The Imperial Families Of Ancient Rome

Every Roman emperor, recognized or ephemeral, is here assembled with biographical and historical background & as complete a tabular record as possible of each family with brief biographical notes. The introduction guides readers through the events around the Empire's founding, Roman society, genealogical complexities and an analysis at the sources.

The Roman Empire was a spectacular polity of unprecedented scale which stretched from Scotland to Sudan and from Portugal to Persia. It survived for over 500 years in the west and 1,480 years in the east. Ruling it was a task of frightening complexity; few emperors made a good fist of it, yet thanks to dynastic connections, an efficient bureaucracy and a governing class eager to attain the kudos of holding the highest offices, it survived the mad, bad and incompetent emperors remarkably well. Although not always apparent, it was the interplay of emperors' kin and family connections which also made a major contribution to controlling the empire. This book aims to put on record the known ancestry, relations and descendants of all emperors, including ephemeral ones and show connections from one dynasty to another as completely as possible, accompanied by concise biographical notes about each ruler and known facts about family members, which include Romans both famous and obscure. It also attempts to distinguish between certainty and possibility and to eliminate obvious fiction. The introduction provides a narrative lead-in to the creation of the empire, attempts to clarify the complexities of Roman genealogy and assess the sources.

Provides a general picture of the main features of the Roman family and looks at important legal aspects such as property rights, dowries, divorce, and the authority of the male with its links to political power.

Brings together what historians, anthropologists, and philologists have learned about the family in ancient Rome. Among the topics: family relations and the law, marriage, children in the Roman family, and the family through the life cycle. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

"May Steven Saylor's Roman empire never fall. A modern master of historical fiction, Saylor convincingly transports us into the ancient world...enthralling!" —USA Today on Roma Continuing the saga begun in his New York Times bestselling novel Roma, Steven Saylor charts the destinies of the aristocratic Pinarius family, from the reign of Augustus to height of Rome's empire. The Pinarii, generation after generation, are witness to greatest empire in the ancient world and of the emperors that ruled it—from the machinations of Tiberius and the madness of Caligula, to the decadence of Nero and the golden age of Trajan and Hadrian and more. Empire is filled with the dramatic, defining moments of the age, including the Great Fire, the persecution of the Christians, and the astounding opening games of the Colosseum. But at the novel's heart are the choices and temptations faced by each generation of the Pinarii. Steven Saylor once again brings the ancient world to vivid life in a novel that tells the story of a city and a people that has endured in the world's imagination like no other.

The turbulent decade of the 60s CE brought Rome to the brink of collapse. It began with Nero's ruthless elimination of Julio-Claudian rivals and ended in his suicide and the civil wars that followed. Suddenly Rome was forced to confront an imperial future as bloody as its Republican past and a ruler from outside the house of Caesar. The anonymous historical drama Octavia is the earliest literary witness to this era of uncertainty and upheaval. In Staging Memory, Staging Strife, Lauren Donovan Ginsberg offers a new reading of how the play intervenes in the contests over memory after Nero's fall. Though Augustus and his heirs had claimed that the Principate solved Rome's curse of civil war, the play reimagines early imperial Rome as a landscape of civil strife with a ruling family waging war both on itself and on its people. In doing so, the Octavia shows how easily empire becomes a breeding ground for the passions of discord. In order to rewrite the history of Rome's first imperial dynasty, the Octavia engages with the literature of Julio-Claudian Rome, using the words of Rome's most celebrated authors to stage a new reading of that era and its ruling family. In doing so, the play opens a dialogue about literary versions of history and about the legitimacy of those historical accounts. Through an innovative combination of intertextual analysis and cultural memory theory, Ginsberg contextualizes the roles that literature and the literary manipulation of memory play in negotiating the transition between the Julio-Claudian and Flavian regimes. Her book claims for the Octavia a central role in current debates over both the ways in which Nero and his family were remembered as well as the politics of literary and cultural memory in the early Roman empire.

In this lively and detailed study, Beth Severy examines the relationship between the emergence of the Roman Empire and the status and role of this family in Roman society. The family is placed within the social and historical context of the transition from republic to empire, from Augustus' rise to sole power into the early reign of his successor Tiberius. Augustus and the Family at the Birth of the Roman Empire is an outstanding example of how, if we examine "private" issues such as those of family and gender, we gain a greater understanding of "public" concerns such as politics, religion and history. Discussing evidence from sculpture to cults and from monuments to military history, the book pursues the changing lines between public and private, family and state that gave shape to the Roman imperial system.

Patricians in the Roman Empire provides a glimpse into the day-to-day lives of ancient Rome's ruling class. Emperors, senators, and generals wielded almost unimaginable power at the height of the empire, and their decisions shaped not just the people they ruled but the history of Rome. This book examines the consequences of that power, from the luxury of a patrician life to the power plays that could erase it all.

Using all available sources, Boatwright explores the constraints and activities of the women of Rome's imperial families from 35 BCE to 235 CE. Livia, Agrippina the Younger, Julia Domna, and others feature in this richly illustrated investigation of change, continuity, historical contingency, and personal agency in imperial women's pursuits and representations.

This volume contains a series of articles that examine the Roman family in Italy and the empire using a wide range of evidence and considering a number of critical issues. Its focus on regional differences in family structure, forms of marriage, and kinship patterns make it the first publication to include targeted study of the family in the Roman provinces. The chapters cover Roman Egypt, Judaea, Spain, Gaul, North Africa, and Pannonia, and make use of both conventional textual sources and epigraphic evidence and material that is less frequently treated, including the medical writers and the Justinianic receipts.