This site is designed for students and teachers of Roman history. The focus of the site is on the political and social history of the period from the battle of Actium in 31 BC to the death of the Emperor Trajan in AD 117. The aim of the site is to guide students and teachers through this complicated period of history. In so doing, the site will provide links to key visual and written resources. It will offer also core historical information. In addition, it will suggest ways in which we might approach the period and its core issues.

The pages will also pose historical questions, and suggest some ways in which those questions might be answered. Understanding history is as much about asking the right questions as it is about finding answers. The aim is to provide users with enough information to be confident in finding their own answers, and perhaps even to ask new and more interesting questions themselves.

This is currently a beta version of the site and is in development. There are errors and issues that need resolving. As the site grows, it requires users to make the site better.

Leave comments on mistakes, typographic or other presentational issues, broken links, or suggestions for further themes to be covered on this page.

There is no fixed way of reading the site. The reader should be able to navigate the site in which ever way they wish, including finding their way into externally provided material.

At the bottom of each page, there will normally by at least three links. One or more will relate to the section under which the current page is written.  Another will be a suggestion of a next page, and the third will relate to a theme developed on the page. As it develops and more thematic material is added, the structure should be more web-like, meaning that you can follow threads in different directions, though, hopefully, you should always be able to escape.

Although the site is not designed to meet the demands of a specific UK educational syllabus, I am looking to support the A level syllabus in OCR Classical Civilization: The Imperial Image; Love and Relationships [the Roman imperial elements]; OCR Ancient History: Roman History, both the modules on 31 BC – AD 68 and the Flavians. The site is designed to support anyone, at any level, engaging with Roman history.

Throughout, there are links to the source material, to images, and to archaeological material when available. For images which are in the public domain, reference is made to sites which give licensing conditions. 

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