Science, made with AI
At heart, Domus Julio-Claudia is a piece of research carried out with the help of AI. It is a demonstration of what artificial intelligence can do when the aim is to publish genuinely interesting historical material — gathering it, structuring it, and presenting it in a way that is clear, accurate, and pleasant to explore.
Passion, design, and technology
It is also a showcase of something we care about deeply: that you can combine a personal passion or hobby with thoughtful design and AI, and end up with something both rigorous and beautiful. That blend of curiosity, craft, and technology is exactly what our company is about.
An open invitation
We would love for you to build on what we have started. Whether you are a student, a hobbyist, a teacher, or simply someone with a curious mind, our research is here for you to use, remix, and learn from. Take it, make something wonderful, and share it — every project you create becomes a small resource others can learn from too. That is exactly the kind of open, generous learning we want to encourage.
We build what we promise
We do not just talk about efficiency and automation — we build it. This site is a live example of the technical standards we hold ourselves to: fast, clean, dependable, and made to last.
How it was researched
This archive was researched and written by Barry van der Laan MBA, using the ancient literary tradition — chiefly Suetonius’s Lives of the Caesars, Tacitus’s Annals, and Cassius Dio’s Roman History — alongside modern scholarship and museum catalogue records for the portraits illustrating each profile. See the full academic concordance and bibliography for editions, translators, and citations.
Forty-eight people, five decades of overlapping marriages, adoptions, exiles, and disputed successions: keeping that consistent is a research and organisation problem as much as a writing one. AI tools, including NotebookLM for organising source material and Anthropic’s Claude for research, drafting, and image verification, were used throughout — always checked against the sources cited on each page, never as a substitute for them.
On uncertain history
Suetonius, our richest single source for this period, mixes verifiable political fact with palace gossip and moralising anecdote that later scholars still argue over: did Livia poison her rivals? Was Claudius’s own family right to underestimate him? This archive does not settle those debates. Every profile separates documented fact — a consulship, a marriage, a date of death — from ancient allegation and modern speculation, and cites the specific passages behind each claim, so you can follow the argument back to its source rather than take our word for it.
Portraits and image sourcing
Every portrait on this site is a real, credited photograph of an ancient artefact — a marble bust, a statue, a coin, a relief — sourced from Wikimedia Commons and checked against museum records for both licensing and identification. Where no confidently identified portrait survives, the page says so directly instead of substituting a guess or a generic stock image.
Other AI showcases
A few more things we have built with AI to show what is possible — all free to use.
The Greek and Roman Gods
A richly illustrated guide to the gods of classical mythology. Browse every major deity of the Greek and Roman world, follow the family tree that ties Olympus together, and read the background behind each figure. Every entry pairs a clear, well-researched profile with original artwork, so you can see who Zeus, Athena, Venus, and the rest really were and how their stories connect. Free to read, no account needed — dive in and wander wherever your curiosity takes you.
Visit thegreekandromangods.com ↗
The Pharaoh Archive
The same idea, taken to ancient Egypt: a single, clearly designed chronology of its dynasties and rulers, from the earliest pharaohs through to Cleopatra and the Ptolemies. Where standard reference material on Egyptian history tends to be scattered across dense academic surveys or thin museum blurbs, the Pharaoh Archive lays the full succession of kings out in one continuous, readable timeline, with each ruler given a proper profile rather than a footnote. Built with the same research-plus-AI approach as this site, for the same reason: it is the resource we wished already existed.
Corrections
This is an independent project, not affiliated with any university, museum, or publisher. If you find a factual error, a broken citation, or a portrait you believe is misidentified, get in touch via this form.