thousand fragments of the Severan Marble Plan have been discovered since the Renaissance, representing around 10 per cent of the original map. Because many of these include the name of the building they represent, it has been extremely useful for archaeologists looking to identify newly discovered architectural remains. Today, the fragments are on display in the new Museo della Forma Urbis on Rome’s Caelian Hill. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/5GettyImages-1925908763-d918fdc-e1764242087895.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A photograph of large white stone fragments with inscriptions on them" title="More than a thousand fragments of the Forma Urbis Romae (‘The Shape of the City of Rome’) have been discovered, giving researchers a remarkable window into early third-century AD Rome (Image by Getty Images)" /> 10. Rome is still surrounded by its ancient walls The Aurelian Walls that surround the city of Rome were built in the AD 270s, but they continued to be used by the city’s defenders until the late 19th century. The breaching of the walls by the army of the Kingdom of Italy in September of 1870 represented the final step in Italian unification. 11. You can find an ancient wall in McDonald’s The Servian Walls of the fourth century BC may be less famous than the Aurelian Walls, but they have much more character. Stretching around 12 miles, multiple fragments of the walls still speckle the modern city of Rome. The largest fragment can be found next to Termini Station, but the most memorable remains are now found in the McDonald’s restaurant on the train station’s lower level. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/6Termini-McDonalds5-c5a8b6d-e1764242135272.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A photograph of a McDonald's ordering screen and behind it there is a large, old brick wall" title="Burger, fries… and a fourth-century BC wall? Visitors to the Roma Termini station branch of McDonald’s can marvel at a feat of ancient engineering while they get their fast food fix (Image by Edward J Watts)" /> 12. Rome’s walls were formidable… but Constantinople’s were MUCH more difficult to breach Rome has been captured numerous times since the Aurelian Walls were built, but the city of Constantinople (modern Istanbul, Turkey) – which became the Roman empire’s eastern capital in AD 330 – has fallen to invaders on just three occasions. The city remained under Roman control for nearly 900 years until its walls were breached by the soldiers of the Fourth Crusade in 1204, before being recaptured by the Romans in 1261. It then fell to the Ottomans in 1453, but has not been seized since. 13. The Roman empire was home to one of the most fought-over cities in the world Although only 134 miles from Constantinople, Adrianople (modern Edirne, Turkey) has been the site of at least 15 different battles and sieges. The last two occurred in 1913 when Bulgaria captured the city from the Ottoman empire before losing it again later that year. 14. The Colosseum was the largest (but not the only) amphitheatre Rome’s Flavian Amphitheatre, or Colosseum, was once capable of seating 50,000 people, making it almost 30 per cent larger than the empire’s next-largest arena in Capua. But the Colosseum was unique because of its remarkable size, not because amphitheatres were rare. In fact, the remains of more than 230 amphitheatres have been found in former Roman cities, stretching all the way from Britain to Israel. One such example in Cahors, France, was discovered during the construction of a car park that is now aptly named the Parking Amphithéâtre. Another, found in suburban Paris, now serves as the courtyard for a high school. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/GettyImages-1451938726-d5b4185-e1764246957408.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A computer generated image of the Colosseum, a large circular building with several arches" title="A computer-generated image depicting the Colosseum during its ancient heyday. The amphitheatre is now a World Heritage Site and a symbol of both modern Italy and ancient Rome (Image by Getty Images)" /> 15. Arenas weren’t just for gladiator fights Thanks in part to the 2000 movie Gladiator and its recent sequel, Roman amphitheatres are now commonly associated with clashes between sandal-wearing warriors. However, gladiator battles weren’t the only events to take place in these ancient arenas. In fact, spectators were as interested in events that displayed exotic wild animals like rhinos, lions and ‘camel-leopards’ (giraffes). The largest games on record – the 100 days of spectacles marking the opening of the Colosseum in AD 81 – saw upwards of 9,000 animals killed. Read more | Sharks in the arena? Gladiator II's real history and historical accuracy explained 16. Commodus was a much better fighter than Hollywood would have us believe In comparison to Maximus (Russell Crowe), Gladiator’s main antagonist, Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix), is depicted as an unremarkable fighter – but this is a distortion of the truth. Following a failed assassination plot orchestrated by his sister Lucilla, the real-life Commodus sent for instructors from around the world to teach him how to shoot arrows, throw javelins, and excel in hand-to-hand combat. As his skills increased, Commodus wanted to show his subjects what he could do. In one memorable display in the Colosseum, the senator Cassius Dio witnessed the emperor “dispatching, with his own hands, five hippos and two elephants in two days. He also killed rhinos and a camel-leopard”. Another time, Commodus arranged for “a hundred lions to appear in one group” and then “killed the entire hundred with exactly one hundred javelins” so that “no one saw a single extra javelin.” While Dio did not approve of these displays, even Commodus’s worst critics could not deny his talent. WATCH | Historian Alison Futrell discusses the real history behind Gladiator II View Green Video on the source website 17. Chariot racing was HUGELY popular The Circus Maximus in Rome, the main site for chariot races, adjoined the imperial palace and had seating for at least 150,000 people. On competition days, 800 horses could race in as many as 24 different contests. The last races held in the Circus Maximus took place in AD 549, but racing continued at Constantinople’s 100,000-seater Hippodrome into the 13th century. 18. Chariot racing was the football of its day Rome originally had four charioteer teams: the Reds, Whites, Greens and Blues. The Reds and Whites were the most historic, but they were surpassed in prominence by the Greens and Blues during the first century AD. The teams had franchises that competed in major cities across the empire and even boasted organised groups of supporters (akin to modern football ultras) prone to riotous behaviour. Star drivers, who could often change teams during their careers, frequently earned enormous amounts of money. The tombstone of Gaius Appuleius Diocles, one of the greatest charioteers of the second century AD, mentions that he won 1,462 races and earned 35,863,120 sesterces in prizes across a 24-year career spent racing for the Reds, Whites and Greens. Although he is believed to have died at the age of 42 and would have kept only a portion of his winnings, his career earnings exceeded the fortunes of most Roman senators. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/GettyImages-520726031-6041b74-e1764247102231.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A chariot race in the Circus Maximus depicted by 19th-century painter Jean-Léon Gérôme. Star drivers could earn huge sums of money (Image by Getty Images)" title="A chariot race in the Circus Maximus depicted by 19th-century painter Jean-Léon Gérôme. Star drivers could earn huge sums of money (Image by Getty Images)" /> 19. Rome became the first large empire to enact universal citizenship In AD 212, the emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus – better known by his nickname, Caracalla – issued a law making all free people in the empire Roman citizens. The new citizens had to legally change their names to honour their new benefactor, flooding the Roman bureaucracy with tens of millions of people now bearing the name ‘Aurelius’. The reason for Caracalla’s generosity? He wanted everyone in the empire to celebrate the murder of Geta, Caracalla’s brother and co-emperor who was killed in his mother’s arms. 20. Roman trade across the Indian Ocean was hugely lucrative When we think of ancient trade, the Silk Road – the sprawling network of trade routes stretching some 4,000 miles between China and the Mediterranean – often springs to mind. Yet, it wasn’t the only source of wealth for the Romans. Merchants also travelled across the Indian Ocean to Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka, carrying gold coins and bringing back spices and exotic animals. At times, the demand for Roman coins in India and Sri Lanka so exceeded the supply that Indian mints struck their own coins featuring the portraits of Roman imperial figures and legends written in Latin. 21. The Romans developed a sophisticated financial system From the second century BC, Roman bankers managed investment accounts that their clients could use for depositing money and making transfers. The system was so sophisticated that emperor Trajan used subsidised government loans to fund social welfare programmes in the second century AD. 22. The Romans invented some truly terrifying military technology The Romans developed a napalm-like substance commonly known as ‘Greek fire’ which was placed in hand grenades or sprayed from hoses equipped with special nozzles – usually against enemy naval forces. When the substance ignited, it even burned on water. The technology was first deployed in AD 672 and was used for more than 500 years against the navies of the Bulgars, Rus’ and Arabs. The empire lost the ability to manufacture Greek fire just before AD 1200, although no one really knows why. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/9Greekfire-madridskylitzes1-760acd4-e1764242423636.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="An illustration of two boats with men in them. The boat on the left are blowing fire over the one of the right" title="A 12th-century AD depiction of Greek fire being used against the rebel Thomas the Slav in AD 821. The exact composition of this devastating incendiary substance has been lost" /> 23. The longest-serving Roman emperor was actually pretty unremarkable He ruled for 66 years between AD 962–1028, but Constantine VIII’s passions for fine food and horses meant that he took little interest in state affairs until the last three years of his life. He instead trusted his older brother and co-emperor – the much more famous and capable emperor Basil II – to govern the empire for most of their lives. Coincidentally, Basil’s term in office (AD 960–1025), is the second-longest in Roman history. Read more | Step inside the ancient Roman empire's gladiatorial arenas, and witness 24 hours of shocking violence 24. TWO emperors share the record for the shortest reign Father-and-son duo Gordian I and Gordian II ruled for a mere 22 days in AD 238. The Gordians, who were governing a province in north Africa without an army stationed there, foolishly rebelled against Maximinus Thrax – one of four other men who also claimed to be emperor that year. Although the Gordians received senatorial support in Rome, they were quickly dispatched by a general loyal to Maximinus. As for the second-shortest reign, the emperor Nepotian barely outlasted the two Gordians by holding Rome for 28 days in June of AD 350. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/10Gordian-II-238-ADEdward-Watts--Author-1d53219-e1764242478419.jpeg" width="850" height="413" alt="Coins issued by the emperor Gordian II, who – along with his father, Gordian I – ruled for just 22 days in AD 238 (Image by Edward J Watts)" title="Coins issued by the emperor Gordian II, who – along with his father, Gordian I – ruled for just 22 days in AD 238 (Image by Edward J Watts)" /> 25. It took a VERY long time for the Romans to adopt Christianity When Constantine I famously converted to Christianity in AD 312, the territory he ruled was only around 10 per cent Christian. In fact, the Roman empire did not become a Christian-majority state until the AD 390s, and some pagan-majority communities lasted long enough that they negotiated the surrender of their cities to Muslim generals in the AD 630s. The Syrian city of Harran (now part of modern Turkey) even maintained temples dedicated to its moon god into the 11th century AD. Edward J Watts is Alkiviadis Vassiliadis Endowed Chair and Distinguished Professor of History at the University of California, San Diego. He is the author of the The Romans: A 2,000-Year History (John Murray Press/Basic Books, 2025)
In the second century BC, Roman troops razed the city of Carthage and obliterated its civilisation. So why, asks Eve MacDonald, did the victors remain obsessed by their conquered foes for the next 200 years?
