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 Ancient Rome was a civilisation that grew from a small agricultural community founded on the Italian Peninsula in the 9th century BC to a large empire straddling the Mediterranean Sea. In its 12 centuries of existence, Roman civilization shifted from a monarchy, to a republic based on a combination of oligarchy and democracy, to an autocratic empire. It came to dominate Western Europe and the area surrounding the Mediterranean Sea through conquest and assimilation. The Roman empire went into decline in the 5th century AD. Plagued by internal instability and attacked by various migrating peoples from beyond its borders, the western part of the empire, including Hispania, Gaul, and Italy, broke up into independent kingdoms in the 5th century. The eastern part of the empire, governed from Constantinople, survived this crisis, and would live on for another millennium, until its last remains were finally annexed by the emerging Ottoman Empire. This eastern, medieval stage of the Empire is usually referred to as the Byzantine Empire by historians. Roman civilization is often grouped into "classical antiquity" with ancient Greece, a civilization that inspired much of the culture of ancient Rome. Ancient Rome contributed greatly to the development of law, war, art, literature, architecture, technology and language in the Western world, and its history continues to have a major influence on the world today.
 When war threatened, the consuls of the day would be charged with the duty of recruiting an army from the eligible citizenry of the Republic. As a rule one of the consuls would lead this mainly volunteer army into battle. As can be imagined, not all elected consuls were adept at leading an army. For example, in the year 113 BC the consul Gnaeus Papirius Carbo was defeated at the Battle of Noreia by invading tribes of the Cimbri and the Teutons, losing all but 20,000 men out of an army of 200,000. This disaster was followed by a protracted war in Africa against King Jugurtha of Numidia. 
Edward Gibbon, English historian, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776)
 Sejanus was born at Volsinii, in Etruria, to the family of Cosconia Lentuli Maluginensis and Lucius Seius Strabo, an equestrian who became Praetorian Prefect under Augustus. By Roman custom he was known as Aelius Sejanus after his adoption into the more prestigious Aelian gens. 
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