Culture of ancient Rome
The Roman Empire, at its height (c. 117 CE), was the most extensive political and social structure in western civilization. By 285 CE the empire had grown too vast to be ruled from the central government at Rome and so was divided by Emperor Diocletian into a Western and an Eastern Empire. The Roman Empire began when Augustus Caesar became the first emperor of Rome (31 BCE) and ended, in the west, when the last Roman emperor, Romulus Augustulus, was deposed by the Germanic King Odoacer (476 CE). In the east, it continued as the Byzantine Empire until the death of Constantine XI and the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453 CE. The influence of the Roman Empire on western civilization was profound in its lasting contributions to virtually every aspect of western culture.
The Last Legion
The Emperor Tiberius is referred to as "the last of Julius Caesar's line". Inconsistently, Romulus Augustulus is also depicted as the last of Julius Caesar's family line and Tiberius as one of his ancestors. Tiberius was actually the second of the five Julio-Claudian emperors, succeeding to the role of emperor as the adopted son of Augustus, who had himself been adopted by Julius Caesar. Augustus had named several of his own relatives as heirs, but as they all died, he named a son of his second wife, Livia, by her first marriage. Thus, Tiberius was not the last of any line established by Julius Caesar (Augustus' maternal great-uncle by blood) as he had no blood relation to Caesar at all. His successors, Caligula and Claudius were blood relatives of Julius Caesar through a maternal blood line dating back to Augustus's older sister, Octavia. Nero, a direct descendant of Augustus, ruled roughly twenty years after the death of Tiberius and was the final emperor of the Julio-Claudian Dynasty, thus making him the last ruler descended from Julius Caesar's family – the Julii.