Roman Empire

On 16 January 27 BC the Senate granted Octavian — the great-nephew and heir of Julius Caesar — the title Augustus ("the revered one"). It was a constitutional fiction: the Republic still officially existed, with its consuls and Senate, but Augustus held all real military and political power and was in every meaningful sense the first emperor. The empire he founded encircled the Mediterranean — Italy, Spain, Gaul, the Danube and Rhine frontiers, Greece, Asia Minor, Syria, Judea, Egypt, North Africa — and gave it the longest period of internal peace it had ever known, the Pax Romana. Augustus reigned forty-one years and died in AD 14; under him the census brought Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem (Luke 2:1) and Jesus was born. He was followed by Tiberius (14–37), under whose procurator Pontius Pilate Jesus was crucified; Caligula (37–41); Claudius (41–54), who expelled the Jews from Rome (Acts 18:2); Nero (54–68), who tried Paul and martyred both Paul and Peter; the year of four emperors (69); Vespasian and Titus, who destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple in 70; and a long succession of emperors and dynasties. The Western Empire fell to Germanic kings in AD 476; the Eastern (Byzantine) Empire endured until 1453.