50 Fun Facts About Roman Emperors

Which emperor, the victor in the civil wars of AD 69, placed a tax on urine collected from Rome's public toilets?

Vespasian answered his son's complaint about the tax by holding up a coin and asking whether it smelled. Street urinals in France and Italy are still named after him.

Which high office did the emperor Caligula reportedly plan to give his favourite racehorse, Incitatus?

Consul had been the top job in the Roman Republic, and ancient writers agree the plan was never carried out. Incitatus reportedly did get a marble stable and an ivory manger.

Which emperor, who really did fight in the arena, is the villain of the 2000 film Gladiator?

Commodus died far from the arena: conspirators sent his wrestling partner, Narcissus, to strangle him in his bath on the last day of 192.

Which emperor wrote the private Stoic notebooks now published as Meditations while on military campaign?

Marcus Aurelius wrote them in Greek, not Latin, as private notes for his own self-improvement. One book is headed as written among the Quadi, in what is now Slovakia.

Which emperor ordered a 73-mile wall built from coast to coast across northern Britain, beginning in AD 122?

Hadrian visited Britain in 122, and three legions, some 15,000 men, spent about six years building most of the wall.

Nero is popularly said to have fiddled while Rome burned, but which instrument did the emperor really play?

The lyre was his passion: Nero sang to it on stage and entered public contests as a performer. The historian Tacitus placed him at Antium, away from Rome, when the fire started.

Which emperor, the adopted son and heir of Rome's first emperor, was reigning when Jesus was crucified?

Tiberius had by then left Rome for a villa on the island of Capri, where he spent much of his final years while a prefect ran the capital for him.

Which Roman landmark did the emperor Titus open in AD 80 with a hundred days of games?

The Colosseum opened with games in which more than 9,000 wild animals were reportedly killed. Modern estimates put its capacity at around 50,000 people.

Which colour, made from a costly sea-snail dye, was eventually reserved by law for Roman emperors alone?

Purple dye was so scarce that 12,000 snails yielded only enough to colour the trim of one garment. To say a man had donned it came to mean he had taken the throne.

Which Roman family name, later a title for every emperor, gave German the word Kaiser and Russian the word tsar?

Caesar was the surname of the dictator Julius Caesar, whose adopted heir became the first emperor. It turned from a surname into a title in AD 68, when that founding family died out.

Which ruler, born Gaius Octavius, defeated Antony and Cleopatra and became the first Roman emperor in 27 BC?

Augustus was an honorific the Senate voted him in 27 BC, meaning roughly 'the revered'. In 8 BC the month of Sextilis was renamed August after him.

Which emperor won the Battle of the Milvian Bridge in 312 and became the first to convert to Christianity?

Constantine put off his own baptism until he lay on his deathbed in 337, a quarter of a century after the battle.

Which emperor gave up power in 305 and retired to a palace on the Adriatic, where he grew cabbages?

Diocletian was the first emperor to abdicate voluntarily. Urged to take back power, he replied that nobody who saw the cabbages he had planted with his own hands would ask.

Which emperor, sidelined by his family for a limp and stammer, conquered Britain and narrates two Robert Graves novels?

Claudius is said to have been hiding behind a curtain after his nephew's murder when a soldier found him and hailed him as emperor.

Which Spanish-born emperor ruled when the Roman Empire reached its greatest territorial extent, around AD 117?

Trajan was born at Italica, near modern Seville, and the Senate formally honoured him as 'optimus', the best. His ashes were laid beneath his own victory column in Rome.

Which Greek city on the Bosporus was refounded in AD 330 as a new imperial capital modelled on Rome?

Byzantium kept its old name in learned use for a thousand years, and in the sixteenth century historians borrowed it as a label for the whole eastern empire.

Which elite unit, stationed in Rome to protect the emperor, murdered Pertinax in 193 and auctioned off the throne?

The Praetorian Guard sold the throne to a rich senator, who was killed after only 66 days. The emperor who followed dismissed the entire unit.

