Even if we'd argue that the Republic was an empire before it was the Empire (which we probably should for other reasons), Rome probably at the earliest became an empire in the 300s BCE (and that is probably stretching it), and probably stretched to the 400s CE (if we ignore the eastern half). But even by that count, around 1 CE would at best be the "middle Roman Empire", hardly late by any calculation.

Yes! But the rest of the sentence is equally wrong:

> During the late Roman Empire, rulers like Julius Caesar and Nero

Nero died in 68 AD: early Roman Empire. In fact he was only the 5th Roman emperor.

These pop-sci and pop-history articles do things like this a lot. Sometimes it feels like the days of reliable scientific journalism are behind us.

Telling apart roman republic, principate and dominate is middle school stuff. Surely, we can expect that level of knowledge from a pop-sci journalist?

Yeah, Caesar was just Caesar, the emperors from the dynasty he founded continued to use his name, and then the emperors from following dynasties "adopted" his name as a title (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesar_(title))

Which is irrelevant when you explicitly name Julius Caesar.

Fun fact to whip out at parties but not applicable here

While the Roman emperors attached "Caesar" to their names and eventually they were frequently referred as the current "Caesar", the official title of their function was "imperator", hence "emperor".

Julius Caesar has refused the title "imperator", for reasons of public image, even if de facto he had the same power as an "imperator", i.e. the power to give commands that must be obeyed by anyone else.

All his successors possessed the title of "imperator", so they are correctly referred as Roman "emperors".

The Smithsonian should be ashamed!

Augustus IS Julius Caesar, he quite literally inherited the name (and all of his great uncle's property).

The full quote is this:

>During the late Roman Empire, rulers like Julius Caesar and Nero owned homes in the town, which was known as a destination that aristocrats flocked to for drinking, parties and general hedonism.

Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus (aka Octavian) not only gained his great uncle's original property, but he invested quite heavily into property and other public works in Baiae with other emperors doing the same. Baiae was very much an "imperial city" and it definitely kicked off with Octavian.

The city gained much of its notoriety (or negative connotation for extravagance) as time went on.

And the sentence says "like", as in "hey reader, here are these two pretty familiar names who are not only relevant to the city itself, but also can give you an idea of the type of elite class we're talking about." It's a pretty succinct way of putting it and while reinforcing multiple points at once.

So it's not wrong. If you're going to be pedantic, at least be correct.

Well, no. "Julius Caesar" with no other qualifier is Julius Caesar, even if other rulers also used the name. Otherwise it would be difficult to differentiate them.

Well yes, that's quite literally how it worked. When Octavian was adopted he literally became Gaius Julius Caesar and technically lost the "Octavianus" part of his former name; roman names did not work like our modern day names.

The article is well constructed for its intended audience without getting into largely irrelevant details about the story.

It's accurate and purposeful. It's certainly not incorrect by any measure.

That's how it worked then (for Romans), but it's not how it works now. So when the writer refers to Julius Caesar without any other qualifications, he refers to the adoptive father of Octavian. It's a minor nitpick though, hardly worth bringing up, but it is correct.

edit: as someone else observed, none of these were part of the late Roman Empire. Octavian and Nero lived in the early Roman Empire, and Caesar lived during the last years of the Republic.

>That's how it worked then (for Romans), but it's not how it works now.

Unfortunately you don't get to flip a switch arbitrarily and choose when to be pedantic to make an irrelevant point.

>The article is well constructed for its intended audience without getting into largely irrelevant details about the story.

That's about as accurate as saying that John Adams and John Quincy Adams were the same person rather than father and son.

They didn't have roman names.

Nero isn't from the the late Roman Empire either.

Exactly, and Augustus was the first Roman emperor!

And you're reading a popsci article by a freelance journalist. Stick to the actual important topic instead of going "akschually" _WHILE_ being incorrect.

The Roman Empire is in fact dead. Much like the late Mark Twain - rumors of both being dead in 2024 are in no way exagerated.

I had to stop reading and double-check the source of the article. Come on, Smithsonian...