The year 326 was meant to be a year of feast and celebration for the emperor Constantine. His last remaining rival Licinius was dead, the Roman Empire was united again under a single emperor and for the moment the unity within the Christian church had been restored thanks to the…
In the spring of 324 Constantine and Licinius were both ready for war. According to Zosimus, Constantine had gathered an army of almost 120,000 infantry and 10,000 cavalry, while Licinius commanded almost 150,000 infantry and 15,000 cavalry.[1] These numbers may remind us of the battle of Lugdunum, fought in the…
During the Roman Republic the Senate had been, from time to time, the most powerful body of the state. During the Principate its power had been greatly reduced, while during the Dominate and the reign of the emperor Diocletianus the Senate had become a marginal factor at best. Constantine more…
In February of the year 313 Constantine and Licinius met in Mediolanum (Milan) in Northern Italy. There the two men formalised the alliance that had already been in effect since 311. Licinius married Constantia, Constantine’s Christian half-sister. The emperors furthermore agreed that Constantine would rule over the western half of…
On paper Galerius was the senior augustus within the Tetrarchy. We do not know his exact age, but at the beginning of 311 he was well into his fifties. The old emperor had become a shadow of a man, perhaps as a result of colon cancer. That is at least…
On paper, the Tetrarchy had been an excellent idea: two senior emperors (augusti) and two junior emperors (caesares) would rule over the vast Roman Empire in perfect harmony. When Diocletianus, who had designed the system, and his co-emperor Maximianus abdicated in 305, the system of succession seemed to be working…
In Antiquity, Trieste was known as Tergeste. It is not entirely clear who the original inhabitants were. Perhaps they were part of the Histri or the Celtic Carni, but it is also possible that they were Veneti. The name Tergeste (Terg-este) in any case seems to support the Venetic hypothesis,…
After the celebration of his Vicennalia, Diocletianus had left for Ravenna. The emperor was now in his sixties and his health was not good. At the start of the year 304 he nevertheless became consul for the ninth time, together with Maximianus, who was now consul for the eighth time.…
Diocletianus styled himself dominus et deus, but towards the end of his reign as emperor it was crystal clear that he was not omnipotent. There was one enemy that proved to be invincible: inflation. Although the emperor tried to blame greedy and depraved individuals, the inflation had in fact been…
In the period discussed here, the Crisis of the Third Century seemed like a thing of the distant past. The Tetrarchy functioned well and the four emperors of the Roman Empire won important victories on all fronts. Rebellions were crushed, rebel leaders were eliminated, and after a few initial setbacks…
In the third century the vast Roman Empire had at least 50 million inhabitants. Since Caracalla’s Constitutio Antoniniana of 212 almost all of these possessed Roman citizenship, provided that they were freeborn. The large majority of the people lived in the country or in one of the many hundreds of…
In the year 284 the Roman Empire had two augusti, who were not on speaking terms. Of the two, Carinus was the legitimate emperor. Immediately after the death of his father Carus in the summer of 283 he had travelled to Rome to claim the purple. For about a year…
What a disappointment! I had hoped to get onto the ancient Via Latina from the Via Demetriade, but the archaeological terrain with the remains of the road turned out to be closed off with a fence. And that fence happened to be locked. I therefore took a couple of photos…
In the summer of 2018 I made a highly enjoyable walk along the famous Via Appia and published an extensive report about it on this website. Part of my walk happened to be a small piece of the less well-known Via Latina. Back then I already decided that one day…
The Museo Nazionale Romano opened its doors as early as 1890. The immense collection of the museum is currently distributed across four locations: the Palazzo Massimo and Palazzo Altemps, which have been discussed previously, the Crypta Balbi and the Baths of Diocletianus. The baths can be considered the museum’s original…
The Palazzo Altemps was named after the German cardinal Mark Sittich von Hohenems (1533-1595). The cardinal’s mother Chiara de’ Medici was a sister of Pope Pius IV, who sat on Saint Peter’s throne between 1559 and 1565. Pius IV will chiefly be remembered as the pope who presided over the…
The nineteenth-century Palazzo Massimo is currently the main seat of the prestigious Museo Nazionale Romano, which is completely dedicated to Roman civilisation. The museum has much to offer to visitors, basically too much for a single visit. This means it is virtually impossible to write a post about the museum…
Those who enter the village of Grand in the Vosges completely unprepared, will perhaps wonder how on earth it ever got its name. With a population of less than 400 souls, Grand is anything but grand. But the name Grand has nothing to do with the French adjective for ‘large’.…
The picturesque town of Desenzano on the shores of Lake Garda once had an imposing Roman villa. Like all Roman villas, this villa was primarily an agricultural estate. The part where the buildings related to agricultural production must have stood has not been excavated. The residential part has, although the…
Jonvelle in the Haute-Saône is a village with less than 125 inhabitants. Its main attraction is the Musée des Vestiges Gallo-Romain, which is dedicated to the remains of a villa from the Roman age. Nowadays we tend to think of a villa as a large house in the country, but…