Emperor Tiberius

Tiberius, the second Emperor of Rome, did not have the strength of character of the first (Augustus) and he set the pattern for tyrannical rule that was to become typical of many of his successors.

His rise to power

Tiberius Claudius Nero, who became the second Roman Emperor on the death of Augustus in 14 AD, was born on 6^th November 42 BC, the son of Tiberius Nero and Livia Drusilla. When Livia was forced to divorce her husband and marry Augustus, in 38 BC, Tiberius became the future emperor’s stepson and a prime candidate to succeed him in due course.

Tiberius was well educated and groomed for high military command. He was active on a number of campaigns, together with his younger brother Drusus, including the subjugation of what is now Switzerland and southern Germany.

In 20 BC Tiberius married Vipsania Agrippina, the daughter of Augustus’s right-hand man Agrippa, but when Agrippa died in 12 BC Augustus insisted that Tiberius divorce his wife and instead marry Julia, who was Augustus’s daughter and Agrippa’s widow. Tiberius was decidedly unhappy about this, especially as he was very much in love with Vipsania and far from emotionally suited to be the husband of Julia, who was notorious for her sexual licence.

Augustus now seemed to be looking at the two sons of Agrippa and Julia as potential successors, so Tiberius, with the emperor’s permission, exiled himself to Rhodes for nine years (from 7 BC to 2 AD) to get away from both his wife and the apparently hostile atmosphere in Rome. However, Augustus recalled him when one of Julia’s sons died, by which time she had been banished for her promiscuous behaviour.

When Julia’s other son died in 4 AD, Tiberius was now the sole candidate to be Augustus’s heir. As Augustus got older and began to lose his grip on affairs, Tiberius took over more of the imperial role, especially in the campaign field. Indeed, by the time Augustus died in 14 AD Tiberius was virtually co-emperor in all but name.

Emperor Tiberius

Tiberius’s first problem as emperor was to deal with mutinies by four legions in Germany and three on the Danube. The latter were easily dealt with by Tiberius’s son Drusus and Aelius Sejanus, the commander of the Praetorian Guard, but the German situation was trickier. The legions there were under the command of Tiberius’s nephew Germanicus, who handled the situation extremely badly and was lucky to be able to calm things down eventually. Despite this demonstration of poor management skills, Germanicus continued to be popular in many quarters, and Tiberius came to see him as a threat to his rule.

Tiberius soon showed that he did not have the same sure touch for government that Augustus had demonstrated for many years. He imagined enemies at every turn and trusted hardly anyone. He governed more by fear than by persuasion, using the tool of “lex maiestatis” to accuse anyone he disliked of treason, which was, understandably, punishable by death.

The death of Germanicus in 19 AD gave rise to all sorts of rumours, including that he had been poisoned on the order of Tiberius. It was certainly very convenient from the emperor’s perspective to have the only serious rival to his throne, and a popular one at that, safely out of the way.

The rise and fall of Sejanus

The rising power in the empire was now Aelius Sejanus, who probably had ambitions of his own to be named as Tiberius’s successor. If this was his plan, then the sudden death in 19 AD of Tiberius’s son Drusus, with whose wife Livilla Sejanus had been carrying on an affair, was extremely convenient, and therefore suspicious. However, Sejanus was thwarted in part of his plan when Tiberius refused to allow him to marry Livilla.

Tiberius came to place an increasing amount of trust in Sejanus at the same time as distrusting just about everybody else. For example, he had the widow of Germanicus and two of her sons banished to an island when they kept making accusations about the cause of Germanicus’s death. Only the third son, Caligula, remained in Tiberius’s good books.

Eventually Tiberius tired of governing and took up residence on the island of Capri, in the Bay of Naples, leaving Sejanus in Rome to take charge of day-to-day matters. Sejanus’s ambition eventually over-reached itself and he apparently hatched a plot to assassinate Tiberius and his immediate family. This was just the excuse that the hard-pressed senators were looking for and, with the emperor’s sanction, they strangled Sejanus and threw his body to the common people, who took great pleasure in tearing it to pieces.

