Two thousand years ago Rome controlled territory stretching from Britain to North Africa and from Spain to Syria, with roughly a quarter of the world's population living under its rule. This series traces the empire through the Julio-Claudian dynasty, from Augustus consolidating power after decades of civil war through the reigns of Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero. Historians and classicists narrate the political intrigue inside the imperial household alongside the everyday machinery of empire: the legions holding the frontiers, the roads and aqueducts binding distant provinces to Rome, and the spectacle of the Colosseum keeping the capital's population entertained. Dramatic reenactments recreate scenes from the imperial court and the streets of Pompeii, while location footage moves between Roman ruins across Europe and North Africa. The series treats Nero's fall and the chaos that follows as the hinge point, when a system built around one family's bloodline nearly collapses under its own excesses. It is a straightforward political history of how a city-state became an empire and how fragile that empire's stability actually was.