History of the Roman Empire founder of the brief Flavian dynasty, to be followed by the Nerva–Antonine dynasty which produced the "Five Good Emperors": Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius and the philosophically inclined Marcus Aurelius. In the view of the Greek historian Dio Cassius, a contemporary observer, the accession of the emperor Commodus in 180 AD marked the descent "from a kingdom of gold to one of rust and iron"—a famous comment which has led some historians, notably Edward Gibbon, to take Commodus' reign as the beginning of the decline of the Roman Empire. In 212, during the reign of Caracalla, Roman citizenship was granted
History of the Constitution of the Late Roman Empire History of the Constitution of the Late Roman Empire The History of the Constitution of the Late Roman Empire is a study of the ancient Roman Empire that traces the progression of Roman political development from the abolition of the Roman Principate around the year 200 until the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 CE. When Diocletian became Roman Emperor in 284 CE, he inherited a constitution that was no longer functioning, and so he enacted the most significant constitutional reforms in over three-hundred years. His reforms, much like those three-hundred years before, were intended to correct the