Gaius Octavius was born in 63 B.C. in Rome ... Deifying his great uncle and renaming himself Augustus, Octavian brought down the ancient world’s greatest Republic and rebirthed it an empire.

A s was the Roman custom, Augustus adopted his stepson Tiberius as his heir, and Tiberius became Rome’s second emperor in 14 CE. Ancient authors did not remember Tiberius kindly, inevitably ...