Carthage burned for six days. After three long years of siege, in the spring of 146 BC Roman soldiers finally broke through the city’s defences and began to slaughter the population. But still the Carthaginians resisted. Street by street, they threw themselves at their enemy. Rome’s relentless military machine moved from the city’s ports, across the temple-filled marketplace and up the streets that lined the central hill. There they were assailed by projectiles hurled down from roofs by women, children and old men. Yet the Romans’ fierce assault on that already ancient city on the north African coast could not be stopped. They went from house to house, ascending to roofs, rooting out Carthaginians from their hiding places. Houses burned and bodies lined the streets while a unit of ‘sweeper’ soldiers cleared away the dead to allow access for more troops. The scene, as told by the Greek historian Appian – in what, it seems, was an eyewitness account – paints a gruesome picture of conquest in the ancient world. It was so brutal, in fact, that the Roman commander, Scipio Aemelianus, had to change his troops frequently, sending in fresh fighters to combat the Carthaginians’ desperate attempts to defend their land, their houses, their families, their gods and their very lives. Those attempts at defence came to nought. The people of Carthage were slaughtered or enslaved, their once-beautiful city left in smouldering ruins on the shores of the Mediterranean. As a result of the destruction, and of the memory of the wars fought between these two ancient superpowers, Carthage became an integral part of the story of Rome and its rise to empire. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/shutterstockeditorial14491209jWeb-Ready-b90d516.jpg" width="5824" height="3883" alt="A photograph of a ruin. The foreground is a large, ragged stone arch, and beyond it, there are some white columns coming out of various size of rocks" title="A century after destroying Carthage in 146 BC, Rome made the city the empire’s main urban centre in Africa, installing familiar elements such as the extensive Baths of Antoninus (Image by Shutterstock)" /> Stolen story The tale of Carthage became a lesson to all those who dared to challenge Rome. Once it had been razed, all that remained of the history of this great city was co-opted by its enemy. The story of those who had built and designed its urban landscape, its technologically superior ports, its defensive walls, and its multi-story houses with indoor plumbing and waters cisterns disappeared. So, too, the memory of its mothers, fathers, grandparents and children – all inundated beneath the tales Romans told of their great victory. In the centuries that followed, the complex culture of Carthage was largely reduced to a simplistic account of Roman wars. Nonetheless, Carthage and all it stood for became a foundational part in the Roman story. The victors believed that, in defeating the Carthaginians, Rome had become the imperial power it is still renowned as today. That view is clear in the comments of the Roman historian Livy, writing well over 100 years after the fall of Carthage – and following many other wars – who remembered the events of the second conflict between the two powers (218–201 BC) as “the most memorable war ever fought”. But who were the Carthaginians? We remember very few of its citizens, even though their city had stood on the north coast of Africa – its ruins now preserved just east of Tunis – for over 600 years before its destruction. Thanks to its location and rich agricultural land, Carthage was prosperous, and its influence stretched across the central and western Mediterranean, a thriving hub with connections to east and west. The city was founded by Phoenician-speaking people in the ninth century BC – and the story of that genesis is intertwined with Roman myths of their own civilisation’s origins. In particular, one recounted by the poet Virgil (70–19 BC) told of a famous queen named Dido, who tempted the Trojan hero Aeneas and played the femme fatale in the epic story of Rome’s foundation. Born a Phoenician princess named Elishat, Dido had clashed with her brother in Tyre (now in Lebanon) and left to lead an expedition to the western Mediterranean where, according to the legend, she established her new city. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/2F7T19TWeb-Ready-e8652c6.jpg" width="4560" height="3040" alt="A brown and gold mosaic showing a couple with their arms wrapped around each other. On either side of them are trees with winding trunks and brown leaves" title="The mythological Phoenician princess Dido, who reputedly founded Carthage, shown with the Trojan hero Aeneas in a Roman mosaic. Virgil painted Dido as a temptress, reinforcing Roman views of Carthaginians as duplicitous (Image by Alamy)" /> Melting pot The Phoenician name for Carthage was Qart Hadasht – ‘the New City’. From its very earliest days, it was a melting pot of cultures. Here, north Africans (called Numidians or Libyans in the Greek and Roman sources, today known as Amazigh), Greeks and Phoenicians from ancient centres of the eastern Mediterranean lived and intermarried, along with various Semitic-speaking peoples and others from western regions. As the city evolved into a state, it created new citizens who, by the fifth century BC, had become Carthaginians. This colonial story reflects the origins of so many of the great cities of the western Mediterranean, whose origins were a mix of eastern Mediterranean and indigenous western peoples. Carthage was, like Rome, founded under a monarchical rule that evolved into a republican-styled oligarchy built on a mix of religious traditions and ethnicities. Archaeological excavations have revealed more about these years. They tell us that it was not an easy start for the Carthaginians, the population growing slowly from the city’s foundation on a hill called Byrsa. But within a few centuries they were producing steel in their forges, exporting agricultural produce and importing luxury goods from the east, west, north and south. Material found in burials in the city reflects a dialogue between different influences from the eastern Mediterranean, central Italy and the far west. There are decorated ostrich eggs and gold jewellery with Egyptian-influenced imagery, and unguents and perfumes imported in delicate vessels from the east. Carthaginians traded across the Mediterranean, and were allied to many different cities and states – including the Romans, whose earliest known treaty was with Carthage, in the sixth century BC. The two cities shared cults, competed for markets and had related families; they were friends before they ever became enemies. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/426522001cmykwebready-b3a37d5.jpg" width="3071" height="2048" alt="A Carthaginian limestone stela fragment featuring the anthropomorphic symbol believed to represent Tanit, their most important female deity (Image by the Trustees of the British Museum)" title="A Carthaginian limestone stela fragment featuring the anthropomorphic symbol believed to represent Tanit, their most important female deity (Image by the Trustees of the British Museum)" /> The Phoenician cities of the Levant – broadly, from Lebanon to Syria, Israel and Palestine today – were conquered by the Achaemenid Persian empire in the sixth and fifth centuries BC. That changed the relationship between Carthage and its mother city, Tyre, providing the catalyst for the African city to grow into its own power. This coincided with an increasingly linked Mediterranean world and a boom in wealth and knowledge across the region – with Carthage in the middle of it all. Phoenician-speaking peoples from ancient cities such as Byblos, Tyre, Sidon and Beirut (all in what’s now Lebanon) had spread out across the Mediterranean, bringing with them an alphabet that was adopted by the Greeks, Etruscans and Romans, and which seeded the characters we still use today. From the eighth and seventh centuries BC, connected cities were established on Sicily, Sardinia, Malta, the Balearic Islands, the north coast of Africa and the southern coast of Spain and Portugal, all of which shared a Phoenician language and culture of origin. Paradigm of power At the centre of this network was Carthage, which grew powerful and wealthy – but also became drawn into conflict with other city states in the region, especially on the island of Sicily, which by the mid-third century BC was partially under direct Carthaginian control. In c264 BC, the Romans launched an all-out war on Sicily that shifted the paradigm of power and, in their own records, created a new narrative about their might. The Greek historian Polybius (c200–c118 BC)sets up his account of the rise of Rome with the lines: “I shall take as my starting point the first time that the Romans crossed to Sicily.” From the late third century BC, as the Romans fought wars with Carthage, they also started to write about them. Only fragments of lost epic poetry survive from this period, but these few words are some of the earliest surviving pieces of Latin prose and verse, including Naevius’s Bellum Poenicum (The Punic War). So the Carthaginians, and the wars they fought with Rome, were a foundational part of the creation of Latin literature. The events of these so-called Punic Wars (more on that name later) shaped the very nature of the written culture that went on to influence all of the literature of the later European languages that derive from Latin. A Carthaginian history of the wars survived, too, and we know that pro-Carthaginian (or at least anti-Roman) histories existed in the second century BC, mentioned by Polybius. These are now long lost, with only a few fragments remaining in later sources. So, though Carthage is embedded in the history of Latin literature, only the Roman view survives. The First Punic War lasted over 20 years, exhausting both sides. As a result, it’s often compared to the First World War in its devastating, and unintended, impact. Polybius described the combatants as “like two equally matched boxers, both courageous, fighting it out for a prize”. At the war’s end in 241 BC – Rome having claimed Sicily, but only briefly invaded north Africa – both sides were almost bankrupt and had lost tens of thousands of soldiers and marines. The peace was only ever likely to be temporary, giving the two cities time to regroup. Because Carthage had lost, it had to pay war indemnity to Rome for 10 years – and the peace held for only a few years longer than the payments continued. