Roman Emperors Family Tree | Augustus Caesar to Justinian the Great

today I'm going to show you the family tree of Roman emperors I'll be starting with the first Roman Emperor Augustus and going all the way down to the 6th century Emperor Justinian the Great I'll be using my Roman emperors a family tree chart which is available as a poster from my website useful charts calm the first thing I want to point out is that unlike later European monarchies there's not actually an unbroken blood line between all of these emperors however there were several dynasties at various points and these are represented by the various colors on the chart I'm going to start up at the top with the first dynasty which is the Giulio Claudian dynasty and in fact instead of starting with Augustus I'm going to start with his very famous great-uncle Julius Caesar before Rome became an empire it was a republic governed by a Senate but in the last days of the Republic there were three generals who came to dominate things and informally they were called the first triumvirate these three men were Julius Caesar Pompey and Crassus after Crassus died there was a power struggle between Pompey and Caesar and Caesar ended up winning and was named the dictator of the Roman Republic eventually however the Senate started to worry that Caesar was becoming too popular and might end up being proclaimed king they therefore quite famously had him assassinated the two main people behind the plot are actually shown on this chart as well Brutus was the son of Caesars mistress Servilia and Kassius was the son-in-law of that same mistress although through a different relationship so after Caesar was assassinated pow was shared by a second triumvirate consisting of Mark Antony previously a close ally of Julius Caesar Octavian who later becomes Augustus he was the grandson of Caesars sister Julia and Caesar actually ended up adopting him as his own son and finally Lepidus who was another son-in-law of Caesars mistress Servilia eventually though Octavian and Mark Antony became enemies part of the reason was that Mark Antony was originally married to Octavian's sister but then started a relationship with Cleopatra the Pharaoh of Egypt earlier Cleopatra had had a relationship with Julius Caesar and produced a son by him named Cesare Eon there was a fear that this son might end up becoming the ruler of Rome so Octavian fought against Mark Antony and eventually he won at the famous battle of actium after that Octavian became known as Augustus and he is generally considered to have been the first emperor of Rome if we look to the side here you can see some of the titles used by the Emperor's of Rome initially the Emperor's were not technically monarchs instead they held the title princeps civil Attis which meant first citizen or first among equals in reality though they held as much power as a monarch would if not more but because of this title the period we are about to look at is called the Principate now augustus did not have any sons but he did have a daughter and that daughter married the famous general marcus agrippa and these two did have sons who were meant to become the heirs of augustus but they died young and so augustus named his two stepsons Tiberius and Drusus as his heirs Tiberius and Drusus were the sons of his wife Livia through her first husband Claudius and this is why the dynasty is called Giulio Claudian Giulio for the connection to Julius Caesar and Claudian for this link to Claudius drew says was actually the favorite of Augustus but he died before Augustus so when Augustus died Tiberius was the only remaining heir so he became the second emperor now part of the agreement was that Tiberius would adopt Germanicus son of drusus hence the line would eventually go through druce's after all Germanicus was meant to be the third emperor but he died before Tiberius and therefore his son Caligula became the next Emperor Caligula had a short reign and was assassinated so the Emperor ship then went to the brother of Germanicus named Claudius Claudius then adopted as his heir Nero the grandson of Germanicus and therefore Nero became the fifth and final emperor of the Giulio Claudian dynasty so you can see that all these early Emperor's were all connected through some sort of adoption but also through some sort of blood relationship to either the Julian or the Claudian family now Nero was quite famously thought to be involved in the Great Fire of Rome he went mad in his later years and actually ended up committing suicide so after his death there was a power struggle the Year 69 is known as the year of the Four Emperors in which four different military leaders were proclaimed emperor eventually the space ian won out and became emperor for the next ten years he is the start of a new but rather short dynasty known as the Flavian dynasty after he died he was followed by his two sons Titus and Domitian Domitian ended up being assassinated after which his advisor Nerva was proclaimed emperor so with Nerva we get the third dynasty sometimes called the Nerva antonin dynasty nervo was elderly at the time so he did not actually rule long but he had adopted as his heir an individual named Trajan so Trajan soon became the next Emperor it was during the rule of Trajan that Rome reached its peak of power you can see that at this point the Emperor ship is once again passed on through adoption on a regular basis just like it was during the Giulio Claudian dynasty but interestingly there was also often a genealogical connection as well for example Trajan chose as his heir Hadrian both Trajan and Hadrian were descendants of this individual here they were also connected through Hadrian's wife as well anyway if we continue forward we see that Hadrian adopted Antoninus Pius who was his wife's sisters daughter's husband and Antoninus Pius adopted two individuals who would become joint Emperor's after him Lucius verus and Marcus Aurelius Lucius verus was married to Marcus Aurelius his daughter and Marcus Aurelius was married to Antoninus Pius daughter Lucius verus did not rule as long as Marcus Aurelius so Marcus Aurelius is usually remembered as the main Emperor for that period if we take him and the previous Emperor's back to Nerva we get five emperors these men are collectively known as the five good emperors because during this time rome was at its peak and things were fairly peaceful this came to an end when Marcus Aurelius chose his son Commodus as his heir instead of adopting someone this is famously played out in the Russell Crowe movie Gladiator albeit with much creative license with Commodus Rome started a slow climb downhill Commodus eventually was assassinated and then we get the year of the five emperors one two three four five different individuals were proclaimed emperor in the year 193 but eventually this individual Severus