by Paulo Barata
Civil war resulted, from which he emerged as the unrivaled leader of Rome.
After assuming control of government, Caesar began a program of social and governmental reforms, including the creation of the Julian calendar. He centralized the bureaucracy of the Republic and was eventually proclaimed "dictator in perpetuity". But the underlying political conflicts had not been resolved, and on the Ides of March (15 March) 44 BC, Caesar was assassinated by a group of senators led by Marcus Junius Brutus.
A new series of civil wars broke out, and the constitutional government of the Republic was never restored. Caesar's adopted heir Octavian, later known as Augustus, rose to sole power, and the era of the Roman Empire began.
Lucceius Albinus
Procurator of Judaea
Lucceius Albinus was the Roman Procurator of Judaea from 62 until 64 AD and the governor of Mauretania from 64 until 69 AD.
Appointed procurator by the Emperor Nero following the death of his predecessor, Porcius Festus, Albinus faced his first challenge while traveling from Alexandria to his new position in Judea. The Jewish High Priest Ananus ben Ananus used the opportunity created by Festus' death to convene the Sanhedrin and have James, the brother of Jesus, sentenced to death by stoning for violation of religious law.
A delegation sent by citizens upset over the perceived breach of justice met Albinus before he reached Judea, and Albinus responded with a letter informing Ananus that it was illegal to convene the Sanhedrin without Albinus' permission and threatening to punish the priest. Ananus was deposed by Agrippa II before Albinus' arrival.
Immediately upon his arrival in Jerusalem, Albinus began an effort to remove the sicarii from the region. Josephus also records that Albinus became the friend of a High Priest named Ananus due to the priest's gift-giving.
When Albinus learned that he was to be succeeded by Gessius Florus, he emptied the prisons by executing prisoners charged with more serious offenses and allowing the remaining prison population to pay for their release.
Lucilius Bassus
General and governor of Judaea
Lucilius Bassus was a Roman legatus appointed by Emperor Vespasian to the Judaea Province in 71 AD.
Assigned to finish off the last remnants of the Great Jewish Revolt in the province, he led the legion Legio X Fretensis, destroying the Jewish strongholds Herodium and Machaerus on their march to the siege of Masada.
After the war was over, Bassus fell ill and died.
Before his appointment to Judaea, Bassus was prefect of the fleet stationed at Ravenna. He betrayed Vitellius by siding with Vespasian during the Year of the Four Emperors.
Lucius Vitelius
Governor of Roman Syria
Lucius Vitellius the Elder (before 5 BC - 51) was the youngest of four sons of quaestor Publius Vitellius.
Under Emperor Tiberius, he was Consul in 34 and Governor of Syria in 35. He deposed Pontius Pilate in 36 after complaints from the people in Samaria.
He supported Emperor Caligula, and was a favorite of Emperor Claudius' wife Empress Valeria Messalina. During Claudius' reign, he was Consul twice in 43 and 47, and governed Rome while the Roman Emperor was absent on his invasion of Britain.
Around the time that Claudius married Agrippina the Younger in 48 or 49, Vitellius served as a Censor.
Lucretius
Philosopher and writer
Titus Lucretius Carus (ca. 99 BC - ca. 55 BC) was a Roman poet and philosopher. His only known work is the epic philosophical poem De rerum natura about the beliefs of Epicureanism.
Virtually nothing is known about the life of Lucretius. Jerome tells how he was driven mad by a love potion and wrote his poetry between fits of insanity, eventually committing suicide in middle age.
Marcellus
Prefect of Judaea
Marcus Antonius Felix
Procurator of Judaea
Marcus Antonius Felix was the Roman procurator of Judaea Province 52-58, in succession to Ventidius Cumanus.
Felix was the younger brother of the Greek freedman Marcus Antonius Pallas. Pallas served as a secretary of the treasury during the reign of the Emperor Claudius. Felix was a Greek freedman either of Claudius, or for Claudius's mother Antonia. According to Tacitus, Pallas and Felix descended from the Greek Kings of Arcadia. Felix became the procurator by the petition of his brother.
Felix's cruelty and licentiousness, coupled with his accessibility to bribes, led to a great increase of crime in Judaea. The period of his rule was marked by internal feuds and disturbances, which he put down with severity.
After Paul the Apostle was arrested in Jerusalem and rescued from a plot against his life, the local Roman chiliarch Claudius Lysias transferred him to Caesarea, where he stood trial before Felix. When Felix was succeeded as procurator, having already detained Paul for two years, he left him imprisoned as a favor to the Jews.
On returning to Rome, Felix was accused of using a dispute between the Jews and Syrians of Caesarea as a pretext to slay and plunder the inhabitants, but through the intercession of his brother, the freedman Pallas, who had great influence with the Emperor Nero, he escaped unpunished.
Marcus C. Nerva
Senator, emperor
(8 November 30 - 27 January 98)
Roman Emperor from 96 to 98
Nerva became Emperor at the age of sixty-five, after a lifetime of imperial service under Nero and the rulers of the Flavian dynasty. Under Nero, he was a member of the imperial entourage and played a vital part in exposing the Pisonian conspiracy of 65. Later, as a loyalist to the Flavians, he attained consulships in 71 and 90 during the reigns of Vespasian and Domitian respectively.
On 18 September 96, Domitian was assassinated in a palace conspiracy involving members of the Praetorian Guard and several of his freedmen. On the same day, Nerva was declared emperor by the Roman Senate. This was the first time the Senate elected a Roman Emperor. As the new ruler of the Roman Empire, he vowed to restore liberties which had been curtailed during the autocratic government of Domitian.