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/HNNYGBWeb-Ready-7f6a4db.jpg" width="5400" height="3600" alt="A painting showing a man dressed in a pink gown and turban, riding an elephant across a field, surrounded by a large crowd of people carrying spears. In the background, there are some trees, mountains and a cloudy sky" title="A 16th-century fresco shows the Carthaginian general Hannibal on an elephant during his 218 BC offensive into the Roman heartland, epitomising the bravery attributed to his people by Rome (Image by Alamy)" /> The Second Punic War between the two great cities began just 23 years after the end of the first. The Carthaginian general Hannibal, son of the famous commander Hamilcar Barca, led an army into Italy and challenged the power of Rome in its heartland. That he did this in an attempt to protect the Carthaginian lands of Spain and Africa from an imminent Roman attack in 218 BC is largely forgotten. History blames Hannibal for the war, even though our ancient sources acknowledge so much confusion around the actual causes of the conflict that, just 60 years later, Polybius referred to the details as “the common gossip of a barber shop”. This was contested history in action – and we know today, more than ever, that historical ‘truth’ is not always easy to come by. When Hannibal crossed the Alps with war elephants, horses and an army, he created a legend for posterity – and sparked mayhem in Italy. Between 218 and 216 BC, he won over to his side forces formerly allied with Rome, and defeated Roman armies in battle after battle. The Roman memory of Hannibal and the challenge he presented to their state in these years really epitomises how much the Romans created themselves in the face of their battles with Carthage. In the Roman mind, Hannibal was the perfect enemy: brave, intelligent and committed, but also cruel, treacherous and without integrity, according to Livy. It is worth noting that Livy used a famous Latin phrase – “perfidia plus quam Punica” – which translates as “a treachery more than Punic”. This epitomises the cultural stereotype that the Romans created for the Carthaginians, using the term ‘Punic’ to refer to the culture and language of Carthage. The word comes from the Latin poenus, thought to derive from the city’s founders, the Phoenicians. ‘Punic’ was an ethnic stereotype current in Latin literature by the late third and early second century BC. By the time Livy wrote his history, between 27 and 9 BC, this concept had become very important to the memory of Carthage. That’s because by then the Carthaginians no longer existed: that civilisation had been destroyed well over 100 years earlier. In Livy’s era, a new Roman colony was being built on the land taken from the Carthaginians. It was also a time when Virgil’s epic poem of Roman identity, the Aeneid, linked Dido and Aeneas – who, according to the myth, became the ancestor of the Romans – in popular memory as star-crossed lovers. The Aeneid refers to the Carthaginians as deceitful: it calls them “the double-tongued people of Tyre”, tying them to their near-eastern roots and to duplicity. The poem served the interests of the first Roman emperor, Augustus, painting the Carthaginians as the offspring of a vengeful woman, who aimed to destroy Rome. The second century AD satirist Juvenal described Hannibal as “the one-eyed commander/ perched on his monstrous beast!” For Romans of the second century, the Carthaginians had been distilled down to these two caricatures – the wily Dido and the monstrous Hannibal. Roman propaganda The Roman imperial propaganda machine so convincingly painted the Carthaginians as monsters to be destroyed, rather than rivals to be contended with, that the story of their culture is difficult to tell today. The reality is that the wars between Carthage and Rome were fought between two powerful city states, formerly allies, for control over the western Mediterranean. After Carthage was destroyed in 146 BC, the survivors scattered across Africa or were enslaved across the Mediterranean, and Carthaginian culture was slowly absorbed into the landscape of a new imperial power. Gradually, the western Mediterranean came to speak Latin, not Phoenician or Greek as many of its people had previously, and Rome dominated the region for the next 600 years. But the memory of Carthage persisted. The Aeneid, Livy’s history of Rome (Ab Urbe Condita) and the stories of epic war created a lasting, compelling memory of the Roman past. In the first century AD, Pliny the Elder’s Natural History tells us, “a statue of Hannibal may be seen in three places in [Rome] within the walls of which he alone of its national foes had hurled a spear”. Loot from Carthage decorated Rome, and the visual memory of the north African city was embedded in the stories of the battles re-enacted in public games and celebrations. During Rome’s civil wars, the general Marius fled and took refuge at Carthage, resting among the ruins. The historian Velleius Paterculus wrote that “he endured a life of poverty in a hut amid the ruins of Carthage. There, Marius, as he gazed upon Carthage, and Carthage as she beheld Marius, might well have offered consolation the one to the other.” The Romans framed their own rise to power and empire through their defeat of the Carthaginians, and these stories have preserved a narrative of the city for us today. At the end of antiquity, this memory continued to fascinate, and the idea of Carthage persevered in works ranging from those of Arabic geographers to the Renaissance translations of Latin epics. For centuries, Europeans framed their own wars in the shadow of Rome and Carthage: when Napoleon crossed the Alps in 1800 en route to the battle of Marengo in Piedmont, he echoed Hannibal’s great journey (famously depicted in David’s painting Napoleon Crossing the Alps). Each year, new scientific techniques and discoveries expand our understanding, and reveal more of a different story of the people of Carthage. But an enduring fact is that without Carthage, the Roman empire as we know it would not have existed. Eve MacDonald is senior lecturer in ancient history at Cardiff University. Her latest book, Carthage: A New History of an Ancient Empire, was published by Ebury in August
Alice Roberts: “Christianity didn’t invent itself as an empire from nothing: it adapted existing Roman structures”
Alice Roberts speaks to Danny Bird about the evolution of the new religion that swept across the Roman empire and beyond
Danny Bird: What made you decide to write about the collapse of the western Roman empire and the rise of Christianity? Alice Roberts: I’ve long been fascinated by this historical period, especially in Britain, where written records are scarce. This book grew from my interest in burial archaeology, shaped by excavations I took part in 20 years ago on a Welsh cliff. Bones were eroding from the cliff face, and we uncovered cist graves – stone-lined, coffin-like structures – some dating from as early as the fifth century. One grave even had a stone lid carved with a simple cross. These early Christian burials sparked my curiosity. More recently, I visited an excavation at Llantwit Major, where archaeologists are investigating what may be Britain’s earliest monastery, possibly dating to the fifth century. This raised further questions: why was Christianity spreading so early? And who was behind it? Rather than relying on broad generalisations, my book focuses on individuals: the people who carried Christianity across regions, and their motives. A story that began with burials in Wales led me across the Roman world from Istanbul (formerly Constantinople) to Alexandria, aiming to find out how Christianity spread so widely, and what that reveals about the fall of the western Roman empire. Christianity presents itself as a faith for the powerless, but your book suggests that it was adopted by urban elites in its early centuries. How does this challenge the mythology surrounding its origins? It stands in stark contrast, really. It’s a tricky point, because those writing about Christianity were necessarily literate members of the elite. So, from the outset, we’re seeing a movement that appears to have spread among relatively well-off individuals. By the fourth century, it had clearly reached the highest echelons of Roman society. Emperor Constantine had begun to take notice, convening a council of bishops in AD 325. But even in the earliest years, this was a movement involving influential figures. Take Saint Paul – or Saul, as he was originally known. One of his first actions was to meet the governor of Cyprus – not preaching to the poor but engaging with powerful individuals in the Roman empire who had the means to support him. The governor then sent him back to what is now Turkey to reconnect with his family. It seems that Paul recognised that patronage by adopting the governor’s name, ‘Paulus’ – which is a very Roman thing to do when offered someone’s backing. What’s your take on Constantine? Is it right to describe him as the ‘Christian emperor’? It’s not as straightforward as it seems. We have a biography written after his death by Eusebius, who explicitly claims that Constantine was Christian and experienced a conversion on the way to the battle of the Milvian Bridge. Eusebius describes Constantine having a vision and carrying a Chi-Rho [a combination of chi and rho, the first two letters of the Greek word for Christ] into battle, supposedly with Christ supporting him. It’s quite striking, because at that point the context is entirely military: Christ becomes someone you want on your side as you move to defeat the emperor in Rome and claim sole rule. (Constantine was never destined to be emperor; he effectively eliminated the other three rulers until he was the last man standing.) Eusebius asserts that Constantine’s conversion occurred en route to that decisive battle. Afterwards, Constantine erected a triumphal arch in Rome. If the vision and conversion had truly occurred en route to the Milvian Bridge, you might expect some Christian symbolism on that arch – but there’s none. Instead, it’s full of traditional Roman iconography. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/09/GettyImages-486776899webready-38d8437.jpg" width="4369" height="2913" alt="Did Constantine’s (above left) use of the Chi-Rho symbol indicate his Christian faith, or was that a later interpretation? (Image by Getty Images)" title="Did Constantine’s (above left) use of the Chi-Rho symbol indicate his Christian faith, or was that a later interpretation? (Image by Getty Images)" /> What’s important to remember is that none of this history comes to us without agenda. Any written account, then or now, reflects the perspective of its author. Eusebius – a bishop – clearly had reasons to portray Constantine as a committed Christian. However, when you examine Constantine’s broader communications – particularly coins, which were vital tools of imperial messaging in a largely illiterate empire – you see something different. His coins continued to depict Roman gods including Sol, to whom he appeared especially drawn, well after his supposed conversion. That led me to investigate the Chi-Rho more closely. More than 1,000 different coin designs were minted during Constantine’s reign, and only a handful bear the Chi-Rho. Even on those coins, it appears in subtle ways: on a military standard, on a helmet – all very martial in character. Read more | “The Roman empire cannot have been governed by a series of psychopaths. It would not have survived”: Mary Beard on Roman Emperors What surprised me most was discovering the Chi-Rho’s ancient origins. The symbol appears in pre-Christian literature and papyri. There’s even one on a Greek bust dating back to a time before the supposed birth date of Jesus Christ. The most plausible explanation from the papyri is that Chi-Rho was originally an abbreviation for the Greek word archōn, meaning ‘ruler’, not Christos as Eusebius claimed. So even if Constantine did carry the symbol into battle, did it mean Christ? Or was that the first time anyone interpreted it that way? Up until then, it meant something else entirely. And we can’t even be sure he used it in the battle. Another contemporary account says he carried a cross, not a Chi-Rho. Why do you think the early Roman church was able to so deftly fill the power vacuum as imperial rule declined? Christianity didn’t invent itself as an empire from nothing: it adapted existing Roman structures. Early on, it functioned like a collegium – a Roman guild – offering social support, patronage and mutual aid, just as Roman professional associations did. This model suited the well-to-do among Roman society, and helped embed Christianity within everyday life. As elites adopted Christianity, it became tightly woven into their world. Roman aristocrats were educated in the liberal arts, and expected to govern provinces and cities. Over time, church institutions began to provide this same education, adding scripture to the traditional Roman curriculum, the cursus honorum, which fast-tracked noble-born Roman men into various civic offices. Christianity thus became the default cultural and ideological framework for elite careers. By the fifth century, bishops had effectively become city administrators, assuming roles once held by imperial officials – such as distributing the grain dole. Rather than creating something entirely new, Christianity absorbed and continued Roman civic functions. This fusion made the church remarkably resilient. As the western Roman empire fragmented, Christian bishops continued running cities. In Gaul, for instance, elite families retained their status across the Roman, Visigothic and Frankish regimes. Individuals such as Saint Sidonius Apollinaris exemplify this continuity, remaining influential under the shifting political circumstances. It’s unlikely that anyone at the time consciously planned to create a resilient ideological-administrative system that could survive the empire’s collapse. They were probably more concerned with preserving their own careers and ensuring opportunities for their children. For instance, elite Roman families would have been thinking pragmatically about how to secure a future for their sons amid instability. Of course, reducing everything to economics would be simplistic. Christianity was also a compelling system of ideas and belief. Many were genuinely devout, drawn to the religion for spiritual reasons, whereas others were more focused on its social and political benefits. These different motivations coexisted and contributed to Christianity’s development. There was no single way to be a Roman Christian. Is this Roman-ness still evident in Christian practice and ritual? The fact that the pope still rules from Rome and has the title of Pontifex Maximus (the most senior priestly rank in the ancient Roman religion), together with the church’s use of Latin and its adoption of imperial purple, all perpetuates this legacy. Plus, high-ranking members of the church are often canonised, echoing the Roman practice of deifying emperors. I traced some of these continuing rituals in my earlier books. When writing Buried (2022), I looked at Roman graveside feasting rituals, particularly at a burial in Caerleon, south-east Wales. A pipe from the surface was used by mourners to pour libations into the grave while holding feasts there – not just on the day of the funeral, but also nine days and 50 days afterwards, as well as on set days for honouring the dead. When I mentioned this pipe burial to my Russian friend Natasha, who grew up in Siberia, she exclaimed: “We did that!” She described a day when families would gather with food in cemeteries, the adults drinking vodka. She believed this was a Russian Orthodox celebration called ‘Parents’ Day’. When I researched further, I discovered that it mirrored the Parentalia festival of the ancestors in the pre-Christian Roman calendar. Read more | Roman gods and goddesses: 17 of the most important deities of ancient Rome These traditions carried over into Christian practice. And such customs persist in both the Greek and Russian Orthodox calendars, as well as in the Catholic church and the Church of England. For instance, the moveable feast known as Pentecost occurs 50 days after Easter; elements of Pentecost recall Rosalia, an ancient Roman summer day of the dead, when graves were decorated with roses. It’s another example of Roman traditions persisting in Christian ritual to this day. A few weeks ago, I happened to be in Orvieto, Italy, on Pentecost. A friend told me to look out for the medieval procession, so I stayed to watch. It was remarkable – people in full medieval dress parading through the streets to the cathedral, and women carrying great armfuls of flowers. The tradition continues. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/09/A0R03Cwebready-245b12f.jpg" width="5020" height="3347" alt="Children parade with flowers at the Sciò la Pica Pentecost festival in Monterubbiano. Like many other Italian celebrations, this tradition seems to be rooted in ancient pre-Christian beliefs (Image by Alamy)" title="Children parade with flowers at the Sciò la Pica Pentecost festival in Monterubbiano. Like many other Italian celebrations, this tradition seems to be rooted in ancient pre-Christian beliefs (Image by Alamy)" /> What was the relationship between Christianity and pre-existing faiths and philosophical thought? The early Christians were Jewish, and Christianity emerged within a Hellenistic-Roman context. These influences were deeply intertwined. Greek philosophy played a huge role in shaping Christian ideas but, from the start, theology was diverse and fragmented. To maintain unity and authority, the early church had to suppress doctrinal splits. Councils such as that at Nicaea (now İznik, Turkey) in AD 325 were about enforcing consensus, not simply defining belief. Still, divisions continued: between east and west, and, much later, Protestant and Catholic, because interpretation remained contested. Claims of Christianity’s radical uniqueness are often overstated. There are strong parallels with other cults, such as that of Mithras, and even Roman emperors’ devotion to a single god in the classical pantheon suggests a tendency towards monotheism. The term ‘paganism’ to describe non-Christian beliefs is a Christian invention, originally derogatory, which implied that the individuals who adhered to such beliefs were rustic or not ‘soldiers’ of Christ. We still use it for lack of a better alternative, though it defines by exclusion. The idea that Christianity invented charity is false, too. Roman society valued public service, and philanthropy was expected, especially from the elite. Caring for the vulnerable was essential to civic life. What Christianity did was adapt