wins out and becomes sole Emperor he established the severn dynasty and during his time as Emperor he ruled partially with his two sons Geeta and Caracalla after Severus died Caracalla assassinated his brother but then himself was assassinated and then we get a non dynastic emperor for a year or so we then get some more distant relatives of Severus as Emperor's Elega beulas and alexander severus they were the grandchildren of this julia who was the sister of this julia who was the wife of Severus now the interesting thing about these four emperors is that they can all trace their roots to an individual named Julius Bassianus who was a high priest in Syria and that individual through an unknown number of generations is thought to have been a descendant of this priest King also in Syria and that priest King was a direct descendant of Cleopatra and Mark Antony so we have at least four Emperor's who may have been descendants of both Cleopatra and Mark Antony okay after the death of alexander severus we get a period known as the crisis of the third century this is a time when within about fifty years we get at least 25 different emperors it's hard to get an exact count because some of them named their sons as joint rulers but there was about 25 different emperors in a 50 year period in fact the year 238 is known as the year of this time six emperors so it was a time of great instability in the Empire and there were even a few breakaway states for a while those were brought back into the fold by an emperor named Lillian however things didn't really stabilize until we arrived at Diocletian a few years into his rule he decided to solve the problem by splitting the Empire in two he retained the title of Emperor in the east and then he named another individual Maximian as Emperor of the West this system was known as the trechie Tetrarchy means rule by four and the reason for this is that each of the two senior emperors also had a junior emperor called a Caesar working under them so in effect there was always for rulers of the Empire at any given time this is why I've restarted the numbers at this point the blue numbers represent the Emperor's in the East and the green numbers represent the Emperor's in the West I've also restarted the numbers because now we move into a period known as the dominate which can be contrasted with the earlier Principate starting with Diocletian the Emperor's also held the title of Domino's or Lord meaning that everyone now admitted that Rome was no longer a republic anyway you can see that there's some loose family connections between the emperors of this period but mostly they were just chosen by appointment the Tetrarchy system worked for a few decades up until an emperor named Constantine the Great he defeated the other Emperor and became the first person since Diocletian to rule both the east and the west at the same time he was also the first Roman Emperor to convert to Christianity and he was the Emperor who moved the capital from Rome to Byzantium renaming it Constantinople his father was an emperor before him and three of his sons went on to become emperors so altogether they can be considered the Constantinian dynasty after that dynasty there was a general named Jovian who was declared Emperor and then another general who became Emperor Valentinian the great he his brother and his two sons are considered to be a dynasty but soon after the death of Valentinian the first we get the start of another new dynasty the Theodosian dynasty that dynasty started with Valentinian the Great's son-in-law Theodosius who became Theodosius the great Theodosius ended up ruling both halves of the empire and in fact was the last person to do so when he died in 95 the Empire became permanently divided with his son honorious ruling the west and Arcadius ruling the east let's look at the West first both honorious and his nephew Valentinian the third had fairly long reins but during this time the Western Empire started to be taken over by various Germanic tribes in fact in the year 410 the city of Rome was sacked for the first time in eight hundred years in the final decades of the Western Empire we get a bunch of different people taking on the role of Emperor the final emperor in the West is usually considered to be either Julius Nepos or Romulus Augustus finally in 476 the West Falls for good with a barbarian leader named oder Acer becoming King in the east we get a totally different story there things continued for another 1,000 years after the fall of the Western Empire however the Empire in the East during that period is often referred to as the Byzantine Empire rather than the Roman Empire but in the eyes of the people at the time it was simply the same old Roman Empire that had been started by Augustus so let's look at a few more Emperor's in the East I'm not going to cover them all because they are actually continued on another chart and I'll tell you about that in a moment so after Arcadius we get his son Theodosius ii and then his son-in-law Marcion you can see here that Marcion had a daughter who married one of the final emperors in the West in fact they then had a son who married the daughter of the Emperor who established the next dynasty in the East the Leonid dynasty that was Emperor Leo the first he was followed by two son in-laws a grandson and a brother-in-law it was during the liana dynasty in the east that the fall of the Western Empire occurred so once the West fell the Eastern emperors were once again these sole emperors and they definitely saw themselves as such after the liana dynasty we get the Justinian dynasty most notable because it included the last really powerful Roman Emperor Justinian the Great Justinian is important for many reasons but one of them is that he managed to take back the city of Rome which was at that time controlled by the Ostrogoths the Byzantines then went on to retain control of Rome until the time of Charlemagne and this is where this particular chart comes to an end not long after Justinian the Byzantine emperors switched from using Latin to using Greek if you want to see the rest of the family tree of Byzantine emperors you can pick up the story using my european royal family tree north and east addition there the tree starts with basil the first of the macedonian dynasty and goes down to constantine xi Pelayo logos if you're interested in how things continued in western europe you'll want to use my european royal family tree west addition that chart starts with Charlemagne and goes on to cover the monarchies of Spain France England Germany and so forth both of these charts as well as the one we've looked at today are available from my website useful charts dot-com [Music]

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Length: 17min 14sec (1034 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 22 2019