Which city did the future emperor Titus capture in AD 70, a victory still shown on his arch in Rome?

Jerusalem's Temple treasures, among them the great menorah, are carved on the arch being paraded through Rome. That carving became the model for the emblem of Israel.

Which Germanic general deposed the last Roman emperor in the West in 476 and became the first King of Italy?

Odoacer spared the boy emperor and let him retire to a fortress in Campania. He ruled Italy until 493, when Theodoric murdered him at a banquet meant to seal their peace.

Which woman, mother of the emperor Nero, swam ashore from a sabotaged boat in AD 59 but was killed soon after?

Agrippina was also a sister of Caligula. In Tacitus's telling, the boat had a lead-weighted ceiling built to collapse on her, but a couch broke its fall, and her son had to send men to finish the job.

The nickname Caligula, given to the future emperor Gaius by his father's soldiers, means what in Latin?

Little boot came from the miniature soldier's outfit, army boots included, that he wore as a small boy in his father's camp. His real name was Gaius.

Which volcano erupted in AD 79, a few months after Titus became emperor, burying two towns in southern Italy?

Mount Vesuvius destroyed Pompeii and Herculaneum, and Titus won praise for his generosity to the survivors. A fire in Rome the next year gave him a second disaster to manage.

Which Stoic philosopher and playwright served as tutor and adviser to the young emperor Nero?

Seneca was recalled from exile on Corsica to take the job. In AD 65 his former pupil forced him to take his own life over a plot he may have had no part in.

Which sixth-century eastern Roman emperor built Hagia Sophia and had centuries of Roman law gathered into one code?

Justinian caused a scandal by marrying Theodora, a former actress, after his uncle changed the law to allow it. She became one of the most influential figures of his reign.

Which queen of Palmyra seized Egypt and much of the Roman East before the emperor Aurelian captured her in 272?

Zenobia was spared execution, and most accounts say she was paraded in Aurelian's triumph and lived out her days near Rome. She is said to have claimed a family link to Cleopatra to strengthen her hold on Egypt.

Which king's army sacked Rome in 410, its first fall to a foreign enemy in almost 800 years?

Alaric features in a famous, likely apocryphal tale: told that Rome had perished, the emperor Honorius panicked, thinking his pet chicken of that name had died.

Which emperor, raised a Christian, tried to revive the old pagan gods in the 360s and is nicknamed the Apostate?

Julian was the last non-Christian ruler of the empire. His revival ended abruptly in 363, when he was mortally wounded during a retreat from Persia.

The Antonine Wall, begun in AD 142 on the orders of the emperor Antoninus Pius, crosses which modern country?

Scotland's wall was built of turf on a stone base and was abandoned only eight years after it was finished, when its garrisons pulled back south.

Which Latin name is given to the roughly 200 years of stability that began under the first Roman emperor?

Pax Romana means 'Roman peace' and is usually dated from 27 BC to AD 180. The empire's population is estimated to have peaked in those years at about 70 million.

According to Suetonius, what did Caligula order his troops to collect as spoils after abandoning an invasion of Britain?

Seashells were, he declared, plunder from the Ocean that was owed to Rome. Suetonius adds that he then built a tall lighthouse to mark the victory.

Which emperor, who died in 395, was the last to rule both the eastern and western halves of the Roman Empire?

Theodosius left the east to his son Arcadius and the west to his son Honorius, a boy of ten. No later emperor ruled the whole empire alone.

Which emperor, nicknamed after a Gaulish cloak, granted citizenship to nearly all free inhabitants of the empire in 212?

Caracalla had his brother and co-emperor Geta murdered within a year of their father's death. The public baths he built in Rome were the second largest the city ever had.

In which English city, known to the Romans as Eboracum, did the emperor Septimius Severus die in 211?

York was his base for a campaign beyond the northern frontier with an army of 50,000. Born at Leptis Magna in what is now Libya, he died at the opposite end of the empire.

Which Latin title meaning 'first citizen' did Rome's early emperors adopt to avoid the appearance of monarchy?