The final years

The final years of Tiberius’s reign were a period of fear and inertia, with the emperor brooding in his villa on Capri and none of his governors or ministers daring to take independent action on any front for fear that it might be misinterpreted. The supine behaviour of the governor of Judaea, Pontius Pilate, in agreeing to the execution of an unconventional teacher named Jesus, in 36 AD, may have been a result of the general attitude of the time within the Empire, but it was a decision that was to have profound consequences for many centuries to come.

Tiberius’s paranoia was coupled with a belief in astrology that came to dominate his decision-making. For example, although he had become convinced that his great-nephew Caligula would be a thoroughly unworthy successor, the stars told him that Caligula would indeed become emperor, so Tiberius did nothing to prevent that happening.

Tiberius died in March 37 AD at the greatly advanced age, for the time, of 79. There have been suggestions that his death was hastened either by Caligula in person or Macro, the commander of the Praetorian Guard who had taken over from Sejanus. However, there is no proof that this actually happened, just as there is no proof that Tiberius spent his last years on Capri indulging in all sorts of licentious behaviour with people performing sexual acts for his amusement on a daily basis. Such behaviour would have been quite contrary to his earlier repugnance at how his wife Julia had behaved, and at variance with his generally dour and gloomy demeanour. He was not a man who sought amusement of any kind, other than taking pleasure at the demise of anyone who crossed him, with people being thrown from the cliffs for causing him offence. However, when later writers wanted to find mud to throw at his reputation, anything would do.

Tiberius’s death was probably greeted with a sense of relief in many quarters, as the old, do-nothing emperor was now succeeded by a lively young man called Caligula. However, if the people and leaders of Rome felt the need to celebrate the tyrant’s passing they would very soon have realised that such rejoicing was premature, to say the least.

© John Welford

The Weighing of the Heart in ancient Egypt

Christian tradition has it that, when you die, your soul is judged by St Peter before it is permitted to enter Heaven via the Pearly Gates, to which St Peter has the key. The ancient Egyptians had a similar belief, but this took the form of a symbolic ceremony called The Weighing of the Heart, as depicted in chapter 125 of the Book of the Dead.

A trial for a dead Egyptian

The candidate for the Afterlife stood before Osiris and a panel of 42 other deities. The deceased had to name each of them and swear that he (or she) had never committed any of a long list of offences. If they could do so, they were likely to be allowed through. The proceedings were recorded by Thoth, the scribe of the gods.

Of course, just saying that you were innocent of all the accusations, which included giving way to anger, was not enough. You also had to prove it by having your heart weighed in the scales of justice. The heart was placed on one side and a feather on the other. If the heart made the scales sink, due to the weight of wrongdoing that it carried, it would be grabbed by a beast called Ammit that, not surprisingly, had the head of a crocodile. If the heart was eaten, the individual would die. The Egyptian alternative to entering the Afterlife was non-existence.

A get-out-of-jail-free card

The way to avoid this fate was to include a copy of chapter 125 of the Book of the Dead, together with an illustration of a perfectly weighted heart, in the tomb of the deceased. Of course, this meant that you, if the deceased person, would have to have been rich enough to afford the services of a scribe and the necessary materials to make the copy. If you were, and the correct document was present for inspection, then progress beyond the weighing ceremony was virtually guaranteed. The heart would be returned to you and you would be reborn to enter the Field of Hetep.

However, if you did not have enough wealth for this get-out clause, your chances of rebirth were slim. It added a whole new meaning to the concept of being “heavy hearted” as death approached.

The importance of the heart, as the seat of thought, emotion and memory, was the reason why it was never removed from the body during the process of embalming.

To make absolutely sure that the weighing would go according to plan, the Book of the Dead also provided spells that guaranteed success. Chapters 26 to 29 were what you needed!

© John Welford

The Vestal Virgins of Ancient Rome

The Vestal Virgins were a Roman institution that was reputed to have begun as early as the reign of Numa, the supposed second king of Rome who, according to legend, succeeded Romulus in about 715 BC and died in about 673 BC.