to the needs of growing urban centres. As cities expanded and poverty increased, the church offered a system to manage – not eliminate – urban destitution. Supporting the poor served both moral and political aims, helping to extract wealth from the rich while reinforcing the church’s influence. How important were Roman bishops and saints in entrenching the hegemony of Christianity more widely? That was very evident in the Celtic west, where Christianity was spreading as the Roman empire disintegrated, in locations that the empire never fully reached – places such as Ireland. You see early Christianity spreading through individuals with very Roman names – including Patricius, otherwise known as Saint Patrick. There are fascinating tales of voyaging saints, often travelling in small coracles, sometimes even with stone coffins. These journeys were just a continuation of what the elite were already doing. They were extremely well connected. In the hagiographies and accounts of these voyages, the saints are rarely heading to places where no Christian has ever been. By the time we hear about these saints, they’re visiting other Christians, often kings. These so-called ‘missionary’ journeys often involved being welcomed at royal courts. It’s always been about nobility and the interconnectedness of powerful families. Some of these saints were bishops, some kings; some began as generals and became bishops. Take, for example, Germanus of Auxerre. He remained rather military in outlook. At the request of the bishop of Rome, he travelled to Britain to deal with the growing divergence in Christian practice, which was causing concerns that the British might splinter away from the church in Rome. So Germanus was sent to bring them back in line, arriving with troops and even joining some battles. It’s striking how these figures, often romanticised as humble ascetics, were anything but isolated. They didn’t retreat from the world; instead, they established themselves close to the seats of power – for example, Saint Cuthbert on Inner Farne island, overlooking Bamburgh Castle. Do you think it’s time we stopped talking about the ‘fall of Rome’ and start seeing it more as a rebrand? I absolutely do. You’ve hit the nail on the head. This is essentially the thesis of my book. The Roman empire, particularly in the east, continued for another thousand years until the Ottomans entered Constantinople in 1453, marking its end. When the Ottomans took that city, the sultans declared themselves to be the Qaisar-e-Rum (‘Caesars of Rome’). In other words, they saw themselves as the inheritors of that legacy. In the west, the empire officially disintegrated in the fifth century but, as we’ve discussed, much of its culture endured and was repurposed by those who filled the power vacuum. If we define the empire as the emperor, then that connection is severed. But if we understand the empire as the broader system – its administration, education and social hierarchy – then that continues under the Roman church. Read more | Religion in Roman Britain: spreading the word of the gods You’re a former president of Humanists UK and one of Britain’s best-known atheists. How did that shape your approach to this foundational era of Christian history? I hope it didn’t, because I’m trying to approach this history by meeting people on their own terms and understanding why this set of ideas was being spread. In the book, I focus mainly on the political, economic and cultural perspectives. In some ways, that means I’m not approaching it from a position of personal investment in the ideas themselves, though I’m fascinated by them. I know a fair bit about them, having been brought up as a Christian, and being immersed in that tradition. I’m especially interested in where those traditions come from – for example, how some church festivals today trace back to pre-Christian times. I think Christianity is a compelling and important part of our culture. As society becomes more secular, and biblical knowledge declines, we risk losing sight of Christian history. Yet there’s still, I feel, a tendency to obscure the history of early Christianity, treating it as if it simply appeared fully formed. For me, it’s about cultural evolution: understanding where it began, who adopted it and who helped spread it. I hope I’ve explored that as objectively as possible. Alice Roberts is an anthropologist, broadcaster and author, based at the University of Birmingham. Her newest Channel 4 series, Roman Empire by Train, will air early in 2026. She will be touring the UK with her new book, Domination, from August to November. alice-roberts.co.uk/tour This article was first published in the September 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
Caesar's funeral drama: anger and revenge after death
The assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 BC drove tensions sky-high in ancient Rome. As Jessica Clarke reveals, plays staged at his funeral were carefully chosen to inflame anger and incite revenge on his killers
On 20 March 44 BC, a violent death in Rome was about to send assembled masses into uproar – sparking pandemonium that threatened to engulf the city. The incident described by the ancient biographer Suetonius wasn’t a real murder but, rather, the climax of a theatre show. If we reconstruct the performance, using both Suetonius’s writing and fragments of the scripts that survive from the time, we can picture the leading actor standing in the centre of the stage before a packed auditorium. He would have raised his sword over his head and declaimed boldly, his voice ringing out across the stands: “What, did I save these men so that they might murder me?” With these words, he would have plunged the blade into his chest. Falling forward onto the stage, he would then ‘die’ slowly and dramatically in front of his enthralled audience. Cries of sorrow broke out from the audience, Suetonius tells us, and shouts of indignation were raised against the characters who had instigated his suicide. Like so many other theatre shows at the time, which are recorded for us by the ancient writer, orator and politician Marcus Tullius Cicero, this performance – staged in the last years of the collapsing Roman Republic – caused a volcanic reaction among the crowd. The performance was part of the funeral of Gaius Julius Caesar. Five days earlier, the Roman general and dictator had been stabbed to death at a senate meeting by a group of conspirators. The city had gone into mourning, and a huge celebration had been organised to commemorate Caesar’s military and political achievements. It would include the usual eulogy and burning of the funeral pyre – but the centrepiece of the event would comprise two magnificent theatre shows. Incendiary shows First came the Contest for the Arms of Achilles, set during the legendary Trojan War. In it, Greek heroes Ajax and Odysseus argue over who should keep the sword and shield of their deceased comrade. Odysseus wins the debate and is proclaimed the victor. Unable to bear his defeat, Ajax takes his own life. According to Suetonius, this staging of the mythical story was designed to provoke a visceral reaction in the crowd – one of intense “pity and indignation” for the wrongful death of the great hero. He also informs us that the tumult continued into the performance of a second play, Electra, which also retells a Greek mythological story. Set a few years after the events of the Trojan War, it follows the story of the eponymous young heroine, who seeks revenge on her father’s assassins. With the help of her brother, Orestes, she exacts her retribution and returns the throne to its rightful heir. Read more | The shockingly simple question historian Tom Holland would ask Julius Caesar Suetonius recounts that this performance, like the first, was greeted with “shouts of indignation” from the crowd. Rome, already a tinderbox of intrigue and rival factions, threatened to erupt into chaos. Events in the city had progressed at a dizzying pace. At the beginning of the year, Julius Caesar had been at the height of his powers. Yet by the middle of March he was dead – and, just days later, his funeral seemed poised to descend into violent mayhem. How had popular feeling in Rome reached such a climactic fervour? And what could have ignited such violent reactions in the audience at the great leader’s funeral? Assassination plot Born in Rome in 100 BC, Julius Caesar had advanced swiftly through the ranks of the senate. Aged around 42, he had launched the lengthy campaign that led to the conquest of Gaul. On his return in 49 BC, he had come into conflict with his one-time ally, Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus – now known as Pompey the Great – defeating him at the battle of Pharsalus the following year. And in January 44 BC he had been elected dictator perpetuo: dictator for life. This had caused panic among many in the Roman senate. Within the established Republican system, the office of dictator had been traditionally a temporary position held during a period of political or military crisis, with the incumbent expected to relinquish the role once the danger had passed. Now Caesar had, to all intents and purposes, been made the sole and permanent ruler of Rome. A plot was hatched by those opposed to this new state of affairs, led chiefly by Marcus Junius Brutus – the son of Caesar’s long-term mistress – and Gaius Cassius Longinus, Brutus’s brother-in-law. On the appointed day, Caesar would come to a senate meeting – and there he would be set upon with daggers. The now-familiar story goes that Caesar, waking early on the morning of the Ides (15th) of March, was warned by his worried wife, Calpurnia, not to go to the senate that day. As she told her husband, she had seen omens that foretold calamity if he left the safety of their home. But Caesar did not heed his wife’s advice, and attended the meeting as planned. As he took his seat of honour, the plotters gathered around him; suddenly, one tugged at his toga to reveal his chest – a signal to the others to act. Caesar was felled by 23 stab wounds, or so the story goes, uttering not a word until he saw the young Brutus among the assassins – when, as he lay dying, he murmured in Greek: “And you, child?” The conspirators had planned to drag his corpse to the river Tiber and to confiscate Caesar’s property. Instead, fearful of the dictator’s loyal friend Mark Antony – who’d been kept from the senate meeting that day – they fled, abandoning the lifeless body. According to Suetonius, three slaves eventually came and carried Caesar’s body home, with one arm hanging down from the litter. