Where Every Roman Emperor was Buried [13:52]

Here’s the formatted transcript. All you have to do is copy and paste the transcript from above to almost any AI platform and ask them to format it in narrative form without the time stamps and voila. I think ChatGPT, Genesis, Grok, Claude will all do it.

Here it is:

Over the millennium and a half that separate the rise of Augustus from the fall of Constantinople, there were about 150 Roman emperors. They reigned, on average, 11 years, living to a median age of 51. Not quite half met unnatural ends. Some emperors never received a formal burial. Vitellius, Elagabalus, and Petronius were flung into the Tiber. Constantine II was dumped into the River Alsa. Justinian II and Alexius II were cast into the sea. So was Constantine V, after being posthumously declared a heretic. All that was mortal of Andronicus II was left to rot in a vault of the Hippodrome at Constantinople. The ashes of Phocas were scattered to the winds.

The bodies of several emperors, likewise, were never recovered. Decius was lost in the mud of a Balkan swamp. Valens was incinerated in a farmhouse outside Adrianople. The skull of Nicephorus I became a favorite drinking cup of the Bulgar Khan Krum. Most emperors, however, were buried with great ceremony. By the third century, an elaborate ritual had evolved. A wax effigy of the emperor was placed on an ivory couch. It was attended for seven days by the Senate, dressed in mourning black. Then the effigy was brought into the Forum, where choruses sang the emperor’s praises. In the Campus Martius, finally, the effigy was placed on a gargantuan pyre, decorated with statues and paintings and packed with incense. Troops of horsemen paraded around the pyre, as did chariots carrying likenesses of famous Romans. When the pyre was lit, an eagle was released from the top to symbolize the flight of the emperor’s soul to heaven. Although Septimius Severus and most of his predecessors were cremated, inhumation was standard from the third century onward.

The body of Justinian was so well embalmed that the crusaders, pillaging the emperor’s sarcophagus more than six centuries after his death, found it almost perfectly preserved. The rest of this video will consider where the Roman emperors were buried, from Augustus in 14 AD to Constantine XI in 1453. I haven’t been able to track down every emperor, but I’ve come close. Buckle up.

Augustus, the first emperor, designed his own mausoleum. It stood on the northern edge of Rome’s Campus Martius, between the Tiber and the Via Flaminia. A vast circular structure with walls of travertine-faced concrete, it was crowned by a terraced roof planted with trees. A long passageway led to the burial chamber, where rows of niches held the cinerary urns of Augustus and his family. One marble urn, belonging to Agrippina the Elder, survived the Middle Ages as a grain measure. Tiberius was buried in the Mausoleum of Augustus. So, presumably, was Claudius. A generation later, the ashes of Nerva were placed there. The less reputable Julio-Claudians were denied admission. Caligula was cremated and buried in the Lamian Gardens on the outskirts of Rome. Although his sisters later exhumed the remains, his ghost reportedly lingered there. Nero’s ashes were placed in the tomb of Domitii, his father’s family, on the Pincian Hill.

Galba was assassinated in the Forum, and his head was paraded around the city on a spear. After various adventures, head and body were reunited and buried in the former emperor’s gardens near the Via Aurelia. Otho took his own life outside Brixellum, modern Brescia, and was buried there. Vitellius, struck down near the forum, was hauled to the Tiber with a meat hook. His wife, however, managed to fish the body from the river and bury it near Rome. The Flavian emperors – Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian – all ended up in the Temple of the Gens Flavia, which stood on the Quirinal Hill. Domitian himself was initially buried elsewhere. His faithful nurse, however, smuggled his ashes into the family temple.

Trajan’s ashes were interred at the base of his namesake column – a signal honor, since the column stood inside the pomerium, the ritual boundary within which burials were normally forbidden. Hadrian built a grandiose mausoleum modeled on that of Augustus, but considerably more elaborate. Every part was sheathed in gleaming marble; colossal statues stood guard on the roof. Centuries later, during Justinian’s reconquest of Italy, they would be hurled down to break the siege ladders of the Goths. Inside the mausoleum, a circular ramp corkscrewed up to the chamber in which the emperors lay. All this was despoiled long ago, but visitors can still see the papal apartment built over the tomb chamber during the Renaissance, which features a bathroom with frescoes of questionable propriety. Antoninus Pius, Marcus Aurelius, Commodus, and Septimius Severus were buried in the Mausoleum of Hadrian. So, eventually, was Caracalla.

Severus Alexander was buried just outside Rome in the mausoleum now known as the Monte del Grano. The famous Portland Vase in the British Museum may have contained his ashes. Gallienus was laid to rest in a mausoleum along the Via Appia. Aurelian was probably also buried at Rome, but the location of his tomb is unknown. A series of third-century emperors were buried far from Rome. Gordian III was buried at Zaitha in Mesopotamia; Hostilian, at Viminacium on the Danube frontier. Valerian was probably buried at Gundeshapur in modern Iran, where he had been taken as a captive of the Persian emperor. It would later be rumored that the Persians had Valerian’s corpse flayed, stuffed, and displayed in a temple. Claudius Gothicus was felled by a plague at Sirmium and likely buried there. A fever claimed Tacitus at Tyana; as far as we know, there he remained. Carus was reportedly incinerated by a lightning bolt near the Persian capital at Ctesiphon. If so, he would have been buried on the spot.

