Roman Empire
625 BC to 476 AD
Research and Reference
- Holy Roman Empire: BritannicaHoly Roman Empire, the varying complex of lands in western and central Europe ruled by the Holy Roman emperor, a title held first by Frankish and then by German kings for 10 centuries. The Holy Roman Empire existed from 800 to 1806.
- Holy Roman Empire: Credo ReferenceA Credo Reference landing page on the Holy Roman Empire.
Streaming Media
- Books that Matter: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman EmpireIn this chapter-by-chapter guide, Professor Leo Damrosch of Harvard University helps you navigate the Decline and Fall’s themes, structure, and lasting influence. Whether you’ve read the book before or never knew where to start, these 24 lectures are an authoritative study of a once-mighty empire - and the great book that became its classic eulogy and epitaph.
- Dawn of the Roman EmpireYour course opens by setting the stage for Rome’s transition from a Republic to an Empire. Octavian, overlooking the Ionian Sea after the ferocious Battle of Actium, has just secured victory in a civil war against Mark Antony. He will soon achieve what Julius Caesar could not: one-man rule over Rome. Delve into this major turning point in world history.
- Roman Emperors: Good, Bad, and CrazyFollow the fortunes of the empire during the two centuries following Augustus and Tiberius, which included not only some of Rome's wisest and most conscientious emperors, like Trajan and Marcus Aurelius, but also some of its most notorious and deranged tyrants, like Caligula and Nero.
- Roman ImperialismBy the time the republic found that it didn't merely possess but was an empire, Roman rule extended from the Atlantic to Mesopotamia, and from the North Sea to the Sahara Desert. How and why did this happen?
Perspectives
The Holy Roman Empire 1495-1806
Over the last forty years or so, research on the history of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation (1495-1806) has been transformed almost beyond recognition. Once derided as a political non-entity, a chaotic assemblage of countless principalities and statelets that lacked coercive powerand was stifled by encrusted structures and procedures, the Reich has been fully rehabilitated by more recent historiography. It is now being hailed by some as a model of peaceful conflict resolution in the centre of Europe which, in the long run, was able to defuse the religious tensions createdby the confessional divide of the sixteenth century and to protect its smaller members against the voracious appetite of more powerful neighbours.Some historians even draw lessons from the history of the Holy Roman Empire for our present. The multi-layered, federal structure of the old Empire and its system of collective decision-making have been held up as a model for a peace-loving, multi-ethnic Europe, a European Union avant la lettre.Other historians have described the Reich as the first German nation-state, a political configuration based not on power and expansion, but on rights and liberties, the rule of law and a structural lack of capacity for aggression. This volume takes stock of this research, particularly in thecritical areas of the Empire's constitutional, religious and social history. A notable feature is the presentation of several decades of research in concise, accessible essays by continental scholars, much of it appearing in English for the first time.
The Roman Empire and Its Germanic Peoples
The names of early Germanic warrior tribes and leaders resound in songs and legends; the real story of the part they played in reshaping the ancient world is no less gripping. Herwig Wolfram's panoramic history spans the great migrations of the Germanic peoples and the rise and fall of their kingdoms between the third and eighth centuries, as they invaded, settled in, and ultimately transformed the Roman Empire. As Germanic military kings and their fighting bands created kingdoms, and won political and military recognition from imperial governments through alternating confrontation and accommodation, the "tribes" lost their shared culture and social structure, and became sharply differentiated. They acquired their own regions and their own histories, which blended with the history of the empire. In Wolfram's words, "the Germanic peoples neither destroyed the Roman world nor restored it; instead, they made a home for themselves within it." This story is far from the "decline and fall" interpretation that held sway until recent decades. Wolfram's narrative, based on his sweeping grasp of documentary and archaeological evidence, brings new clarity to a poorly understood period of Western history.
Augustus and the Creation of the Roman Empire
Offering multiple viewpoints of the rise, achievements, and legacy of Caesar Augustus and his empire, Augustus and the Creation of the Roman Empire encourages the examination of such subjects as the military in war and peacetime, the social and cultural context of political change, the reform of administration, and the personality of the emperor himself.