Book 14 in the Magic Tree House series (1998) A novel by Mary Pope Osborne Jack and Annie set off to find an original copy of an ancient Chinese myth. Armed only with their magic library cards, they must take on a book-burning emperor. But with the help of a scholar and a silk weaver, they triumph again.
In the 280s Carausius was the commander of the Roman fleet based in Britain and Gaul, with the task of clearing the seas of pirates. He was so successful and popular in this that he established himself as an independent emperor in 286. In 293 he was murdered by his associate Allectus, who himself was killed in 296 by the Roman army sent to recover the province.
Agrippina the Younger attained a level of power in first-century Rome unprecedented for a woman. According to ancient sources, she achieved her success by plotting against her brother, the emperor Caligula, murdering her husband, the emperor Claudius, and controlling her son, the emperor Nero, by sleeping with him.
Septimius Severus, the African Emperor, was descended from Phoenician settlers in Tripolitania, and his reign, from AD 193-211, represents a turning point in Roman history.
Well-illustrated and engaging, this biography reveals the multifaceted and sometimes conflicting character of an enigmatic and complex emperor.
When Justinian first assumed the title of Roman Emperor in 527 CE, his inherited empire--now based in Constantinople-- had lost almost all of its connection with the Eternal City itself, and was threatened from within by profound theological splits, and from without by the various barbarian kingdoms that surrounded it. By taking military action against the barbarian Ostrogoths, Visigoths, and Vandals, and signing an "eternal peace" with Persia, Justinian managed to reclaim much of the lands formerly held by Rome; while through his incessant legislation and monetary contributions to an extensive building program, he sought to reestablish the old Roman cultural institutions of order and architectural beauty in his newly won kingdom.
