A marble portrait head of the emperor Augustus
Marble portrait of the emperor Augustus, ca. 14–37 CE
Marked Rome

SubjectIn outline · lessons being written

The Roman Empire

At its largest, under Trajan in AD 117, the Roman empire stretched from Britain to Iraq. It was held together by an army, roads, laws, Latin and Greek, and later by Christianity. The western half ended in AD 476; the eastern half lasted until 1453.

Date
27 BC to AD 476 in the westVI · The classical world
Place
Rome · Lepcis Magna · Palmyra · ConstantinopleEurope, The Middle East, Africa
Laid out as
An empireOne power across a long stretch of time: how it grew, held together, and came apart.
Lessons
6 planned, none written yet

The lessons we plan

Titles may change as they are written

  1. IAugustus and the peace
  2. IIRoads and aqueducts
  3. IIICitizens, subjects and the enslaved
  4. IVCrisis of the third century
  5. VConstantine and Christianity
  6. VIThe fall of the West

Still to come

The people and objects these lessons will cover

People

  • Augustus
  • Livia
  • Trajan
  • Hadrian
  • Septimius Severus
  • Constantine

Objects

  • The Pont du Gard
  • Trajan’s Column
  • The Vindolanda tablets

Where it sits

All of human history, era by era

Early human ancestryOur species and the Old Stone AgeFarming and the New Stone AgeFirst cities and the Bronze AgeThe Iron Age and growing statesThe classical worldAfter the empiresMedieval networks and empiresOceans crossedRevolutions and the first factoriesIndustry, empire and world warThe world since 1945

27 BC to AD 476. Each era is drawn the same width, so the earliest are squeezed: era II alone is over 300,000 years.

Nearby in time and place

This page is an outline. The summary above is a starting point; each lesson, when it is written, will give its sources, its pictures and where historians disagree. Spotted a mistake?