“Nero,” by Anthony Everitt and Roddy Ashworth. Random House, 448 pages. Edward Gibbon begins “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” with a splendid panorama of the Antonine dynasty’s holdings, ...

THE BLOODY POET—Desider Kostolanyi—Macy-Masius ($2.50). In a parade of purple, the emperors of Rome go through the pages of old histories with the sound of loud horns. In the annals of Tacitus and ...

Ancient manuscripts detailing the events during the Roman Empire are believed to contain 'first hand' evidence about the life and death of Jesus Christ. The Annals, written by the Roman historian ...

There are two places in which we have a record of the historical Jesus. This is, of course, other than the Gospels themselves. One is a work called Antiquities of the Jews, written by the Jewish ...

The most lasting memorial to the Emperor Nero is the Colosseum, even if that was not the intention. In fact, the new Flavian dynasty which took control of Rome in AD 69 erected this vast pleasure ...

TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers. About the Archive This is a digitized version of an article from The Times’s print archive, before the start of online ...

Unhinged leaders, dynastic intrigue, devastation and plunder: For 15 years I have been researching and teaching the ancient historian Tacitus’ works on the history of the Roman Empire. It has rarely ...