It is said that Numa was a Sabine, from the neighbouring tribe to the Latins, who brought the cult of the goddess Vesta with him. Vesta was the goddess of the hearth and in her temple burned a sacred flame that was never allowed to go out. It was the duty of the priestesses known as the Vestal Virgins to protect the flame and keep it burning.

Originally there were four Virgins, but their number soon increased to six and stayed that way right through to the end of pagan Rome. They were often chosen when still children, sometimes as young as six years old.

Vestal Virgins was required to serve for 30 years. During the first ten years they learned the rituals that went with the job, for the second ten they practised them and for the third ten they taught them to the next generation of recruits.

During their 30 years they were required to remain pure and virginal, but were free to marry once their time was up. However, despite being virgins they would be in their late thirties or early forties when this happened, and their chances of making a good match were severely restricted.

The temple of Vesta (pictured) was open to anyone, male or female, during the day, but no man was allowed in during the hours of darkness. It was part of the Virgins’ duties to ensure that this rule was not broken.

Being a Vestal Virgin was a highly honoured status, and they lived well at the city’s expense. However, the punishment for breaking the vow of chastity was extremely harsh, namely death.

Should a Vestal Virgin be condemned to death for a major offence, which included letting the flame go out, they would be carried in a funeral procession while still alive, dressed in funeral clothes, with their nearest and dearest weeping and wailing alongside them. They would then be walled up in an underground cell where they would die of suffocation.

The cult of the Vestal Virgins was respected right though the periods of Rome’s Monarchy, Republic and Empire, only being suppressed in the year 394 AD when the Christian emperor Theodosius I ordered the sacred flame to be extinguished. The story goes that his niece Serena entered the Temple of Vesta and took a necklace from the statue of the goddess, placing it around her own neck. The last of the Vestal Virgins then cursed Serena who suffered terrible nightmares for the rest of her life.

© John Welford

Byzantium, Constantinople, Istanbul

28th March 1930 was the day on which Istanbul officially changed its name from Constantinople, although the new name had been in use locally for centuries before then.

The city, on the Bosporus Strait that separates Europe and Asia, began as Byzantium, a Greek colony founded in the 7th century BC. When the Roman Empire overwhelmed Greece, Byzantium became a free city, albeit under the overall dominion of Rome.

When Emperor Constantine defeated his rival Licinius at the Battle of Chrysopolis in 324 AD, he spent the next night in nearby Byzantium, which was no more than a small town on a peninsula overlooking the Bosporus and the Sea of Marmara. He said afterwards that he had a vision (not the first he had had in his life) in which the spirit of the town, an old woman, became transformed into a beautiful young woman on whose head Constantine placed a diadem. This persuaded him to rebuild and expand the town into a magnificent city.

A few days later he led a party of troops to mark the boundary of his new city, which would be three times the size of the old one and defended by huge walls. In 330 AD he renamed it Constantinople and declared that it would be the new capital of the Roman Empire.

The foundation of Constantinople marked the split between the eastern and western halves of the Empire, with the eastern half surviving for nearly a thousand years after the western half had disappeared. It is always referred to as the Byzantine Empire, although the name of Byzantium had long since been displaced by that of Constantinople.

The name Istanbul derives from “Istinpolin” from the Greek for “in the city”. It sounds as though it might have been the answer to a question like “Where does X live?” or “Where are you going?” At any rate, it was understood by the Turks of Anatolia to be the name of the city, and this is what they called it from as early as the 13th century.

Officially, it was always Constantinople until the change in 1930, but by that time very little remained that was of Greek or Roman origin, and there was certainly nothing left of Byzantium.

© John Welford

The Battle of the Milvian Bridge, 312 AD

The Battle of the Milvian Bridge was fought on 27^th October 312 AD. Although the result of the battle was significant in itself, it was what the victor thought he had seen prior to that battle that was to have to profound consequences for the future of Europe.