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/07/GettyImages-587490474cmyk-b0fa33d.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="A crowd of people stand around a raised platform. On the platform, a man dressed in white stands, holding up a bloodied piece of cloth" title="Mark Antony displays Caesar’s bloodied toga while delivering an impassioned eulogy at his comrade’s funeral, shown in a 19th-century painting (Image by Getty Images)" /> Read more | Alternate history: what if Julius Caesar had not been assassinated? The assassins were right to fear Mark Antony’s reaction, which was both cunning and effective. Rather than seeking direct violent retribution against those who had plotted against his friend, Antony set about planning a spectacular funeral, orchestrating an event designed to stir up popular goodwill towards Caesar and fan the flames of hatred against the conspirators. And he began with a clever selection of plays. Show of strength Theatre performances had long comprised a traditional element of Roman funerals. The practice seems to have originated in the Etruscan civilisation who may have introduced wrestling and gladiatorial combats in the eighth century BC. In Rome, the earliest evidence of such shows relates to the funeral of Junius Brutus Pera in 264 BC, at which his sons seem to have organised gladiatorial shows on a temporary wooden stage. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/07/GettyImages-122321047-WL-3c001f7.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="A stone carving shows 6 men dancing and playing games, wearing helmets and holding spears" title="Games and dances are depicted on an Etruscan tomb monument from the fifth century BC. This ancient Italic civilisation seems to have started the practice of staging funeral performances (Image by Getty Images)" /> Over time, such events became increasingly lavish; indeed, sumptuary laws were passed to curtail the greatest excesses of the wealthy elite. These upper-class funerals might include not only stage shows but also a procession of actors dressed up in costumes and masks to resemble deceased members of a great Roman family. Parading through the city’s streets, the procession celebrated the passage of the deceased from death to life, and reminded the crowds of that aristocratic family’s eminent lineage. Why did Antony select The Contest for the Arms of Achilles and Electra to be performed at Caesar’s funeral? What was he hoping to convey to his Roman audiences? On the surface, these seem rather odd choices, particularly Electra; that play (possibly a Latin translation of Sophocles’s earlier work, written in Greek in the fifth century BC) was by Atilius, whose work does not seem to have been well regarded in Rome. One late Republican commentator described his writing style as “iron” and “very harsh”, and Cicero decries Atilius’s Electra as being rather a bad play. However, exploring the two plays’ thematic content might reveal Antony’s motivation for his production choices. Written by Pacuvius, the Arms of Achilles begins just after the eponymous hero has been killed by an arrow shot from the Trojan ramparts. In the verbal contest for Achilles’ sword and shield that follows his death, Odysseus outsmarts Ajax, securing victory through cunning and subtle arguments. It might be seen as an apt metaphor for the situation in Rome in March 44 BC: two sides struggle for control of a powerful weapon, with the loyal Ajax ultimately losing to the duplicity of his comrades. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/07/GettyImages-122216797-WL-b9687ed.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="A stone relief shows two people bent over in mourning, while a horse stands to the side" title="Electra and Orestes mourn their murdered father, King Agamemnon, in a fifth-century BC relief. A play of this story, chosen for Caesar’s funeral, highlighted the virtue of vengeance (Image by Getty Images)" /> If this was the message Antony intended to convey, he seems to have been successful. Suetonius recounts that the audience expressed furious outrage as they watched Ajax take his own life on stage. Did they draw a parallel between the death of the legendary Greek hero and the murder of Julius Caesar? Electra’s story of revenge, too, features themes that may have been deliberately intended to evoke the contemporary political situation: a wrongful murder and the righteousness of seeking retribution. Little wonder, then, that emotions were running high by the time Mark Antony took to the speaker’s platform in the Roman Forum later that day. Inflammatory eulogy The exact words spoken by Antony during that famous eulogy are now lost. However, according to Suetonius, the central part of his speech was the recitation of a senatorial decree honouring Julius Caesar. As Antony read, he lingered over the passage of the decree in which every senator swore to protect Caesar – highlighting the contrast between these faithful promises and the events that had unfolded on 15 March. As a final flourish, Antony is said to have displayed Caesar’s bloodied toga to the crowd, pointing out each of the stab wounds. It was clearly a powerful performance, much like those that had just taken place in the theatre – and one that had a powerful effect. Read more | Who are the most underrated Roman emperors? As the funeral bier bearing Caesar’s body was carried into the Forum, the crowd rushed forward and set it alight before it reached the official site of the cremation. Bystanders heaped dry branches on top of the body, smashing up the seats and benches on which they had been sitting and adding them to the flames. Musicians and actors reportedly tore off their robes and threw them into the fire, while women tossed in their jewellery and their children’s amulets. As the mass outpouring of grief reached a climax, the fired-up masses turned from the flaming pyre and rampaged through the streets of Rome. Bent on destruction, they surged towards the houses of Brutus and Cassius – but were prevented from attacking by sentinels posted outside. Turning away, the crowd came across the unsuspecting poet Helvius Cinna – and, mistaking him for his near-namesake Cornelius Cinna, who had supported the conspiracy, killed him. They cut off his head and, mounting it on a spear, paraded it through the streets of Rome. Although Brutus and Cassius survived the night, they soon had to flee the city with their fellow conspirators. It would take Antony more than two years to track them down, finally facing them in October 42 BC at the battle of Philippi. And it was Antony who emerged victorious from this clash – as from the battle for popular approval in Rome. Caesar’s funeral began with theatre shows and ended with a bloody riot. With their themes of duplicity, murder and righteous revenge, the plays seem to have been selected very deliberately to provoke and nurture hysteria in the massed crowds. It is surprising, therefore, that very little about them is mentioned in accounts of the funeral, which tend to focus much more on the eulogy given by Mark Antony. When we think of theatre today, we think perhaps of Shaftesbury Avenue or Broadway – of decorous, darkly lit auditoria filled with well-dressed spectators. But in the ancient world, the theatre could be as riotous and politically impactful as any rhetoric declaimed from the speaker’s platform. Jessica Clarke’s new book, A New History of Ancient Roman Theatre, will be published by Liverpool University Press in December This article was first published in the July 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
Rome's worst nightmare: the story of Spartacus
When the Spartacus revolt erupted in 73 BC, it exposed a terrifying truth: that the cocksure Roman Republic was nowhere near as invincible as it liked to believe. Guy de la Bédoyère takes up the story
