therealcalicali reblogged
therealcalicali reblogged
history meme: 02/02 natural disasters | Eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD
In the year of 79 AD, Mount Vesuvius erupted in one of the most catastrophic and famous eruptions in European history. Historians have learned about the eruption from the eyewitness account of Pliny the Younger, a Roman administrator and poet. Mount Vesuvius spawned a deadly cloud of volcanic gas, stones, ash and fumes to a height of 33 km (20.5 miles), spewing molten rock and pulverized pumice at the rate of 1.5 million tons per second, ultimately releasing a hundred thousand times the thermal energy released by the Hiroshima bombing.[2] The towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum were obliterated and buried underneath massive pyroclastic flows. An estimated 16,000 people died from the eruption. [x]
therealcalicali reblogged
history meme: 01/03 inventions whatever i want | The Prætorian Guard
The Praetorian Guard was a tremendously powerful faction in Rome, originally created by the Emperor Augustus as his personal “secret service” bodyguards. Equal parts secret service, special forces and urban administrators, Rome’s Praetorian Guard was one of the ancient world’s most prestigious military units, an elite recruitment of Roman citizens and Latins, known to engage in espionage, intimidation, arrests and killings to protect the interests of the Roman emperor.
But even if the Praetorians’ may have been tasked with protecting the Roman Emperor, they were also the single greatest threat to his life. The unit was a major player in the webs of deceit that characterized imperial Rome, and they were willing to slaughter and install new emperors when tempted by promises of money or power. Disgruntled Praetorians famously engineered the assassination of Caligula and the selection of Claudius as his successor in A.D. 41. Among others, the Guard also played a part in the murder of Commodus in 192, Caracalla in 217, Elagabalus in 222 and Pupienus and Balbinus in 238. In some cases, the Praetorians were partially responsible for both installing and murdering a would-be emperor. Likewise, Emperor Pertinax was confirmed by the Praetorians in 193 and then slain just three months later when he tried to force them to accept new disciplinary measures.
After murdering Emperor Pertinax, the Praetorian Guard tried to cash in on the power vacuum by placing the Roman throne on the auction block. Following a brief bidding war between former consul Didius Julianus and Pertinax’s father-in-law, the Praetorians reportedly sold control of the Empire to Julianus for the enormous sum of 25,000 Roman sesterces per man. The incident is one of the most notorious episodes in the unit’s history, but some historians argue that this account of is overblown.
When Constantine the Great, launching an invasion of Italy in 312, forced a confrontation with the Emperor Maxentius, the Praetorian cohorts made up most of the army; Maxentius was defeated and died on the field. Later in Rome, the victorious Constantine definitively disbanded the remnants of the Praetorian Guard. The soldiers were sent out to various corners of the Empire, and the Castra Praetoria were dismantled.
therealcalicali reblogged
history | germania | west germanic peoples
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therealcalicali reblogged
ancient history meme | ½ empires: the roman empire
The Roman Empire was the post-Roman Republic period of the ancient Roman civilization, and lasted approximately 1,500 years compared to the 500 years of the Republican era. The first two centuries of the empire’s existence were a period of unprecedented political stability and prosperity known as the Pax Romana, or “Roman Peace”. Following Octavian’s victory, the size of the empire was dramatically increased, including territories around the Mediterranean Sea in Europe, Africa and Asia. At its height (c. 117 AD), it was the most extensive political and social structure in western civilization. By 285 AD the empire had grown too vast to be ruled from the central government at Rome and so was divided by Emperor Diocletian into a Western and an Eastern Empire. The Roman Empire began when Augustus Caesar became the first emperor of Rome and ended, in the west, when the last Roman emperor, Romulus Augustulus, was deposed by the Germanic King Odoacer, in 476 AD. In the east, it continued as the Byzantine Empire until the death of Constantine XI and the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. The influence of the Roman Empire on western civilization was profound in its lasting contributions to virtually every aspect of western culture.
therealcalicali reblogged
“Let them hate us as long as they fear us.”
—
“Oderint dum metuant.”
Caligula
(via hellyeahtotalwarquotes)