Nerva's brief reign was marred by financial difficulties and his inability to assert his authority over the Roman army. A revolt by the Praetorian Guard in October 97 essentially forced him to adopt an heir. After some deliberation Nerva adopted Trajan, a young and popular general, as his successor. After barely fifteen months in office, Nerva died of natural causes on 27 January 98. Upon his death he was succeeded and deified by Trajan.
Marcus V. Corvinus
Brother of Messalina, consul
Marullus
Prefect of Judaea
Nero
Step-son of Claudius, emperor
(15 December 37 - 9 June 68)
5th Roman Emperor. Ruled from 54 to 68.
During his reign, Nero focused much of his attention on diplomacy, trade, and enhancing the cultural life of the Empire. He ordered theaters built and promoted athletic games. During his reign, general Corbulo conducted a successful war and negotiated peace with the Parthian Empire. His general Suetonius Paulinus crushed a revolt in Britain and also annexed the Bosporan Kingdom to the Empire, beginning the First Roman-Jewish War.
In 64, most of Rome was destroyed in the Great Fire of Rome, which many Romans believed Nero himself had started in order to clear land for his planned palatial complex, the Domus Aurea. In 68, the rebellion of Vindex in Gaul and later the acclamation of Galba in Hispania drove Nero from the throne. Facing assassination, he committed suicide on 9 June 68 (the first Roman emperor to do so).
His death ended the Julio-Claudian Dynasty, sparking a brief period of civil wars known as the Year of the Four Emperors. Nero's rule is often associated with tyranny and extravagance. He is known for many executions, including those of his mother and the probable murder by poison of his stepbrother, Britannicus.
He is infamously known as an early persecutor of Christians.
Ovid
Writer and poet
Publius Ovidius Naso (20 March 43 BC - AD 17/18), known as Ovid in the Englis
h-speaking world, was a Roman poet who is best known as the author of the three major collections of poetry, the Heroides, Amores and Ars Amatoria, and of the Metamorphoses, a mythological hexameter poem.
He is also well known for the Fasti, about the Roman calendar, and the Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto, two collections of poems written in exile on the Black Sea. Ovid was also the author of several smaller pieces, the Remedia Amoris, the Medicamina Faciei Femineae, and the long curse-poem Ibis. He also wrote a lost tragedy, Medea. He is considered a master of the elegiac couplet, and is traditionally ranked alongside Virgil and Horace as one of the three canonic poets of Latin literature.
Pallas
Brother of Marcus Antonius Felix, secretary of Emperor Claudius
Marcus Antonius Pallas (c. 1 - 63) was a prominent Greek freedman and secretary during the reigns of the Roman Emperors Claudius and Nero. His younger brother was Marcus Antonius Felix, a procurator of Judaea Province.
Pallas was originally a slave of Antonia Minor, a daughter of Mark Antony and niece of Emperor Augustus. Antonia probably manumitted Pallas between the years of 31 and 37, when he would have passed the minimum age for freedom. When Antonia died in 37, he became the client of her son, Claudius, as tradition dictated at the death of a former master and patron.
As a freedman, Pallas rose to great heights in the imperial government. From the beginning of Claudius' reign, the senate was openly hostile to him, which forced him to centralize powers. The daily maintenance of the empire was too much for one man, so Claudius divided it up amongst his trusted freedmen. Pallas was made secretary of the treasury.
When his brother Felix was recalled to Rome to stand trial for maladministration, Pallas could not prevent him from being banished, though he was at the height of his career. Nor could he prevent his fellow freedman-administrator Polybius from being executed for treason.
In the second half of Claudius' reign, Pallas chose to support Agrippina the Younger as a new empress after the fall of Empress Messalina.
When Nero succeeded Claudius, Pallas retained his position in the treasury for a time.
In 55, Nero dismissed Pallas from service, tired of having to deal with any allies of Agrippina. He further accused Pallas of conspiring to overthrow him. Seneca, who was prominent in Nero's circle, came to Pallas' defense at the trial and got him acquitted.
Pallas did not elude Nero's wrath forever, and was killed on Nero's orders in 63.
Pontius Pilate
Prefect of Judaea
Pontius Pilatus, known in the English-speaking world as Pontius Pilate, was the fifth Prefect of the Roman province of Judaea, from AD 26 - 36. He is best known as the judge at Jesus' trial and the man who authorized the crucifixion of Jesus. As prefect, he served under Emperor Tiberius.
Little is known of Pilate. There is an old tradition linking the birthplace of Pilate with the small village of Bisenti, Samnite territory, in today's Abruzzo region of Central Italy. There are alleged ruins of a Roman house known as "The House of Pilate in Bisenti". Other places in Spain and Germany have also made similar claims about Pilate. Eusebius, quoting early apocryphal accounts, stated that Pilate suffered misfortune in the reign of Caligula, was exiled to Gaul and eventually committed suicide there in Vienne. The 10th century historian Agapius of Hierapolis, in his Universal History, says that Pilate committed suicide during the first year of Caligula's reign, in AD 37/38.
Poppaea Sabina
Wife of Nero
Poppaea Sabina (after AD 63 known as Poppaea Augusta Sabina) (30 - 65) and sometimes referred to as Poppaea Sabina the Younger to differentiate her from her mother of the same name, was a Roman Empress as the second wife of the Emperor Nero. Prior to this she was the wife of the future Emperor Otho. The historians of antiquity describe her as a beautiful woman who used intrigues to become empress.
The cause and timing of Poppaea's death is uncertain. According to Suetonius, while she was awaiting the birth
