Key figures of ancient Rome

When was ancient Rome, and what defined each stage

Roman history is easiest to hold in three stages. The dates for the earliest stage come from Roman tradition, not from records made at the time.

• The kingdom, 753 to 509 BCE: Rome's own tradition says seven kings ruled until the last, Tarquin the Proud, was expelled. Archaeology confirms a growing settlement on the Palatine hill in this period, but the stories of Romulus and Remus are legend.
• The Republic, 509 to 27 BCE: two consuls elected each year, a Senate of former officials, and assemblies of citizens. Rome conquered Italy, beat Carthage in three Punic Wars and took over the Greek east. Its last century was a run of civil wars.
• The Empire, 27 BCE to 476 CE in the West: one man held real power while the old offices carried on. At its largest, under Trajan in 117 CE, it stretched from Britain to Mesopotamia. The eastern half, ruled from Constantinople, lasted until 1453.

Three things ran through the whole era. First, citizenship: Rome slowly extended it, to Italians after the Social War (91 to 88 BCE) and to almost all free people in the empire in 212 CE. Second, the army, which won the empire and in the end chose the emperors. Third, slavery: enslaved people worked the great estates, the mines and the households, and every figure in this guide lived in a society built on it.

Rome's enemies and rebels: Hannibal and Spartacus

Hannibal Barca (247 to about 183 BCE) was a Carthaginian general from the city in modern Tunisia that fought Rome for control of the western Mediterranean. Polybius reports Hannibal's own story that at nine he swore at an altar, at his father's request, never to be a friend of Rome. In 218 BCE he marched an army with war elephants from Spain over the Alps into Italy, and at Cannae in 216 BCE he surrounded and destroyed a much larger Roman army in a single afternoon. He fought in Italy for fifteen years without taking Rome, lost to Scipio at Zama in 202 BCE, and later took poison in exile rather than be handed over. Every surviving account of him was written by Greeks or Romans.

Spartacus (about 100 to 71 BCE) was a Thracian who had become a gladiator. In 73 BCE he broke out of a gladiator school at Capua with about seventy companions; within months tens of thousands of enslaved people had joined him, and his army beat several Roman forces. Plutarch says he wanted to cross the Alps so his followers could go home, but they preferred to stay and plunder Italy. Marcus Crassus crushed the revolt in 71 BCE and, according to Appian, about six thousand prisoners were crucified along the Appian Way. Be careful with the modern image: no source says he wanted to end slavery as an institution.

The end of the Republic: Julius Caesar and Augustus

Julius Caesar (100 to 44 BCE) rose through Roman politics on huge debts and alliances with Pompey and Crassus, then spent 58 to 50 BCE conquering Gaul, which he described in his own Commentaries. Ancient writers claimed the conquest killed a million people and enslaved another million; those numbers cannot be checked, but the scale was enormous. In January 49 BCE he led his army across the Rubicon, the border of Italy, starting a civil war, and he made himself dictator. His reformed calendar of 365 days with a leap day every four years took effect in 45 BCE. On the Ides of March, 15 March 44 BCE, a group of senators led by Brutus and Cassius stabbed him to death in a meeting of the Senate.

A detail most lists miss: “Et tu, Brute” is Shakespeare's line. Suetonius says Caesar died without a word, though he adds that some people reported him saying in Greek “You too, child” to Brutus.

Augustus (63 BCE to 14 CE) was born Gaius Octavius, Caesar's great-nephew, and was adopted as Caesar's son in his will at eighteen. He took part in the proscriptions of 43 BCE, when Appian says about 300 senators and 2,000 equestrians were listed for death, the orator Cicero among them, and then defeated Mark Antony and Cleopatra at Actium in 31 BCE. In 27 BCE the Senate gave him the name Augustus. He ruled for forty-one years while claiming he had restored the Republic, rebuilt much of the city, and created a standing professional army. His own summary of his career, the Res Gestae, was inscribed in bronze outside his tomb, and copies survive on temple walls in modern Turkey, the best at Ankara.

Read that sentence as what it is: the first emperor describing himself. Compare Julius Caesar vs Augustus for how differently the two men used power.