It’s a measure of the enduring appeal of Stanley Kubrick’s 1960 swords-and-sandals epic that, when most of us hear the name Spartacus, a dimple-chinned Kirk Douglas springs immediately to mind. Heroic. Noble. Doomed. Roman citizens, it’s safe to say, saw Spartacus rather differently – as a rebellious slave who threatened the future of the Roman Republic. Violent. Disobedient. Dangerous. Though writing in the imperial Roman era long after the defeat of Spartacus, the words of the author Plutarch (AD 46–c120) capture something of the dread the warrior inspired. “It is said that, when he was first brought to Rome to be sold, a serpent was seen coiled about his face as he slept,” noted Plutarch, “and his wife, who was of the same tribe as Spartacus, a prophetess, and subject to visitations of the Dionysiac frenzy, declared it the sign of a great and formidable power which would end in misfortune.” So what’s the truth behind these very different legends? Why did Spartacus take up arms outside the gladiatorial arena? And why was the uprising he led – the third of the so-called Servile Wars, following rebellions in 135–132 BC and 104–c100 BC – perceived as being so threatening to Rome? Brutal degradations To answer these questions, it first helps to remember just how reliant upon slaves Rome had become by 73 BC, when the renegade band of trainee gladiators led by Spartacus burst out of their barracks in southern Italy. Their rebellion exposed the terrifying truth: that every city, every village and every villa estate was at risk from the slaves on whom every aspect of Roman life depended. Paradoxically, this reliance on slave labour had grown from Rome’s success. Having seen off the naval trading power of Carthage in three Punic Wars (264–241 BC, 218–201 BC and 149–146 BC), and having seized Greece in 146 BC, Rome had vastly increased its reach and territory. The Romans had also defeated Macedon and, in 133 BC, been granted the kingdom of Attalus III of Pergamon (spanning much of western Anatolia, now in Turkey) by the terms of his will. Booty poured into Rome. In an era when slavery was ubiquitous, this included the trafficking of human beings – a practice Rome industrialised on an unimaginably vast scale. Its generals brought back hundreds of thousands of slaves – people who were sold in its markets and put to work on tasks that ranged from looking after wealthy men and women in fine homes to labouring on plantations. For some of the least fortunate, the brutal degradations of the mines awaited. The streets of Rome heaved with slaves scuttling about on the business of their masters and mistresses. Then there were the gladiators. This profession had grown out of a funerary custom of the Etruscans (the people of central Italy from whom the Romans borrowed many traditions) to evolve into a central component of crowd-pleasing Roman entertainment, funded by the elite as part of their political competitiveness. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/06/GettyImages-170979965-CMYK-f7cdcdf.jpg" width="3898" height="2597" alt="Two men wrestle each other over a fountain. Around them, three other men stand in military stances" title="Wrestlers in a sixth-century BC Etruscan tomb fresco near Tarquinia, central Italy. Roman gladiatorial games evolved from Etruscan funerary customs" /> Among those gladiators was Spartacus. Born in Thrace, an area in the south-eastern Balkans spanning parts of modern Turkey, Greece and Bulgaria, Spartacus had, according to one translation of the historian Appian (c95–c165 AD), “once served as a soldier with the Romans”. Not unlike the fictional Maximus Decimus Meridius in Ridley Scott’s 2000 blockbuster Gladiator, he had somehow been enslaved and eventually sold to a school run by the lanista (gladiator trainer) Lentulus Batiatus in Capua, southern Italy. It seems that Spartacus’s military training stood him in good stead when, outraged by Batiatus’s treatment of his fighters, mostly Gauls and Thracians, he took part in a rebellion to overpower the training-school guards. Surviving accounts of the revolt written by Plutarch and Appian some 200 years later unsurprisingly don’t quite tally – an all too common problem with ancient sources. Nevertheless, it seems that around 200 gladiators planned a breakout, and that 78 did manage to escape. Only then did they elect Spartacus as leader. He had a reputation for being unusually wise and cultured for someone of his background. He was also exceptionally courageous and strong. Whatever the precise details of those events, the Third Servile (or Spartacus) War had begun. Spartacus and his rebels made for the nearby slopes of Vesuvius, and were joined by runaway slaves and even some free peasants. Any loot gathered along the way was shared out equally – an egalitarian gesture that attracted others. They defeated soldiers sent from Capua and helped themselves to their equipment, discarding their own less-effective gladiatorial weapons. Around 140 years later, Pliny the Elder (c23-79 AD) recorded how Spartacus had allegedly forbidden any of his followers to possess gold or silver. Pliny interpreted this rule as showing that slaves in Rome’s recent past had more moral fibre than Romans themselves. Opportunity missed At the start of the rebellion, few took Spartacus and his followers too seriously. Initially, the praetor (commander) Clodius was sent from Rome with 3,000 troops to trap the rebels on the volcano. The renegades, though, made ladders from vines and shinned down sheer cliffs to make their escape. Even then, arrogance and complacency prevailed in Rome, where no one appreciated quite how dangerous the revolt was becoming. Once more, only a scratch force was sent against Spartacus, who repeatedly beat off attacks. His army grew larger, stronger and better equipped day by day: with his military experience, Spartacus was able to oversee training and the manufacture of weapons. Appian estimated the number of rebels at 70,000; however, such rounded figures are meaningless, especially when they involve Rome’s enemies. Not only was there no way of accurately measuring the strength of armies but, by exaggerating the strength of opponents, Roman victories were given additional sheen – a powerful incentive to tell tall tales after the event. Only belatedly was a proper consular army of two legions sent out by the Senate. In 72 BC, they defeated a force of ‘30,000’ rebels led by another gladiator, the Gallic Crixus, killing “20,000” including Crixus himself. Read more | What were the lives of gladiators like in ancient Rome? According to Plutarch, this defeat made Spartacus more cautious. “Spartacus was soon great and formidable,” he wrote, “but he took a proper view of the situation. Since he could not expect to overcome the Roman power, he began to lead his army toward the Alps, thinking it necessary for them to cross the mountains and go to their respective homes – some to Thrace and some to Gaul. But his men were now strong in numbers and full of confidence, and would not listen to him, but went ravaging over Italy.” Determined to pursue his escape plan, Spartacus persevered with his march north – but was cut off by one of the consuls (Rome’s highest elected officials), while the other blocked his retreat. However, the consular army amounted to only about 10,000–12,000 men, so splitting them up was a mistake. Spartacus attacked each half of the Roman army in separate engagements: his force having now grown to (supposedly) 120,000, he defeated both, sending the consuls fleeing in separate directions. Buoyed up, Spartacus headed towards Gaul, defeating the 10,000-strong army of the governor of Gallia Cisalpina (in the north of what’s now Italy). Spartacus executed 300 Roman prisoners as a sacrifice in honour of Crixus. He then marched on Rome and – acting as brutally as his former Roman masters – killed all of his remaining prisoners and his pack animals so that he could move as quickly as possible. By now, the consuls had regrouped and together tried to block Spartacus. He defeated them again. Terrifying humiliation That highly trained Roman troops were being repeatedly overcome by an army led by an ex-slave was a devastating and terrifying humiliation for the Roman military. Spartacus, though, understood that his force, for all its size, lacked the equipment and training to take Rome. Instead, he captured the city of Thurii (on the Gulf of Taranto in southern Italy) and traded with merchants for iron and brass to manufacture more arms. Another victory over a Roman army followed. The Spartacus War was now in its third year, and the revolt represented an unmatched opportunity for any Roman general who could crush it. Rome had two great military leaders at the time. One was the fabulously wealthy Marcus Licinius Crassus (c115–53 BC), who had fought on the side of the dictator Sulla in the civil war of the 80s BC. The other was Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (106–48 BC), commonly known as Pompey, who had recently crushed the rebellion of the senator Sertorius in Spain. The Senate placed Crassus in charge of the war. Determined to win at all costs, and desperate to do so before Pompey was called upon to help, he raised an army of six legions and added the consular army of two legions – except those men he executed as punishment for their failure to defeat Spartacus previously. In one ancient account of what followed, Crassus sent Mummius, one of his legates, with two of the legions to fight Spartacus. Mummius was defeated, and some of the survivors fled. Crassus regrouped them, but took the 500 most cowardly and decimated them – executing one in 10. Though brutal, his methods worked: facing 10,000 of Spartacus’s men, who were encamped some way from the main force, Crassus’s force killed two-thirds. With that victory under his belt, he led his men to rout the rest. Spartacus’s army fled south to the sea, hoping to cross to Sicily, but was thwarted when Cilician pirates, who had agreed to help him with sea transport, double-crossed the rebels. He and his men were now trapped in what’s now Calabria, on the far south-western tip of Italy’s toe. Plutarch described how any chance of the rebels escaping from southern Italy was thwarted: “[Crassus] determined to build a wall across the isthmus, thereby at once keeping his soldiers from idleness, and his enemies from provisions. The task was a huge one and difficult, but he accomplished and finished it, contrary to all expectations, in a short time, running a ditch from sea to sea through the neck of land 300 furlongs [about 37 miles] in length and 15 [Roman] feet [about 4.4 metres] in width and depth alike. Above the ditch he also built a wall of astonishing height and strength.” Read more | Was Maximus Decimus Meridius real? These five historical figures inspired Gladiator’s hero Whatever the justice of his cause, we should be under no illusions