Free Republic

The ruins of a Roman villa near Mount Vesuvius, discovered under the remnants of another villa built above it many years later, may have been where Augustus, the first Roman emperor, drew his last breath, archaeologists say.The earlier villa, which excavations suggest was inhabited before the first century A.D., seems to have been destroyed in the devastating eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79, and the later villa was built there in the second century...She noted that the site corresponds with writings by the Roman historians Tacitus, Suetonius and Cassius Dio, who recorded that Augustus died in A.D. 14 at...

The first major recorded battle of the Roman invasion of Britain under the orders of the emperor Claudius, the battle is thought to have been fought at a crossing of the River Medway, near the modern day city of Rochester in Kent, England, and it raged for nearly two days.The British force was led by two brothers: Togodumnus, king of the Catuvellauni, and Caratacus, a chieftain of the same tribe. The Roman invasion force, under the command of Aulus Plautius, consisted of four legions, a force approximately 20,000 strong. On hearing of the Roman landing at Richborough, British resistance united...

Conqueror of Dacia. Subduer of Parthia. The Roman Emperor Marcus Ulpius Traianus — or Trajan as he is known to history — died on August 8 in the year AD 117. By most measures, Trajan was a superior emperor. In his satirical work The Caesars, written in AD 361, the emperor Julian the Apostate puts these words into the mouth of Trajan in defense of his reign and exploits before the gods: "O Zeus and ye other gods, when I took over the empire it was in a sort of lethargy and much disordered by the tyranny that had long...