Timeline

Cities, writing, kings and law appear between the Tigris and the Euphrates two and a half thousand years before Rome. Only the milestones are given here; the site's story proper begins in the Aegean.

• c. 3500 B.C.

  Uruk becomes the first city

  In southern Mesopotamia the settlement of Uruk grows to a size no earlier place had reached, with monumental temples and a ruling priesthood. See Peoples and Tongues for who lived where.

  Lady of Uruk
• c. 3200 B.C.

  Writing

  Clay tablets at Uruk carry the earliest known script, pictographic accounts of grain, beer and livestock. Within centuries it becomes cuneiform, the writing of the Near East for three thousand years.

• c. 2334 B.C.

  Sargon of Akkad

  Sargon unites the Sumerian city-states with the Semitic-speaking north under one crown, the first empire in the historical record. The date follows the conventional middle chronology.

• c. 2100 B.C.

  The Third Dynasty of Ur

  A Sumerian revival under Ur-Nammu and Shulgi. The law code attributed to Ur-Nammu is the oldest surviving; the ziggurat of Ur dates from this reign.

• c. 1792–1750 B.C.

  Hammurabi of Babylon

  Babylon takes the leadership of Mesopotamia. Hammurabi's stele of laws, nearly three hundred rulings under an image of the king before the sun-god, survives in the Louvre.

• c. 1600–1450 B.C.

  Minoan Crete and the rise of Mycenae

  The palace civilisation of Crete reaches its height, then passes into the hands of the Greek-speaking Mycenaeans of the mainland. Chapter I.

• c. 1274 B.C.

  Kadesh

  Ramesses II of Egypt and the Hittite king Muwatalli fight the largest chariot battle of the age in Syria. Both claimed victory; the treaty that followed is the earliest surviving peace treaty. Chapter II.

• c. 1200–1150 B.C.

  The Bronze Age collapse

  Within two generations the Hittite empire vanishes, the Mycenaean palaces burn, Ugarit is destroyed and Egypt fights off the Sea Peoples. Writing is lost in Greece for four centuries. Chapter III.

Out of the dark age come the Greek city-state, the alphabet, the colonies, and a Persian empire large enough to reach them all.

• c. 1000 B.C.

  Iron, Phoenicians and the alphabet

  Iron tools spread through the eastern Mediterranean. The Phoenician cities of Tyre and Sidon carry a twenty-two-letter alphabet along the trade routes; the Greeks will adapt it within two centuries.

• 911–609 B.C.

  The Assyrian empire

  From Nineveh and Nimrud the Assyrian kings rule from the Nile to Iran by siege, deportation and terror. Nineveh falls to the Medes and Babylonians in 612 B.C.

• 776 B.C.

  The first Olympiad

  The traditional date of the first Olympic games, from which later Greeks counted their years. Homer's poems take shape in roughly this century. Chapter IV.

  Homer
• 753 B.C.

  Rome founded, by tradition

  Varro's date for Romulus. Archaeology shows huts on the Palatine from the tenth century and a paved Forum by the seventh; the seven kings of the tradition cannot be verified, but the city is real.

• c. 750–550 B.C.

  Greek colonisation

  Greek cities plant daughters from Marseilles to the Crimea: Cumae, Syracuse, Byzantium, Cyrene. Sicily and southern Italy become "Great Greece." Map: the Greeks across the sea.

• 594 B.C.

  Solon at Athens

  Solon cancels debts, ends debt-slavery and grades political rights by wealth rather than birth. Tyranny under Peisistratus follows; Athens is not yet a democracy. Chapter V.

• 586 B.C.

  Jerusalem destroyed

  Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon razes the Temple and deports the Judaean elite. The exile shapes the Hebrew scriptures. Map: the diaspora.

• 550–539 B.C.

  Cyrus founds the Persian empire

  Cyrus the Great overthrows the Medes, takes Lydia and its Greek subject cities in 546, and enters Babylon in 539. His successors add Egypt and the Indus: the largest state the world had seen. Chapter VI.

• 509 B.C.

  The Roman Republic

  The tradition dates the expulsion of the last king, Tarquin the Proud, and the first pair of consuls to this year. Power now rotates annually among the patrician families. Rome under law.

  L. Junius Brutus
• 508/7 B.C.

  Cleisthenes at Athens

  Cleisthenes rebuilds Athenian politics on ten new tribes drawn across the whole territory, and a council of five hundred chosen by lot. This is the usual starting point of Athenian democracy.

Greece defeats Persia and then tears itself apart. Rome, still a small city on the Tiber, writes down its law, is sacked by the Gauls, and begins the long conquest of Italy.

• 499–494 B.C.

  The Ionian revolt

  The Greek cities of Asia rise against Darius with help from Athens and Eretria. Miletus is destroyed in 494; the Persian king turns to punish the mainland.

• 490 B.C.

  Marathon

  The Athenians, with the Plataeans beside them, beat the Persian landing force on the plain of Marathon. Ten years of respite follow. Chapter VII.

• 494 B.C.

