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Catilius Severus
The ''gens Catilia'' was a Roman family of imperial times. It is best known from Lucius Catilius Severus, consul in AD 120, and subsequently praefectus urbi. He was the maternal ''proavus'', or great-grandfather, of the emperor Marcus Aurelius. At one time he hoped to obtain the empire himself, but he was removed from his office after expressing his disapprobation at the adoption of Antoninus Pius, who had been his colleague in the consulship. Another Catilius Severus was a relative of the emperor Alexander Severus, and a member of his ''consilium''. He is described by the historian Lampridius as a ''vir omnium doctissimus'', "the most learned of men."''Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology The ''Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology'' (1849, originally published 1844 under a slightly different title) is an encyclopedia/biographical dictionary. Edited by William Smith, the dictionary spans three volumes and 3,700 p ...'', William Smith, Ed ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ancient Rome
In modern historiography, ancient Rome refers to Roman civilisation from the founding of the city of Rome in the 8th century BC to the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD. It encompasses the Roman Kingdom (753–509 BC), Roman Republic (509–27 BC) and Roman Empire (27 BC–476 AD) until the fall of the western empire. Ancient Rome began as an Italic settlement, traditionally dated to 753 BC, beside the River Tiber in the Italian Peninsula. The settlement grew into the city and polity of Rome, and came to control its neighbours through a combination of treaties and military strength. It eventually dominated the Italian Peninsula, assimilated the Greek culture of southern Italy ( Magna Grecia) and the Etruscan culture and acquired an Empire that took in much of Europe and the lands and peoples surrounding the Mediterranean Sea. It was among the largest empires in the ancient world, with an estimated 50 to 90 million inhabitants, roughly 20% of t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire ( la, Imperium Romanum ; grc-gre, Βασιλεία τῶν Ῥωμαίων, Basileía tôn Rhōmaíōn) was the post-Republican period of ancient Rome. As a polity, it included large territorial holdings around the Mediterranean Sea in Europe, North Africa, and Western Asia, and was ruled by emperors. From the accession of Caesar Augustus as the first Roman emperor to the military anarchy of the 3rd century, it was a Principate with Italia as the metropole of its provinces and the city of Rome as its sole capital. The Empire was later ruled by multiple emperors who shared control over the Western Roman Empire and the Eastern Roman Empire. The city of Rome remained the nominal capital of both parts until AD 476 when the imperial insignia were sent to Constantinople following the capture of the Western capital of Ravenna by the Germanic barbarians. The adoption of Christianity as the state church of the Roman Empire in AD 380 and the fall of the Western ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lucius Catilius Severus
Lucius Catilius Severus Julianus Claudius Reginus was a Roman senator and general active during the reigns of Trajan and Hadrian. He was appointed consul twice: the first time in 110 CE (as ''consul suffectus'') with Gaius Erucianus Silo as his colleague; the second in the year 120 (as ''consul ordinarius'') with the future emperor Antoninus Pius as his colleague. Catilius was also the step-great-grandfather of the emperor Marcus Aurelius. Catilius is called Lucius Catilius Severus Julianus in Bithynian inscriptions, Lucius Catilius Severus as a consul, and Catilius Severus in literary sources.Olli Salomies, ''Adoptive and polyonymous nomenclature in the Roman Empire'', (Helsinski: Societas Scientiarum Fenica, 1992), p. 138 His family origins probably lie in Apamea, a town of Bithynia. In his monograph of naming practices in the first centuries of the Roman Empire, Olli Salomies notes that this polyonymous name implies an adoption, "no doubt the son of a Cn. Catilius, not the son ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Roman Consul
A consul held the highest elected political office of the Roman Republic ( to 27 BC), and ancient Romans considered the consulship the second-highest level of the ''cursus honorum'' (an ascending sequence of public offices to which politicians aspired) after that of the censor. Each year, the Centuriate Assembly elected two consuls to serve jointly for a one-year term. The consuls alternated in holding '' fasces'' – taking turns leading – each month when both were in Rome and a consul's ''imperium'' extended over Rome and all its provinces. There were two consuls in order to create a check on the power of any individual citizen in accordance with the republican belief that the powers of the former kings of Rome should be spread out into multiple offices. To that end, each consul could veto the actions of the other consul. After the establishment of the Empire (27 BC), the consuls became mere symbolic representatives of Rome's republican heritage and held very little ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Praefectus Urbi
The ''praefectus urbanus'', also called ''praefectus urbi'' or urban prefect in English, was prefect of the city of Rome, and later also of Constantinople. The office originated under the Roman kings, continued during the Republic and Empire, and held high importance in late Antiquity. The office survived the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, and the last urban prefect of Rome, named Iohannes, is attested in 599. Lançon (2000), p. 45 In the East, in Constantinople, the office survived until the 13th century. Regal period According to Roman tradition, in 753 BC when Romulus founded the city of Rome and instituted the monarchy, he also created the office of ''custos urbis'' (guardian of the city) to serve as the king's chief lieutenant. Appointed by the king to serve for life, the ''custos urbis'' served concurrently as the ''princeps Senatus''. As the second highest office sof state, the ''custos urbis'' was the king's personal representative. In the absence of the king from ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (Latin: áːɾkus̠ auɾέːli.us̠ antɔ́ːni.us̠ English: ; 26 April 121 – 17 March 180) was Roman emperor from 161 to 180 AD and a Stoic philosopher. He was the last of the rulers known as the Five Good Emperors (a term coined some 13 centuries later by Niccolò Machiavelli), and the last emperor of the Pax Romana, an age of relative peace and stability for the Roman Empire lasting from 27 BC to 180 AD. He served as Roman consul in 140, 145, and 161. Marcus Aurelius was born during the reign of Hadrian to the emperor's nephew, the praetor Marcus Annius Verus, and the heiress Domitia Calvilla. His father died when he was three, and his mother and grandfather raised him. After Hadrian's adoptive son, Aelius Caesar, died in 138, the emperor adopted Marcus's uncle Antoninus Pius as his new heir. In turn, Antoninus adopted Marcus and Lucius, the son of Aelius. Hadrian died that year, and Antoninus became emperor. Now heir to the throne, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Antoninus Pius
