Rome 21: The Nerva-Antonines

In the previous lecture, we saw the end of the Flavian dynasty with the death of Domitian. In this lecture, we pick up where we left off and begin with a new dynasty that would rule for 180 years, the Nerva-Antonine dynasty. The first five of these emperors were termed by Edward Gibbon “The Five Good Emperors.” The final emperor in this dynasty was an apple that would fall far from the tree, a man named Commodus, whose death, as we shall see, would put Rome on a path for civil war.