Moving on to the Tetrarchy, Diocletian was buried in his retirement villa, so massive that its walls still contain the entire old town of Split, Croatia. In one of those ironies of history, the arch-persecutor’s mausoleum became a Christian cathedral. Diocletian’s co-emperor Maximian seems to have been buried in Marseille; a medieval legend claimed that his body was later discovered, perfectly preserved, floating in a pool of perfumed oil. Galerius was buried just outside the massive fortified palace he had built for himself at Felix Romuliana, now in eastern Serbia. Constantius Chlorus died at York but was probably buried at Trier. Constantine established the Church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople, where he and many other emperors would eventually be entombed. Before discussing that remarkable complex, however, let’s focus on the final rulers of the Western Roman Empire, who were left out of Constantine’s mausoleum.

During the fifth century, four emperors were buried in Rome. Honorius was buried in a mausoleum beside old St. Peter’s Basilica. Valentinian III and, probably, Severus and Olybrius were laid in the same structure. When the mausoleum was demolished in the 16th century, the sarcophagus of Honorius’ wife was discovered. Honorius himself and the emperors buried with him, however, still lie undisturbed beneath the church. Gratian and Valentinian II were buried by St. Ambrose in Milan. Avitus was buried at Brioude, now in central France. Majorian was probably buried at Tortona in northern Italy. After a brief stint as emperor, Glycerius was deposed and made bishop of Salona, now in Croatia, where he was eventually buried. Before his demise, however, he seems to have orchestrated the assassination of his successor, Julius Nepos, who had also been exiled to the vicinity. Romulus Augustulus, the final western Roman emperor, lived out his days near Naples and was buried there.

Returning to the Eastern Roman Empire, Constantine was buried in a circular mausoleum beside the Church of the Holy Apostles at Constantinople. Over the following seven centuries, that mausoleum and another constructed by Justinian would accumulate dozens of imperial sarcophagi. For reasons ranging from personal devotion to deposition, some emperors were buried elsewhere in and around Constantinople. After 1028, when the mausoleums of the Holy Apostles were completely full, the practice became universal. A few emperors were buried outside Constantinople. Constans II was buried in Syracuse. Leontius, Tiberius III, Leo V, and Romanus IV were all buried on Prote, one of the Princes’ Islands in the Sea of Marmara. Another of the Princes’ Islands, Prinkipo, was briefly the resting place of Empress Irene. The tomb of Michael V was on Chios. Michael I was buried at Satyros in Bithynia. Theodosius III, who became bishop of Ephesus after being deposed, was buried in that city; his tomb became famous as a place of miraculous cures.

The Comnenian Dynasty established a family mausoleum at the Pantokrator Monastery in Constantinople, now Zeyrek Mosque. John II and Manuel I were buried here. Alexius I, the dynasty’s founder, was buried at Pammakaristos Monastery, now Fethiye Mosque. After the crusaders took Constantinople in 1204, several Byzantine successor states rose in the provinces. The most significant of these, the Empire of Nicaea, was founded by Theodore Laskaris, who was buried in the city he had chosen as his capital. His successors John III and Theodore II were buried in Magnesia ad Sipylum, and John IV – the last of the line – was buried on the Asian coast of the Sea of Marmara.

Michael VIII, who retook Constantinople and founded the Palaiologan Dynasty, was denied burial in the imperial city due to a religious controversy; his remains were interred at a monastery in Selymbria, Thrace. John VI, a later member of the dynasty, was buried at Mystra, near ancient Sparta. The rest of the Palaiologans were buried in Constantinople. Andronicus II, buried at the Monastery of Constantine Lips, is the only Roman emperor whose remains have been discovered by archaeologists. Andronicus III and John V ended up at the Monastery of Panagia Hodegetria, now on the grounds of Topkapı Palace. Andronicus IV, Manuel II, and John VIII were all interred near their Comnenian predecessors at the Pantokrator Monastery. Constantine XI, the last of the Roman emperors, died fighting beneath the walls of Constantinople. His body was never found.

Looking at the map of all the burials discussed in this video, some clear patterns emerge. Unsurprisingly, most emperors were buried in Rome or Constantinople. Emperors were buried elsewhere either because they fell in battle, because they were exiled, or because they had established a capital in the provinces. To be buried in a place, after all, is to claim it.

If you’d like to claim your place on my upcoming trips to Rome and Eastern Turkey, follow the link in the description. The Turkey trip includes an excursion in Istanbul, where we’ll see the remains of several imperial tombs. You’ll find the latest episode in my “Rome in Review” series, which investigates the 1963 film Cleopatra, on Patreon, also linked below. Finally, for more historical content, check out my other channels, Toldinstone Footnotes and Scenic Routes to the Past.

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