The first answer is simple: hereditary rule. For most of this period, emperors were not chosen on the basis of their ability or honesty, but simply because they were born in the right family.

Historians record that the unified Roman Empire was ruled by 69 emperors between the first emperor Augustus (who reigned from 27 B.C. to A.D. 14) and Theodosius (ruled from A.D. 379 to 395), but ...

100 BC – 44 BC / Reigned 46 – 44 BC) changed the course of Roman history. Although he did not rule for long, he gave Rome fresh hope and a whole dynasty of emperors. Born into an aristocratic ...

as he reigned just two years from 392 to 394 A.D. Eugenius was emperor of the Western Roman Empire but was installed by a military officer following the mysterious hanging of his predecessor ...

Around 2,500 years ago, the city of Rome was at the centre of a huge empire that stretched from Scotland to Syria. The Roman Empire was based upon enslaved people and citizens. Enslaved people ...

What was Roman Egypt like? In what ways did it differ from when the Greeks had ruled it during the Ptolemaic period?

This story appears in the January/February 2017 issue of National Geographic History magazine. The emperor Hadrian was well known for building monuments across the Roman Empire, a territory that ...

Much of Attila’s infamy comes from his relentless campaign westward into Europe where he pillaged the riches of the Roman Empire. But he was stopped by a confederation of Roman soldiers and ...