about Spartacus’s capacity for brutality. According to Appian, “He crucified a Roman prisoner in the space between the two armies to show his own men what fate awaited them if they did not conquer.” Spartacus ignored the fortifications for a while but, as his food supplies dwindled, he was forced to break out with some of his men – and Crassus became worried that Spartacus might now decide to march on Rome. The events that followed are confused in the accounts, and difficult to follow. However, it seems that, though Spartacus suffered the defection of some of his army, he enjoyed some success, too. The last battle Back in Rome, concern that the siege might drag on even longer drove the Senate to invite Pompey and his army, recently returned from Spain, to head south and help defeat Spartacus. This infuriated Crassus, who believed that Pompey would take all the glory from such a victory, and was desperate to fight Spartacus before his rival arrived. So when the rebel leader tried to negotiate terms with Crassus, the Roman bluntly refused. Nevertheless, Crassus seemed to have lost his chance of glory when Spartacus escaped and headed for Brundisium (now Brindisi) on the Adriatic coast in another attempt to flee by sea. The rebel leader, though, abandoned that plan when he heard that Lucullus, proconsul (governor) of Macedonia, had arrived back in Brundisium after defeating supporters of Mithridates, king of Pontus. Crucially, at that point Spartacus defeated a force sent against him under the command of Quintus, one of Crassus’s officers. Until then, Spartacus had kept his head – but now “this success turned out to be the undoing of Spartacus, because it filled his slaves with overconfidence”, said Plutarch. Those rebels attacked the Roman soldiers as they were digging fortifications, and that confrontation forced Spartacus into preparing for a full-blown showdown with Crassus. The story goes that Spartacus was brought his horse, ready to carry him into battle – but instead he pulled out his sword and killed it, saying that if he won this day, he would have many fine horses from the enemy – but if he lost, he would want none. The Roman and rebel armies finally met in open conflict in the clash that became known as the battle of the Silarius River – where, Plutarch and Appian affirm, Spartacus died on the field. Appian wrote that the renegade’s body was never found, but that he “was wounded in the knee, holding his shield in front of him and contending this way against his assailants until he and the great mass of those with him were surrounded and slain”. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/06/HIP2630637-2-CMYK-1184840.jpg" width="4331" height="2886" alt="A black and white depiction of Roman soldiers in hand to hand combat, with spears" title="Spartacus’s death, imagined in a 19th-century engraving. The Roman historian Appian wrote that the rebel leader “was wounded in the knee... he and the great mass of those with him were surrounded and slain”" /> Revenge and recrimination The Romans fell on the remainder of Spartacus’s men, who were now floundering around in leaderless confusion. Crassus had won, but Pompey rolled up in time for his men to cut down the surviving rebels as they tried to escape. Some fled into the mountains, and Crassus pursued them. According to Appian, the last 6,000 fugitives were captured and crucified by Crassus along the Via Appia between Capua and Rome. Pompey, though, claimed that it was he who, by mopping up the vestiges of the rebel forces, had brought the war to an end. The following year, 70 BC, the two men were joint consuls – but disagreed on almost everything. Even worse for Crassus, Pompey was able to hold a magnificent triumph in Rome to celebrate his defeat of Sertorius in Spain, while Crassus was too ashamed to hold one for merely winning a slave war. The Third Servile War had put Rome in a precarious position. Spartacus had dented the military prestige won by Rome over several centuries of expansion, and made a mockery of the military system that the Greek historian Polybius, writing in his Histories, had so feted only 80 years earlier. The Roman historian Florus, writing almost two centuries later, summed up Roman disgust at what had happened: “I know not what name to give to the war which was stirred up at the instigation of Spartacus, for the common soldiers being slaves and their leaders being gladiators … added insult to injury which they inflicted upon Rome.” Read more | “She returned smelling of smoke and sex:” why powerful Roman women were branded nymphomaniacs Never again? Considering the damage to Rome’s prestige, one of the most remarkable aspects of the Spartacus War is that there was no repeat in later years. This certainly wasn’t because Rome changed its stance on slaves: untold numbers continued to be acquired in, for example, Caesar’s Gallic Wars. This reliance on slaves had a profound impact on Roman society. Under the emperors from Augustus (27 BC–AD 14) onwards, historians habitually bemoaned how wealth and power were turning the Romans into feeble, luxury-loving layabouts. With slaves on hand to do almost everything for them – carrying them in litters, cooking, labouring, flapping away flies and even telling them the time – Romans who could afford these unpaid servants were, it was said, no equals of their ancestors, hardy farmers and soldiers. Perhaps one of the reasons nothing like the Spartacus rebellion happened again was because the Romans, once the bloodshed and retribution were over, managed to find a way to give slaves a form of hope. The Romans were as barbaric as any other ancient civilisation – more so, in terms of the sheer scale of their dominance – but there was one crucial difference: they were endlessly pragmatic and adaptable. Not only did the Romans develop a system of manumission, giving slaves the opportunity to gain their liberty, but freedmen and freedwomen were able to run businesses, accumulate savings and see their children grow up not just free but eligible to vote and hold office. That did nothing to overturn the cruelty and injustice of slavery, but the tombstones of freedmen and freedwomen in the cemeteries of Rome, the port at Ostia and at Pompeii bear witness to the lives that some of the more successful built for themselves. It was certainly better than risking crucifixion along the Appian Way by rebelling. Despite the risks they faced in the arena, gladiators, too, could become popular heroes and celebrated heartthrobs – they might even be freed, some becoming wealthy along the way. The truth, of course, was that most of them ended up dead or disabled long before that happened, but the fact is that there was no second Spartacus, nor anyone like him. No gladiator-led slave rebellion ever threatened Rome’s existence again. A slave to the truth? How accurate is Kubrick's 1960 blockbuster, Spartacus? It’s one of the most famous films of the 20th century. When the Stanley Kubrick-directed Spartacus was released in 1960, its scale and ambition caught the imagination of cinema-goers everywhere. But how true to real events is it? The answer is: more than you might think. The central narrative in the film is the conflict between Spartacus (Kirk Douglas) and Crassus (Laurence Olivier), reflecting historical accounts. In the movie, Crassus encounters Spartacus while watching a private bout at Batiatus’s gladiator training school, though is unaware of his identity. In fact, it seems that Crassus never knowingly saw Spartacus in real life. Pompey does not appear in the film, though is mentioned. The success of the rebels’ breakout and defeat of Roman armies is essentially accurate, as is Spartacus being wrong-footed by the duplicity of the Cilician pirates. The brilliant Peter Ustinov played the real lanista Batiatus, shamelessly stealing every scene in which he appeared. Who could forget his pompous arrival with his entourage in search of new gladiators, spying a bedraggled Spartacus being punished for hamstringing a guard? “Hamstrung? How marvellous,” he says, “I wish I’d been here! I’ll take him.” Some key characters in the film are fictitious, including Spartacus’s ex-slave wife from the gladiator barracks, Varinia (Jean Simmons), and Crassus’s slave Antoninus (Tony Curtis), who joins the revolt. In fact, Spartacus’s wife, name unknown, was said to have been Thracian. The screenplay did capture vividly the notion of Rome as a living force beyond the insignificance of human beings. As Crassus, Olivier proclaims that Rome, “that bestrides the known world like a colossus”, cannot be withstood by any man. The city must be served, and all must abase themselves and grovel before Rome, he declares: “You must love her.” The final, celebrated “I’m Spartacus” scene, in which every one of the surviving rebels stands up to claim to be the eponymous hero, is of course pure movie make-believe. The mass execution along the Appian Way was not – this was Rome’s way of deterring any slaves from attempting such a venture in future. In the movie, Varinia shows the dying Spartacus his son, promising that the boy would grow up in liberty: “He is free Spartacus, free.” Yet slavery lasted as long as the Roman empire and beyond. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/06/2GD63MB-CMYK-10a7c48.jpg" width="2916" height="1942" alt="Kirk Douglas (centre) portrays the rebel gladiator Spartacus in Stanley Kubrick’s 1960 movie – which was more historically accurate than you might expect" title="Kirk Douglas (centre) portrays the rebel gladiator Spartacus in Stanley Kubrick’s 1960 movie – which was more historically accurate than you might expect" /> Guy de la Bédoyère is a historian and broadcaster. His latest book is Populus: Living and Dying in the Wealth, Smoke and Din of Ancient Rome (Abacus, 2024)