The empire at its height: Boudica and Marcus Aurelius

Boudica (died 60 or 61 CE) was queen of the Iceni, a people of what is now Norfolk and Suffolk in eastern England. When her husband, a client king allied to Rome, died, Roman officials seized the kingdom; Tacitus says Boudica was flogged and her daughters raped. She led the Iceni, the Trinovantes and other peoples in a revolt that burned Camulodunum (Colchester), Londinium (London) and Verulamium (St Albans), and archaeologists still find the red layer of burnt debris from that year. The governor Suetonius Paulinus defeated her army at a site that is still unknown, probably along Watling Street in the Midlands, and she died soon after, by poison or illness. All we know comes from two Roman historians, Tacitus and Cassius Dio, and the speeches they give her are their own compositions.

Marcus Aurelius (121 to 180 CE) was emperor from 161 to 180, at first jointly with Lucius Verus. His reign was hard: a plague brought back by the army from the east from 165 CE killed many across the empire, and he spent years on campaign against Germanic peoples along the Danube. In camp he wrote private notes to himself in Greek, which we call the Meditations; he did not give them that title and probably never meant them to be published. They are a Stoic's reminders to stay calm, do his duty and treat difficult people as fellow citizens of the world. Christians were persecuted in parts of the empire during his reign, and his son Commodus, who succeeded him, is remembered by ancient writers as one of Rome's worst emperors.

A coda from the late empire: by the time Hypatia taught mathematics and philosophy in Alexandria around 400 CE, Christianity had become the empire's official religion (380 CE). She was murdered by a Christian mob in 415 CE, during a feud between the city's Roman prefect and its bishop. Her story shows how much the empire had changed since Augustus.

Timeline of ancient Rome

Big themes and debates in Roman history

• Why did the Republic fall? Historians point to generals whose soldiers were loyal to them rather than to the state, to the gap between rich and poor in Italy, and to politicians who broke the rules to win. Caesar was a symptom as much as a cause.
• Was Augustus a restorer or a monarch? He kept the Senate, the consuls and the elections, and also controlled the army, the money and the key provinces. Students can test his Res Gestae against Suetonius and Tacitus.
• Seeing Rome through its enemies. Hannibal, Spartacus and Boudica left no writings. Ask of every account: who wrote it, when, and what did they want readers to feel about Rome?
• Slavery and freedom. Rome freed enslaved people more often than many slave societies did, and freedmen could become rich. It also crucified rebels and worked people to death in mines. Both are true.
• Did Rome fall in 476? Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776 to 1789) told a story of collapse. Many historians since the 1970s, led by Peter Brown, prefer to speak of a slow transformation into what they call late antiquity. Others, such as Bryan Ward-Perkins, argue the collapse in the West was real and sharp.

Primary sources to read on ancient Rome

• Polybius, Histories, Book 3: Hannibal's march and Cannae, by a Greek who interviewed survivors and walked the Alpine route.
• Livy, History of Rome, Books 21 and 22: the same war told by a Roman two centuries later.
• Caesar, The Gallic War, Book 1: it opens with “Gaul is a whole divided into three parts”. Notice that Caesar writes about himself in the third person.
• Cicero's letters to Atticus from 49 BCE: a senator's private reactions to the civil war, including a letter from Caesar on his policy of mercy.
• Augustus, Res Gestae: short enough to read in one lesson.
• Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars: gossip and records mixed, written about 121 CE. Use it, but check it.
• Tacitus, Annals, Book 14, chapters 29 to 39: Boudica's revolt.
• Plutarch, Life of Crassus, chapters 8 to 11: Spartacus.
• Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 2: the morning reminder about difficult people.

Free English translations of Suetonius, Caesar and the Meditations are on Project Gutenberg, and many Latin and Greek texts with translations are on the Perseus Digital Library.

How to study ancient Rome: classroom projects

• Two accounts of one battle. Give half the class Polybius on Cannae and half Livy. Each group lists what its author stresses, then compare. This is the core skill of analysing a primary source.
• Put Caesar on trial. Did he save Rome or destroy the Republic? Use Caesar's own Commentaries for the defence and Cicero's letters and Suetonius for the prosecution. Our classroom debate guide has a structure.
• The Res Gestae audit. List ten claims Augustus makes about himself and find one other source that confirms, qualifies or contradicts each.
• Archaeology and text. Compare Tacitus on the burning of London with photographs of the burnt layer from Museum of London excavations.
• Interview an emperor. Write questions for Marcus Aurelius about plague, war and duty, then practise them by voice with Marcus Aurelius on Yuga. The recreation is built from the Meditations and the historical record but it is not the man, and it can be wrong, so quote the Meditations and the historians in your work.

For the Greek world Rome conquered, see key figures of ancient Greece; for the two great conquerors side by side, see Alexander the Great vs Julius Caesar.