Imperial Rome: A Captivating Guide to Events and Facts You Should Know About the Roman Empire (The Ancient Romans)

Imperial Rome saw the rise of good and bad emperors. How much do you really know about their lives?

To this day, we feel the influence of imperial Rome. After all, imperial Rome was one of the first successful “melting pots” of cultures. The Romans took what worked and discarded what didn’t work, showing that it was possible to have a stable, centralized government over an extremely large area.

But there’s also another side to imperial Rome. Intrigue, treachery, love of power, narcissism, and lunacy—these are all interrelated in the fascinating history of imperial Rome. If you like Game of Thrones, you’ll most certainly like this book; the only thing is, it has no dragons.

But you don’t need fictional beings to appreciate what very real humans did thousands of years ago. And Roman emperors, in spite of being worshiped like gods, were just that: real human beings with their own good and bad sides. By delving deeper into the lives of Roman emperors, we can understand Roman history and ourselves better.

There is much to discover within the pages of this book. Some of what you learn includes the following:

• The downfall of the Roman Republic and the emergence of the illustrious Roman Empire;
• Caesar’s life and conquests, as well as his ultimate assassination at the hands of his senators;
• The fascinating life of Octavian Augustus and the start of the Pax Romana;
• Gradual “reduction” in the quality of emperors, starting with bureaucratic Tiberius, who ultimately left Rome;
• The incredible life of Tiberius’s successor, Caligula, who gained much notoriety;
• The long reign of Emperor Claudius, whose two wives, Messalina and Agrippina the Younger, shaped the future of Rome;
• Nero, who (maybe) set Rome on fire and who was most certainly a very unusual emperor with a penchant for the arts;
• The Flavians and the Five Good Emperors, who led imperial Rome into its most prolific period;
• The gradual but consistent erosion of traditional Roman values and its ultimate dissolution into early medieval Europe;
• And so much more!