The Roman Empire was in turmoil, for neither the first nor the last time, as a plethora of claimants fought for the title of Emperor. The situation eventually boiled down to two brothers-in-law fighting for domination, namely Constantine and Maxentius. After winning a series of battles, Constantine had made his way nearly to Rome with some 50,000 men as against the 70,000 with which Maxentius was defending the city.

On the day preceding the battle, Constantine believed that he saw a flaming cross in the sky, close to the Sun, inscribed with the words “By this sign you shall conquer”.  Constantine was a devotee of Sol Invictus, the sun god, and he took this as evidence that the god of the Christians was endorsed by Sol Invictus. He therefore decreed that his troops should paint the “chi rho” sign on their shields (this being shorthand for “Christ”) and stated that, should he win, he would convert to Christianity.

During the battle on 27^th October, Maxentius tried to lure Constantine’s forces on to a bridge of boats that was designed to collapse under their weight. However, the plan failed and it was Maxentius, together with many of his troops, who ended up drowned in the River Tiber.

Constantine kept to his promise and declared that Christianity would henceforth be tolerated in the Roman Empire and all persecutions would cease. However, he still retained a measure of devotion to Sol Invictus, apparently believing that the Christian God and Sol Invictus were closely linked. This is the reason why the Christian day of rest was declared as Sunday.

Constantine was to exercise a huge influence on the Church, the different factions of which appeared to celebrate their freedom from persecution by persecuting those of their number who expressed differing views. Constantine used his power as Emperor to knock heads together, such as at the Council of Nicaea in 325 that established theological principles that are still observed today.

On the other hand, Constantine was hardly an ideal Christian in terms of his own behaviour, which appears to have included the executions of both his son and his wife, and decrees that included capital punishment by the swallowing of molten lead.

It has been suggested that what Constantine saw in the sky was an unusual but completely natural meteorological phenomenon known as a “solar halo”. Whatever the cause, the effect was certainly dramatic and very long-lasting.

The picture is of the River Tiber viewed from the modern Milvian Bridge.

© John Welford

The Battle of Salamis, 480 BC

23^rd September 480 BC was the date on which the Persians were defeated by the Greeks at the Battle of Salamis, which was the first great naval battle in history.

The Persians under Xerxes had swept all before them as they expanded their empire, and by 480 BC they were threatening the city states of mainland Greece. It seemed inevitable that the mighty hordes of the Persians would have no problem when it came to the citizen armies of Greece, especially as the latter found it extremely difficult to act in unison.

In August of that year Xerxes defeated the Spartans at Thermopylae and then moved on towards Athens. The Athenian general Themistocles had ordered the city to be evacuated apart from the Acropolis, which was consequently overrun by the Persians.

The Greek generals then squabbled over what to do next, with some wanting to fall back to Corinth and others, particularly Themistocles, wanting to take on the Persian navy. Themistocles eventually got his way, but the bickering went on.

He then took an even bigger gamble and sent a slave to Xerxes with a message to say that Themistocles had changed sides and would help the Persians. The Greeks were ready to run away, according to the message, and all Xerxes had to do was attack now and he would have a massive victory.

Xerxes fell for the ruse, especially as he knew from his own spies that at least part of what he had heard was true – the Greeks were certainly arguing among themselves. However, as the Persian fleet bore down on them, the Greeks now had no option but to stand and fight.

Themistocles also showed his cleverness by luring the Persians into a trap. The strait between the port of Piraeus and the island of Salamis was too narrow for the huge Persian galleys to manoeuvre, but the smaller and lighter Greek vessels were much better suited to the conditions. Themistocles also knew that there was a time of day when the swell in the strait was one that the cumbersome Persian galleys would find even more difficult to deal with than the Greeks, and he launched his counter-attack at this time.

The Greeks were able to get close to the Persian ships and shear off their oars, before turning away and getting into position to ram the disabled galleys.

After seven hours of fighting the Persians had lost 300 of their ships, to only 40 for the Greeks. Xerxes was watching from the land and commented, as one of his ships had a rare victory against a Greek trireme, “My men have become women, my women have become men”. This was because the victorious Persian galley was commanded by Queen Artemisia of Halicarnassus.