Princeps is the root of the English word 'prince'. From the late third century emperors dropped the modest pose and took the title 'dominus', a word once used for slave-owners.

Which title of ancient Rome's chief priest was held by the emperors and is still used by the pope?

Pontifex Maximus means 'supreme pontiff'. The emperor Gratian gave the title up, probably in 383, because of its pagan associations, and the bishops of Rome later adopted it.

To which city, protected by swamps and marshes, did the western emperor Honorius move his court in 402?

Ravenna stayed the western capital for most of the fifth century. So many mosaics survive there that it is often called the capital of mosaics.

Whose army killed the last eastern Roman emperor when it stormed his capital in 1453?

The Ottomans were led by a 21-year-old sultan, Mehmed II. The last emperor is thought to have died fighting in a final stand, and Greek folklore remembers him as the Marble Emperor.

Which wife of Rome's first emperor stayed married to him for 51 years and was later rumoured to have poisoned his figs?

Livia married him three days after giving birth to her previous husband's son. Modern historians think the poisoned-figs rumour unlikely, and her grandson later declared her a goddess.

Domitian, assassinated by court officials in AD 96, was the last emperor of which dynasty?

Flavian rule lasted 27 years across a father and his two sons. Suetonius and Cassius Dio allege that Domitian officially titled himself 'Lord and God'.

Which emperor, raised to power at 14 as high priest of a Syrian sun god, was murdered at 18 in 222?

Elagabalus brought his god's sacred stone to Rome and ranked it above Jupiter, which shocked the city. The army revolt that made him emperor was organised by his grandmother.

Which emperor was taken alive by the Persian king Shapur I in 260, the first ever captured in battle?

Valerian was held prisoner for the rest of his life. One hostile Christian writer claimed the Persian king used him as a footstool when mounting his horse.

At which battle in AD 9 did the chieftain Arminius wipe out three legions of Rome's first emperor?

Teutoburg Forest left the Rhine as Rome's frontier with Germania. Arminius knew his enemy well: he held Roman citizenship and had served as an officer under the general he ambushed.

Which system, introduced in AD 293, shared rule of the Roman Empire among senior emperors and their junior colleagues?

Tetrarchy means 'rule of four'. The arrangement lasted barely a generation: by 324 one man had beaten every rival and ruled alone again.

Which of Rome's seven hills became the exclusive domain of the emperors, who covered it with their official residences?

The Palatine is the origin of the word 'palace' in English and many other languages. Ruins of several emperors' homes can still be seen on the hill.

At which Greek festival in AD 67 was Nero declared winner of a chariot race after being thrown from his chariot?

The Olympic Games were moved from their proper year so that he could compete. He was crowned on the grounds that he would have won had he finished the race, and the judges later had to repay his bribes.

Which people killed the emperor Valens and destroyed about two-thirds of his army at Adrianople in 378?

The Goths had come to the Danube as refugees from the Huns only two years earlier. The emperor's body was never found after the rout.

Which so-called barracks emperor, proclaimed in 235, was the first from outside the senatorial and equestrian classes?

Maximinus Thrax ruled for three years, and his reign is often taken as the start of the Crisis of the Third Century.

Which emperor led the games held in 248 to celebrate the one thousandth anniversary of Rome's founding?

Philip the Arab was born in what is now Syria. Rome's official chronology dated the city's founding to 21 April 753 BC, and he was overthrown and killed the year after the party.

Which modern Latin phrase describes the Roman practice of erasing a disgraced emperor's name and statues?

Damnatio memoriae was never a Roman term: it first appeared in a German thesis of 1689. Coins of the murdered emperor Geta proved impossible to recall, though saying his name meant death.

Which palace complex did Nero build across the heart of Rome after the great fire of AD 64, artificial lake included?

The Golden House was nearly finished when Nero died four years later. Its buried rooms were rediscovered in the Renaissance, and their painted 'grotesques' thrilled the artists of the day.