This volume presents the proceedings of the seventh workshop of the international thematic network 'Impact of Empire', which concentrates on the history of the Roman Empire and brings together ancient historians, archaeologists, classicists and specialists on Roman law from some 30 European and North American universities. The seventh volume focuses on the impact that crises had on the development and functioning of the Roman Empire from the Republic to Late Imperial times. The following themes are treated: the role of crises in the empire as a whole; the relationship between crises and the...

This was a time of civil war, anarchy, intrigue, and assassination.Between 193 and 284 the Roman Empire knew more than twenty-five emperors, and an equal number of usurpers. All of them had some measure of success, several of them often ruling different parts of the Empire at the same time. Rome's traditional political institutions slid into vacuity and armies became the Empire's most powerful institutions, proclaiming their own imperial champions and deposing those they held to be incompetent.Yet despite widespread contemporary dismay at such weak government this period was also one in which...

The emperor Commodus (AD 180-192) has commonly been portrayed as an insane madman, whose reign marked the beginning of the end of the Roman Empire. Indeed, the main point of criticism on his father, Marcus Aurelius, is that he appointed his son as his successor. Especially Commodus behaviour as a gladiator, and the way he represented himself with divine attributes (especially those of Hercules), are often used as evidence for the emperor s presumed madness. However, this political biography will apply modern interpretations of the spectacles in the arena, and of the imperial cult, to...

Ancestry played a continuous role in the construction and portrayal of Roman emperorship in the first three centuries AD. Emperors and Ancestors is the first systematic analysis of the different ways in which imperial lineage was represented in the various 'media' through which images of emperors could be transmitted. Looking beyond individual rulers, Hekster evaluates evidence over an extended period of time and differentiates between various types of sources, such as inscriptions, sculpture, architecture, literary text, and particularly central coinage, which forms the most convenient...