Xerxes returned to Persia, leaving his army behind. The following year this was defeated at the Battle of Plataea and the Persian threat to mainland Europe was averted for a further century and a half.

© John Welford

Diocletian's persecution of the Christians

23^rd February 303 was the day on which Diocletian, Emperor of Rome, declared the beginning of one of the worst episodes of persecution of the growing sect known as Christians.

Diocletian governed a vast empire that stretched across much of northern Europe, including southern Britain, and right round the Mediterranean Sea. In order to maintain the stability of the Empire, which incorporated many different nationalities, it was essential for all its subjects to recognise the supremacy of its central figure, namely the Emperor.

Diocletian took this necessity to the extreme of declaring himself to be a living god who must therefore be worshipped. This was something of a Roman tradition, so he was not doing anything new. However, what he could not tolerate was the existence within his empire of people who did not accept this state of affairs. If they worshipped a different god they were not part of a united empire and were therefore likely to cause disruption to the overall “pax Romana” (Roman peace).

Diocletian’s persecution was therefore based on political rather than religious motives. It did not help that the Christians were also given to arguing among themselves, which was therefore a potent cause of public disorder. Christians were also in the habit of condemning the lax morals of non-Christians, which caused much resentment. By suppressing Christians of all persuasions, Diocletian therefore hoped to remove a source of potential conflict.

The first order given was to destroy all Christian churches throughout the Empire. This led to resistance from Christians, and governors of Roman provinces countered this opposition with increasing degrees of severity. Although Diocletian had not originally envisaged the wholesale slaughter of Christians, this became inevitable when other forms of suppression proved ineffective.

Later edicts proposed harsher punishments for refusal to worship the Emperor, and local governors became highly imaginative in their methods of torturing and executing Christians. Many saints in the Christian calendar were victims of the Diocletian persecution, being done to death in particularly horrific ways.

Horrible though it was, the period of persecution did not last long. Diocletian retired from office in the year 305 and within a few years the emperor was Constantine, who famously became a Christian himself as did nearly all his successors.

© John Welford

Jean-François Champollion and the Rosetta Stone

Jean-François Champollion, one of the fathers of modern archaeology, was born on 23^rd December 1790. Among his many claims to fame was that he unlocked the mystery of the Rosetta Stone and was thus able to offer a key to the translation of Egyptian hieroglyphics.

As well as being an archaeologist with a particular interest in ancient Egypt, Champollion was also a brilliant linguist, particularly in ancient languages. He was therefore well placed to decipher the Rosetta Stone.

The stone in question had been unearthed by the troops of Napoleon Bonaparte when they invaded Egypt in 1799. The slab of black basalt was unearthed at the town of Rosetta in the Nile delta and was found to bear an inscription in three distinct writing systems, namely Greek, Egyptian hieroglyphic and Demotic, which is a non-hieroglyphic form of the Egyptian language.

The stone was captured by the British when Napoleon was expelled from Egypt in 1801. It was sent to the British Museum in London where it has been ever since. However, transcriptions were made of the texts and it was these that Champollion was able to study in Paris in 1809.

It soon became obvious to him that the text was simply three ways of saying the same thing, namely giving an account of the deeds of Pharaoh Ptolemy V Epiphanes. It was therefore possible to date the stone to 196 BC. With his knowledge of Greek it was relatively straightforward for Champollion to decipher the other texts although it did take him 13 years to finish the task. With this problem solved, the inscriptions that adorned ancient buildings throughout Egypt could now be understood.

© John Welford

Commodus, a disastrous Emperor of Rome

22^nd October 180 AD was the day on which Emperor Commodus entered Rome to begin his 12-year reign, one which Rome was all too happy to forget when it ended.

Commodus, aged 18, became emperor on the death of his father, Marcus Aurelius, when the two were on campaign on the Danube river, 700 miles from Rome. Marcus Aurelius had been one of the wisest emperors that Rome ever produced, and he was the last in a line of “good” emperors that stretched back to Trajan who had become emperor more than 80 years previously.

