Augustus was a genius of political theatre.
He kept every republican institution intact — the Senate, the consuls, the elections — and simply made himself indispensable to all of them.
He called himself 'first citizen', not king.
He returned power to the Senate, repeatedly, until the Senate begged him to take it back.
He ruled for 44 years and died in his bed.
The emperors who followed built the city you see today.
Claudius constructed the aqueducts.
Nero burned half of it down and rebuilt it wider.
Vespasian began the Colosseum on the site of Nero's private lake.
Trajan added the forums.
Hadrian rebuilt the Pantheon.
Each emperor left his mark in stone.
At its peak, under Trajan around AD 117, the empire stretched from Scotland to Iraq.
Rome itself had a population of perhaps one million people — a number no European city would reach again until London in the 19th century.
It was fed by grain from Egypt, entertained in the Colosseum, and supplied by roads that connected every corner of the known world.
Fun fact: the Romans had central heating.
The hypocaust system circulated hot air under raised floors and through hollow walls.
They also had multi-storey apartment buildings, fast food restaurants, public libraries, and a postal service.
The fall of Rome set all of these back by roughly a thousand years.
