by Charles Simmins

Created on: January 21, 2009   Last Updated: February 24, 2010

Rome went from Republic to Empire through war. Caesar had been murdered and his power and prestige were up for grabs. When the wars ended and the bodies buried, Rome had an Emperor.

Republican Rome and Imperial Rome held much of the same territory, with the British Isles, parts of eastern France and Western Germany, parts of the Balkans and parts of the Middle East as additions to the Empire. These conquests were far from secure. Nearly constant border warfare with its gains and losses remained a feature of the Empire until its end.

The other constant of Imperial Rome was the turnover of the Imperial throne. Conspiracies, treason, and conquests characterized politics in Rome for centuries. The road to the top of the Empire was paved in blood.

The Roman Empire existed for five centuries. During those years, paved roads, aqueducts, bridges and piers were constructed throughout its lands, and many can still be found today. Trade routes spanned the known world and spices from the Far East could be bought in Roman Britain and grain from Egypt fed Italy. The general peace and prosperity that existed during much of the Empire's tenure had never been seen and after the fall of Rome it would be generations before it was seen again.

The Roman Empire began under Octavian, called Augustus. He ruled for 41 years and provided the foundation for the Imperial form of government. He also named his nephew, Tiberius, as his successor.

It was to be a poor choice. The names of three of the four emperors who followed Augustus are well known, for their cruelty and insanity. Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius and Nero occupied the throne from 14 AD to 58 AD, and all but Claudius are notorious for their acts of depravity while emperor.

A civil war and a dynastic change brought a period of relative calm and Imperial expansion into the third century AD. Then, chaos again. In the forty nine years after 235 AD, two dozen men claimed the throne, some for a matter of days.

Diocletian became emperor near the beginning of the fourth century AD. He found the empire too large to govern and split it in two, by creating several administrative centers closer to the Imperial borders. The Emperor Constantine would move the center at Nicomedia to Byzantium, thus founding the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire. The Eastern Roman Empire would endure until 1453.

Constantine's other, more famous, act was to legalize Christianity in 313. After Constantine came civil wars, rebellions, invasions and longer and longer periods of chaos. By the 400's the military, more correctly the military stationed near Rome, ruled through figurehead emperors. Before the end of that century German tribes that had been recruited as mercenaries took control of Rome, while the outlying territories in the West fell to invasion after invasion.

The Roman Empire, ruled by Italians, ended in 476. The Eastern Empire endured and even flourished for some of the next thousand years. It fell to the Turks and the last historic link to Imperial Rome fell with it.

The Franks would claim the Imperial title under Charlemagne, and that state in part would endure in the Germanies as the Holy Roman Empire until 1806. At times the Emperor would be crowned by the Pope of Rome, at other times the crown was taken. At no time was this empire "Roman" other than having held the city by conquest on occasion.

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