Antoninus Pius (Latin: ''Titus Aelius Hadrianus Antoninus Pius''; 19 September 86 – 7 March 161) was Roman emperor from 138 to 161. He was the fourth of the Five Good Emperors from the Nerva–Antonine dynasty. Born into a senatorial family, Antoninus held various offices during the reign of Emperor Hadrian. He married Hadrian's niece Faustina, and Hadrian adopted him as his son and successor shortly before his death. Antoninus acquired the cognomen Pius after his accession to the throne, either because he compelled the Senate to deify his adoptive father, or because he had saved senators sentenced to death by Hadrian in his later years. His reign is notable for the peaceful state of the Empire, with no major revolts or military incursions during this time. A successful military campaign in southern Scotland early in his reign resulted in the construction of the Antonine Wall. Antoninus was an effective administrator, leaving his successors a large surplus in the t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Augustan History
The ''Historia Augusta'' (English: ''Augustan History'') is a late Roman collection of biographies, written in Latin, of the Roman emperors, their junior colleagues, designated heirs and usurpers from 117 to 284. Supposedly modeled on the similar work of Suetonius, ''The Twelve Caesars'', it presents itself as a compilation of works by six different authors (collectively known as the ''Scriptores Historiae Augustae''), written during the reigns of Diocletian and Constantine I and addressed to those emperors or other important personages in Ancient Rome. The collection, as extant, comprises thirty biographies, most of which contain the life of a single emperor, but some include a group of two or more, grouped together merely because these emperors were either similar or contemporaneous. The true authorship of the work, its actual date, its reliability and its purpose have long been matters for controversy by historians and scholars ever since Hermann Dessau, in 1889, rejected ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pliny The Younger
Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus, born Gaius Caecilius or Gaius Caecilius Cilo (61 – c. 113), better known as Pliny the Younger (), was a lawyer, author, and magistrate of Ancient Rome. Pliny's uncle, Pliny the Elder, helped raise and educate him. Pliny the Younger wrote hundreds of letters, of which 247 survive, and which are of great historical value. Some are addressed to reigning emperors or to notables such as the historian Tacitus. Pliny served as an imperial magistrate under Trajan (reigned 98–117), and his letters to Trajan provide one of the few surviving records of the relationship between the imperial office and provincial governors. Pliny rose through a series of civil and military offices, the ''cursus honorum''. He was a friend of the historian Tacitus and might have employed the biographer Suetonius on his staff. Pliny also came into contact with other well-known men of the period, including the philosophers Artemidorus and Euphrates the Stoic, during his ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Epistulae (Pliny)
The ''Epistulae'' (, "letters") are a series of personal missives by Pliny the Younger directed to his friends and associates. These Latin letters are a unique testimony of Roman administrative history and everyday life in the 1st century. The style is very different from that in the ''Panegyricus'', and some commentators maintain that Pliny initiated a new genre: the letter written for publication. This genre offers a different type of record than the more usual history; one that dispenses with objectivity but is no less valuable for it. Especially noteworthy among the letters are two in which he describes the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 during which his uncle Pliny the Elder died (''Epistulae'' VI.16, VI.20), and one in which he asks the Emperor for instructions regarding official policy concerning Christians (''Epistulae'' X.96). The ''Epistulae'' are usually treated as two halves: those in Books 1 to 9, which Pliny prepared for publication; and those in Book 10, which w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anthony Birley
Anthony Richard Birley (8 October 1937 – 19 December 2020) was a British ancient historian, archaeologist and academic. He was the son of Margaret Isabel (Goodlet) and historian and archaeologist Eric Birley. Early life and education Anthony Birley was the son of the archaeologist Eric Birley. Eric bought the house next to the archeological site Vindolanda where Anthony and his brother, Robin, began to excavate the site. The brothers took part in many of the excavations there. From 1950 to 1955, Anthony studied at Clifton College, an independent school in Bristol, England. He studied classics at Magdalen College, Oxford, graduating with a first-class Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree in 1960. He remained at the University of Oxford, and completed his Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degree in 1966: his doctoral thesis was titled "The Roman high command from the death of Hadrian to the death of Caracalla, with particular attention to the Danubian wars of M. Aurelius and Commodus". Caree ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alexander Severus
Marcus Aurelius Severus Alexander (1 October 208 – 21/22 March 235) was a Roman emperor, who reigned from 222 until 235. He was the last emperor from the Severan dynasty. He succeeded his slain cousin Elagabalus in 222. Alexander himself was eventually assassinated, and his death marked the beginning of the events of the Crisis of the Third Century, which included nearly fifty years of civil war, foreign invasion, and the collapse of the monetary economy. Alexander was the heir to his cousin, the 18-year-old Emperor Elagabalus. The latter had been murdered along with his mother Julia Soaemias by his own guards, who, as a mark of contempt, had their remains cast into the Tiber river. Alexander and his cousin were both grandsons of Julia Maesa, the sister of empress Julia Domna, who had arranged for Elagabalus's acclamation as emperor by the Third Gallic Legion. Alexander's 13-year reign was the longest reign of a sole emperor since Antoninus Pius. He was also the second-young ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
