When we think of misinformation, we likely imagine bad actors and bots operating rogue in the age of viral algorithms and fake content. Yet long before the internet, and even before the invention of the printing press, Rome was already ripe with hearsay and rumor, and often that was so by design. From the dusty public plazas to the marble halls of Emperor Augustus, falsehoods, whether spread quietly or shouted from the crowd in the public Forum, were among the most potent political weapons of the age.
Rumors of The Republic
In the Roman Republic (509–27 BCE), politics thrived on speech. Votes were cast in public, trials were held outdoors, and reputations were build and destroyed in the open air of the Forum Romanum. For all its legalism and ceremony, the Republic was governed as much by fama (public perception) as it was by law. Misinformation in this context did not circulate in written form like it does today, but lived in conversation. Rome’s political elite cultivated networks of informants and nuntii (messengers), ensuring that gossip could travel fast. Slander, especially, was a refined art.
During the political crisis of 44–43 BCE, immediately after the assassination of Julius Caesar, Cicero tried to rally the Senate and turn public opinion against Mark Antony. As a long opponent of tyranny, Cicero saw Antony as the new danger to the Republic. Beginning in September 44 BCE, he delivered and circulated a series of speeches known collectively as the Philippicae, modeled after Demosthenes’ attacks on Philip II of Macedon.
Across fourteen speeches, Cicero portrayed Antony as a drunken, immoral, violent demagogue, corrupting the army and threatening Rome’s civil liberties. He accused him of public indecency, abuse of power, and scheming to crown himself a king; all these charges were meant to discredit Mark Antony before the Senate and people.
Interestingly, the campaign was a rhetorical war of misinformation and exaggeration on both sides: Cicero’s attacks relied heavily on character assassination, while Mark Antony and his allies, in return, spread their own rumors about Cicero’s motives and loyalties.
And this, crucially, was not unusual. Political trials and public assemblies depended on persuasion, and not necessarily on evidence. Without newspapers, journalists or independent watchdogs, citizens had little means to verify what they heard. The spoken word reigned supreme, and with it, the capacity to mislead and deceive. The Republic’s information ecosystem was small, personal, and unregulated — an ideal breeding ground for falsehood.
Misinformation as Strategy
The manipulation of truth was not confined to individuals. The Roman Senate itself could spread or suppress information to preserve stability, or, to justify violence. During the Social War (91–88 BCE), reports of Italian rebels committing atrocities were deliberately exaggerated in Rome to rally public support for military campaigns. Later, when Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon in 49 BCE, he famously declared that he was defending the people’s liberty against senatorial corruption. This, too, was a kind of propaganda: a moralistic cover for a coup d’état.
For Julius Caesar, marching his army across the Rubicon river was an illegal act for a provincial governor; furthermore, this act did trigger a civil war against Pompey. Caesar justified the invasion as a defense of the libertas populi Romani (“freedom of the Roman people”).
Later, in writing on the Caesar's invasion of Pompey, Plutarch remarked that Caesar used the slogan of liberty as a pretext to seize control; the act of crossing the Rubicon was in fact the beginning of open tyranny. In A History of Ancient Rome, Mary Beard identifies Caesar's "defense of liberty" argument as the most successful piece of propaganda in his entire career.
Indeed, Caesar deeply understood that stories, and not military action, in the end win empires. His Commentarii de Bello Gallico, a detailed account of his campaigns in Gaul, was a remarkable piece of propaganda disguised as a historical record. By carefully curating victories, minimizing losses, and portraying himself as merciful and rational, Caesar shaped how both the Senate and the Roman populace would remember his wars.
The Imperial Information Machine
After the assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 BCE, Rome descended into nearly twenty years of civil war among Caesar’s heirs and rivals. When, after decades of war, Augustus finally seized power, he faced a different challenge: how does one reliably control information in such a vast and diverse Empire? The Principate (27 BCE–284 CE) replaced open political competition with a much more subtle game of perception.
Under the Principate, public speech, debate, and electoral competition were sharply limited. The Senate became largely ceremonial, and the emperor ruled by decree, but the appearance of the old Republic was maintained. This meant that power was exercised not through open discourse but through symbolic communication: images, ceremonies, coinage, and carefully curated public decrees. This is where statues and coins carrying the emperor's likeness started being used as important tools of ideology. The symbolic imagery of Augustus as Restitutor pacis (Restorer of Peace) permeated his official coinage (Pax Avgvsta). The coins depicted an idealized version of Augustus as youthful and godlike; his hair is arranged in neat shaped locks, and his expression is calm and distant, emphasizing divine authority.
