Brush up on the Pole family, Charles V, the Holy Roman Empire & the history that shaped the events in Episode 1 as seen on ...

The Roman emperor Nero is known as one of history’s most brutal and eccentric leaders. He is said to have killed his mother, stepbrother and wives, persecuted Christians and squandered a fortune ...

Finally, once on the throne, there was no easy exit. Emperors had no elections or term limits, no early retirement or pension plans. It was a job for life, so if an emperor was mad, bad or ...

In 221 BCE, King Ying Zheng of Qin conquered the rival warring states and established the Qin empire as Qin Shi Huangdi (The ...

The Eastern Roman Empire had seven simultaneous emperors during the Middle Ages, between the years 1203 and 1204 AD. This was ...

Born Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus in A.D. 12, Caligula rose to power in A.D. 37 as the third Roman emperor. Nicknamed “Caligula,” meaning “little boots,” after the miniature soldier ...

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 ...

The Roman Empire began in 27BC when Augustus became the first official Roman emperor. At its height, it spanned as far west as northern England and as far east as Syria. Life in the Roman Empire ...

Croatia In 301 A.D., the Emperor Diocletian made a bold but ultimately unsuccessful bid to address the inflation that was rampaging across the eastern half of the divided Roman Empire. Prices of ...

In 193 AD, Roman Emperor Pertinax was assassinated by his Praetorian Guards, who then sold the throne in an auction to Didius Julianus.