Commodus began his reign cautiously enough, but he then got a taste for luxury and the high life, and he might also have suffered from some sort of mental illness that transformed him into a brutal maniac.

After about five years he had given himself over totally to pleasure and was quite content to let the affairs of the Empire be handled by others. He organised massive celebrations and orgies, sparing no expense. When the money started to run out he simply took it from other people, by having wealthy senators executed on trumped-up charges and seizing their estates.

Megalomania took over, even to the extent of having Rome renamed “Colonia Commodiana” and the months of the year changed to the names of the titles he had awarded himself. Even the people of Rome were required to add the name Commodianus to their own.

He then started to fancy himself as a gladiator, appearing in the Colosseum in the guise of Hercules. Naturally enough he won all his contests, although he did not kill his opponents, preferring to vent his bloodlust on the many animals that appeared in the arena. However, on one occasion he vented his fury on a gladiator who killed a lion with more skill than Commodus could muster – the unfortunate gladiator was executed for daring to be better than the emperor.

Eventually, Commodus’s excesses became too much to bear and he was assassinated in a plot that involved his own favourite concubine. Once he was dead Rome swiftly returned to normal with all the statues of Commodus being torn down and his name removed from all state documents. As far as the people and senate of Rome were concerned, Commodus had never existed.

© John Welford

The Year of the Four Emperors: 69 AD

On 20^th December 69 AD the Roman Empire ended a period of chaos and gained a new emperor who would bring a measure of much-needed stability and ensure its survival.

The year 69 is known as the Year of the Four Emperors, three of whom met violent deaths. After Nero was overthrown in June 68 various factions of the army put forward their own candidates for Emperor, and it was these conflicting claims that created the chaos.

First up was Galba, an elderly provincial governor who was Nero’s chosen successor. However, he proved to be incapable of command and managed to alienate key elements of the army. He was overthrown and murdered by troops loyal to Otho, a former friend of Nero, who then took over as emperor.

The army in Germany had declared that their preferred candidate was Vitellius, whose troops proceeded to march on Rome while Otho desperately tried to mount a defence. When his men were defeated by those of Vitellius (who had stayed behind in Germany until the issue was decided), Otho committed suicide having reigned for only three months.

Soon after Vitellius arrived in Rome in June 69, another army advanced from the east. This was composed of troops loyal to a general named Vespasian, who had been fighting in Judea and Syria. The army in Egypt declared Vespasian emperor on 1^st July, and this inspired troops closer to Rome to follow suit.

The supporters of Vespasian fought those of Vitellius on the same battlefield that had seen the defeat of Otho by Vitellius’s army only a few months before. This time Vitellius was not so lucky, and when the victorious army of Vespasian reached Rome (on 20^th December) they murdered Vitellius and threw his body into the River Tiber.

Meanwhile Vespasian was still in Judea trying to sort out the Jewish Revolt that would end the following year with the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. He left his son Titus to finish the job while he set off for Rome, which he reached a year after he had originally been declared emperor by his troops.

Vespasian had a long and distinguished military record, his exploits including the defeat of Celtic tribes in southern Britain during the invasion instituted by Claudius in 43 AD. As emperor he proved to be the right man for the job, despite being over 60 when he took office. He ruled firmly but justly and was respected and revered by the people of Rome.

One lasting result of Vespasian’s reign was his decision to tear down Nero’s pleasure palace and build an amphitheatre in place of the artificial lake that Nero had constructed. Although it was completed after Vespasian’s death in June 79, much of the building survives to this day and is one of Rome’s chief tourist attractions under the name of The Colosseum.

© John Welford

The death of Domitian, 96 AD

On the 18^th of September 96 AD the Roman Emperor Domitian was assassinated in a plot orchestrated by his wife.

The jury is still out on Domitian, and whether it will ever return to give its verdict is another matter. Some historians reckon that he was among the cruellest and most bloodthirsty of the emperors, while others maintain that he has had a bad press over the centuries and was not as evil as previously believed.

