Rome had emperors for five centuries in the west and far longer in the east. These ten shaped what the office became.
The Roman emperor was never a job with a clean job description. Augustus took care to present himself as a first citizen rather than a king, and the powers he assembled were a bundle of republican offices held simultaneously. What followed was an office defined largely by whoever occupied it, with no fixed rule of succession and no reliable way to remove a bad occupant except violence. That instability explains a good deal of Roman political history. Adoption produced a run of competent rulers in the second century; inheritance by sons produced Commodus. The army made and unmade emperors so often in the third century that a reign of five years counted as long. Diocletian's answer, dividing the work between four men, was the first serious attempt to make the succession something other than a lottery.
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Play it insteadAnswer: D. Hadrian
Why: The wall ran roughly 117 kilometres from the Tyne to the Solway. A shorter turf wall was pushed further north in Scotland a few years later and abandoned within a generation.
Answer: C. Trajan
Why: The conquests of Dacia and Mesopotamia marked the high point around AD 117. His successor gave up the eastern gains almost immediately as indefensible.
Answer: B. Constantine I
Why: The Edict of Milan of 313 ended official persecution, and Constantinople was dedicated in 330. Christianity became the state religion only later, under Theodosius I.
Answer: A. Diocletian
Why: Two senior Augusti and two junior Caesars governed different regions from around 293. He is also one of very few emperors to retire rather than die in office.
Answer: D. Marcus Aurelius
Why: He wrote them in Greek, much of it while on campaign on the Danube frontier. They were never intended for publication.
Answer: C. Vespasian
Why: Work started around AD 72 and his son Titus opened it in 80. Its formal name, the Flavian Amphitheatre, comes from the family that paid for it.
Answer: B. Nero
Why: His death in AD 68 was followed by the Year of the Four Emperors. The fighting ended only when Vespasian took control the following year.
Answer: A. Claudius
Why: Caesar had landed twice in the 50s BC without leaving a garrison behind. This invasion led to nearly four centuries of Roman rule in the south.
Answer: D. Being adopted as heirs by their predecessors
Why: Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius each named a successor from outside their immediate family. The pattern broke when Marcus Aurelius left the throne to his son Commodus.
Answer: C. Romulus Augustulus
Why: The commander Odoacer removed him and ruled Italy himself without taking the title. Some historians prefer Julius Nepos, who kept a claim until 480, which is why the date is a convention rather than a clean break.
Floods, tricksters and dying gods turn up across unconnected cultures. Three explanations, and how to tell which applies.
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