A Walk With the Emperors

The three walking or armchair tours of ancient Rome use emperors as the timeline to put Roman sights into a historical and chronological context. Quotations from then contemporary authors are utilized to describe the emperors, visited sights and their imperial patrons, so that ancient gossip from the tabloids of Suetonius or an opinion or observation from Virgil, Cicero, Horace, Pliny, the disciple Luke or even an emperor, may provide insights to the times, and put artifacts into their appropriate context. Dante, Goethe, Gibbon and Shakespeare share their judgments looking back through time. These unique tours attempt to lead the reader through the often confusing Rome which is strewn with artifacts from its 2600 year history. The 350 year period of 27BC to 327 AD is visited in 196 pages, with walking maps, photographs and timelines.

A pre-Imperial Prologue introduces Julius Caesar’s 48 BC overthrow of Pompey, the assassination of Caesar, and the end of the Roman Republic. The struggle for succession among Marc Antony, Lepidus, and Octavian ends in 31 BC. The tour covers Imperial Rome from 27 BC (when the Senate named Augustus “Imperator”) to 333AD in three walking or armchair tours: Tour 1 (27BC- 68 AD) begins in Trastevere (across the Tiber) with the reign of the first Emperor Caesar Augustus (Octavian), followed by the remaining four patrician Emperors of the Julio-Claudian Dynasty: Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius and Nero. I inherited a Rome of brick and left a Rome of marble Augustus, Res Gestae Tour 2 (69-193) commences in the Forum, and finds the Empire led by a new style and class of leadership under the Flavian Dynasty (69-98) of Vespasian and his two sons; and then rise to its global height under the Adoptive and Antonine Emperors Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus, Marcus Aurelius and Commodus. In the second century of the Christian era, the Empire of Rome comprehended the keenest part of the earth, and the most civilized portion of mankind E. Gibbon, History of the Decline and Fall… Tour 3 (194-335) opens at the grain dole center, near the Largo Argentina, at the territorial apex of the Empire under Septimius Severus. The vast Empire then began to disintegrate into chaos, and had a temporary revival under Diocletian. Constantine made a final grasp at Christianity to sustain the Empire’s viability. Two great powers - The Roman Empire, which became a monarchy at that time and the teaching of Christ- proceeding as if from a single starting point, at once tamed and reconciled all to friendship. Thus each blossomed at the same time and place as the other . . . in order to merge the entire race into one unity and concord. Eusebius 336 AD The tours should be read in advance of actually walking to the described sites; or they can be read as an armchair tour thousands of miles from Rome. Backtracking has been kept to a minimum, but now that there is an admission for the Forum, sites are visited there even if they do not fit the chronology of the emperor under discussion.

Mott L. L. Groom was a European history major at Albion college and received an MA in International Relations at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. He lived in Rome with his family during the 80’s when he worked from a Campo Marzio terrace on the Tiber for an international oil company. He and his wife Barbara, then moved back to Rome in the early 90’s where he consulted in the petroleum sector from near the Piazza del Popolo. From the late 90’s until 2004, he was retired and lived in Trastevere, not far from S. Maria en Trastevere where the tour begins and where he began his moped riding research on the history of ancient Rome. He has authored several Op Ed, trade publication, and travel articles on Italy but this is his first book. He has also given management talks based on Roman Emperors using photos, time lines and research from this book entitled Quality Management Roman Style. A second book of the same type is in preparation. It will cover the period from 100 BC to the assassination of Julius Caesar. A third covering the fall of Rome is in the research stage. He lives with his photographer wife Barbara on Cape Cod and is always in some form of planning for trips to Rome or to see his nine grandchildren who are spread across the United States.