Domitian was the son of an emperor (Vespasian) and the brother of another (Titus), both of whom generally get the “thumbs up” when their reigns are weighed up in terms of good versus bad. Domitian was kept well away from the business of government during their reigns, and when he got the job for himself he did rather let things go to his head, insisting on being addressed as “master and god”, for example.

There seems little doubt that life during Domitian’s reign was a chancy business if you were a senator or in any way close to the seat of power, and a number of summary executions did take place of individuals who caused offence to the emperor. However, much of the evidence comes from the pen of one man, namely the historian Suetonius, who seems to have taken a distinct dislike to Domitian.

Domitian’s main problem was that he wanted to rule as an absolute monarch, whereas Vespasian and Titus had involved the Senate in their decision-making, and there were elements of the old Roman Republic in the way they went about things. Having been sidelined by the new emperor, the senatorial class was never going to regard him favourably, and neither was Suetonius.

Whatever the facts of Domitian’s reign, those relating to its end seem undisputed. Enough people went in fear of their lives to make assassination a real possibility. One of these people was Domitian’s wife, Domitia Longina, and another was Stephanus, the steward of the emperor’s niece Domitilla. Stephanus had been accused of embezzlement, so had good reason to be fearful. The two hatched their plot together with members of Domitian’s personal staff.

Stephanus pretended to have hurt his arm, which he wrapped with a bandage. Domitian therefore had no suspicion that anything was amiss as Stephanus went about his business for several days in this state, although he was actually carrying a dagger inside the bandage.

On the morning of 18^th September Stephanus approached Domitian with a scroll that he wanted to show the emperor. Once Domitian was distracted, Stephanus whipped out the dagger and stabbed Domitian in the leg, which was probably not where he intended the first blow to fall. Domitian fought to defend himself and the two men rolled around on the floor until other members of the plot could land their dagger blows, which were better aimed.

The number of Roman emperors who died peacefully in their beds was not a large one. Domitian was one of many who came to a violent end.

© John Welford

The Battle of Zama, 202 BC

The battle of Zama was fought on 15^th October 202 BC. It was the battle that finally decided which power would be master of the Mediterranean region – Rome or Carthage.

The battle that decided Rome’s dominance over Carthage

Carthage, a powerful city-state in North Africa, had been a thorn in the side of Rome for many years, particularly under the generalship of Hannibal who had inflicted a heavy defeat on Rome at Cannae in 216 BC. However, Rome simply refused to cave in. Hannibal’s main problem was that he did not have the right equipment for siege warfare - although he came within three miles of the walls of Rome at one point he could never hope to breach them.

What tipped the balance for Rome was the emergence of a general who was at least the equal of Hannibal. This was Publius Cornelius Scipio, a survivor of Cannae, who managed to recapture virtually all the land lost to Hannibal in Spain. In 204 BC, with Hannibal still in Italy, Scipio gathered a large army and set sail for Carthage.

After several Roman victories in North Africa, Hannibal was forced to return home. However, it was two years later that the issue was finally decided on the battlefield at Zama, five miles south of modern Tunis. Hannibal could muster 40,000 troops and 80 elephants as against Scipio’s 34,000 men, but the latter were better trained and included three times as many cavalry troops as the Carthaginians could put into the field.

The elephants were soon taken out of the account, being panicked by the blare of Roman trumpets, and the cavalry battle was decisively won by the Romans. The infantry of the two armies now faced each other, and the initial advantage went to the larger force of Hannibal’s army. However, the Roman cavalry, having chased off that of the Carthaginians, was then then able to attack the infantry from the rear, and this was the decisive move. More than 20,000 Carthaginians were killed during the battle.

Scipio was magnanimous in victory and allowed Hannibal to remain in Carthage, where he became his country’s ruler. However, the Roman Senate was later to demand that Hannibal should be punished and he was forced to flee into exile, where he eventually committed suicide.

Scipio became one of Rome’s greatest heroes and he was awarded the title Africanus. As a general, he never lost a battle during a 25-year long career.

© John Welford