In the absence of a free press, misinformation took institutional form. Imperial decrees and bulletins (acta diurna) reported official news: military victories, decrees, public games. These notices, the world’s first "state gazettes", offered a controlled narrative of empire. As it is customary in political filtering to this day, reports of defeats, losses and famines were underrepresented, delayed or altogether omitted. Tacitus, writing a century later, lamented that under the political rule of the emperors, truth is "impaired by silence", and that historians could speak freely only after hatred or flattery had already done their work:
“For the truth of past events is often impaired by partisanship or by malice; and even in the case of events of earlier times, the discrepancy between the narratives of different writers shakes confidence. But the greatest distortions occur in the histories of our own times, while the influence of hatred and favour is still strong. Hence it is that truth is impaired by silence in one case, by exaggeration in another. When the state was still free, men wrote with passion; later, when it was enslaved, they wrote with flattery or hatred. Thus between these extremes of adulation and hostility, the interests of posterity are neglected.” (Tacitus, Annals, translation by A.J. Woodman, Hackett Classics, 2004)
Still, unofficial channels persisted. Markets, taverns, and bathhouses also served as cradles of rumor. Merchants arriving from distant provinces brought not only wares for sale but also stories and gossip. The historian Suetonius records that when Emperor Nero was rumored to have set fire to Rome in 64 CE, his attempts to blame Christians failed because the “report persisted” that he himself had ordered it:
“It was believed by many that the fire was the result of his orders, inasmuch as he wished to enjoy the spectacle of a burning city, like another Orestes freed from his mother’s bonds. For he viewed the conflagration from the tower of Maecenas, and, exulting in what he called ‘the beauty of the flames,’ sang The Sack of Ilium in stage costume. Yet no one could doubt that the fire had been started by his command.” (Suetonius, De Vita Caesarum, Life of Nero, §38, Loeb Classical Library, ed. J.C. Rolfe, 1913)
Reflecting on Suetonius's account, Tacitus adds:
“To suppress this rumor, Nero falsely charged with guilt and punished with the utmost refinements of cruelty a class hated for their abominations, whom the populace called Christians… Accordingly, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much on the charge of arson as for hatred of mankind.” (Tacitus, Annals, translation by A.J. Woodman, Hackett Classics, 2004)
In this case, misinformation turned against its source, illustrating an enduring paradox: once released, falsehoods can't be controlled, and develop lives of their own. And with discovery of falsehoods comes public outrage, followed by... yes, consequences.
Fear, Superstition, and the Divine
Roman misinformation was not always purely political; it was also religious. Although, the two were closely interconnected; the Romans lived in a world where the divine and the political were in constant conversation — and often in conspiracy.
Omens, prophecies, and portents provided fertile soil for manipulation. Even something like a sound of a breaking thunder during an assembly could be declared as a sign from Jupiter; an omen conveniently interpreted by priests allied with one faction or another. The Senate occasionally suppressed or fabricated prodigies (prodigia) to justify political decisions. When Hannibal invaded Italy, the Senate ordered two Greeks and two Gauls to be buried alive to appease the gods - a rare and horrific ritual framed to carry divine significance. But to this day, historians speculate whether its true purpose was, in fact, to tighten the grip on panicking publics.
Prior Hannibal invasion in 218 BCE, Rome had already suffered a series of catastrophic defeats: Trebia in 218 BCE, Lake Trasimene a year prior, and their worst defeat of all at Cannae in 216 BCE. Defeats costed tens of thousands of Roman lives, and panic gripped the city. The Senate, desperate to restore the order and divine favor, tapped into a series of rare and ancient rituals, including human sacrifice.
But beyond serving as tools of political pressure and control, superstitions also seeped into private life of both ordinary citizen and emperors alike. Astrology, imported from the East, became wildly popular in the Imperial period. Augustus banned astrologers who predicted his death, while Tiberius later used favorable predictions to legitimize his reign.
The Uncanny Parallels
It is tempting to dismiss Roman rumor as quaint in comparison to modern disinformation campaigns. But the parallels are uncomfortably close. Back then, as it is now, misinformation exploited public trust and sentiment for political gain. Today we have influencers where back in the day, Rome had orators; the antics we are familiar with from viral videos, were instead re-enacted in live forums, parades, and festivities. Yet, importantly, both societies face the same question: who gets to tell their own version of truth, and how close is it to reality?
Like politicians today, emperors sought to regulate rumor by censorship and control of communication: strategies that, contrary to their goal, instead breed suspicion and help to spread gossip. In contrast to the Empire, Republic allowed misinformation to thrive through drowning the truth in sheer volume of voices and interpretations. Yet, each approach demonstrates that there's a delicate balance to uphold: too much control breeds conspiracy, too little - invites confusion. And in the end, both these extremes are bad because the consequences could be deadly.
Rome’s grain supply was notoriously vulnerable to rumor. The capital depended on shipments from Egypt and North Africa, and even the suggestion of delay could spark public unrest. When false reports of grain shortages spread in 19 CE, riots erupted in the city. In Annals, Tacitus writes:
“This year a scarcity of corn, the effect of long-continued droughts, caused much discontent. The populace blamed the emperor, and as usual in such cases, riotous gatherings took place” (Tacitus, Annals, trans. A.J. Woodman, Hackett, 2004)
With the first sparks of public concern, the anger was directed at the Emperor in a panicked belief that he was hoarding or mismanaging grain.
Even the smallest and the wildest of falsehoods could bare grave and real consequences. When years after his suicide in 68 CE, the rumor of Emperor Nero still being alive spread, it attracted opportunistic imposters. Remarkably, each opportunist gathered real political followings. Parthians, Rome’s rivals to the east, were especially happy to shelter and ensure safety of pseudo-Neros using them as living propaganda tools.
If there is but a single lesson to be drawn from the spread of misinformation in the ancient Rome, it is that it thrives wherever means of spreading information outpace the ability to verify it. Even though the Roman world was connected mainly by roads, not networks, and communication was not instantaneous, it circulated and evolved faster than the ways to fact-check it.
In De Re Republica, Cicero once wrote that “nothing is so swift as rumor: it flies, and nothing can restrain it.” Two millennia later, that observation remains painfully true. The Romans may not have known their ways around social algorithms, but they knew full well the true costs of lies and falsehoods spreading faster than the means of curbing them.