  First secession of the plebs

  The tradition records the commons withdrawing from the city and winning their own officers, the tribunes, whose persons were sacrosanct. The struggle of the orders has begun.

• 480–479 B.C.

  Thermopylae, Salamis, Plataea

  Xerxes invades with the largest army Greece had seen. Leonidas dies at the pass, Themistocles wins at sea in the straits of Salamis, and the Spartan-led army finishes the war at Plataea.

  Themistocles
• 478 B.C.

  The Delian League

  Athens takes the leadership of the maritime alliance against Persia. Within a generation the league's treasury is at Athens and the allies are subjects.

• 451–450 B.C.

  The Twelve Tables

  A board of ten publishes Rome's law on bronze tablets in the Forum, so that patrician magistrates can no longer keep it in their heads. Cicero's generation still learned them by heart. Rome under law.

• 447–432 B.C.

  The Parthenon

  Under Pericles, Athens spends the league's money on the Acropolis. Sophocles, Herodotus and Socrates are at work in the same city. Chapter VIII.

  Pericles
• 431–404 B.C.

  The Peloponnesian War

  Athens against Sparta for twenty-seven years, with plague, the Sicilian disaster of 413, and Persian gold for the Spartan fleet. Athens surrenders in 404 and pulls down her walls. Map.

  Alcibiades
• 401–399 B.C.

  The Ten Thousand

  Greek mercenaries hired by Cyrus the Younger win at Cunaxa, lose their employer, and march home from Babylonia to the Black Sea under Xenophon. Chapter IX.

• 399 B.C.

  Socrates executed

  Condemned by an Athenian jury for impiety and corrupting the young. His pupil Plato writes the dialogues; Plato's pupil Aristotle will teach Alexander.

  Socrates
• 396 B.C.

  Veii taken

  After a siege the tradition stretched to ten years, Camillus captures the Etruscan city across the Tiber. Rome's territory nearly doubles.

• 390 B.C.

  The Gauls sack Rome

  A Gallic war band under Brennus destroys a Roman army at the Allia and burns the city; only the Capitol holds. Greek sources put the sack in 387. The trauma lasts for centuries. Rome masters Italy.

• 367 B.C.

  The Licinian-Sextian laws

  After a decade of obstruction, plebeians win access to the consulship and a limit on holdings of public land. A new nobility of patrician and plebeian families takes shape.

• 343–290 B.C.

  The Samnite wars

  Three wars against the hill peoples of the central Apennines, including the humiliation at the Caudine Forks in 321. By 290 Rome dominates central Italy. Map: Rome takes Italy.

• 338 B.C.

  The Latin League dissolved

  Rome defeats her Latin allies and settles them one by one: some with full citizenship, some with citizenship without the vote, some as allies bound by treaty. The formula built the empire. Theme: the allies.

• 338 B.C.

  Chaeronea

  Philip II of Macedon, with the eighteen-year-old Alexander commanding his cavalry, defeats Athens and Thebes. The independent Greek city-state is finished as a great power.

  Demosthenes

Alexander conquers Persia and dies; his generals divide the East. In the same decades Rome takes Italy, then Sicily, then Carthage, then the kingdoms of Alexander's heirs.

• 334–323 B.C.

  Alexander's conquest of Persia

  Granicus, Issus, Gaugamela; Egypt, Babylon, Persepolis burned, the Indus reached. He dies at Babylon in June 323 aged thirty-two, with no adult heir. Chapter X.

  Alexander
• 312 B.C.

  The Appian Way

  The censor Appius Claudius Caecus builds Rome's first great road, to Capua, and its first aqueduct. Roads will hold Italy together as much as armies.

• 310–307 B.C.

  Agathocles invades Africa

  The tyrant of Syracuse, besieged by Carthage, sails to Africa and carries the war to Carthage's own fields, a stratagem Scipio will copy a century later. Episode.

• 301 B.C.

  Ipsus: the successors divide the East

  Antigonus the One-Eyed falls in battle. Ptolemy keeps Egypt, Seleucus takes Syria and the East, and Macedon goes its own way: the three kingdoms Rome will meet. Chapter XI.

  Ptolemy I
• 287 B.C.

  The Hortensian law

  After the last secession of the plebs, resolutions of the plebeian assembly bind the whole people. The struggle of the orders is formally over. Theme: law and society.

• 280–275 B.C.

  Pyrrhus in Italy

  The king of Epirus, hired by Tarentum, beats the legions twice at a cost he cannot afford, tries Sicily, and is checked at Beneventum. Rome now controls Italy to the straits.

  Pyrrhus
• 264–241 B.C.

  The First Punic War

  Rome builds a navy from nothing to fight Carthage for Sicily. After the victory off the Aegates Islands in 241, Sicily becomes the first province. Rome and Carthage.

• 218–201 B.C.

  Hannibal's war

  Hannibal crosses the Alps and destroys Roman armies at the Trebia, Trasimene and Cannae (216), yet Rome's allies mostly hold. Scipio takes Spain, then Africa, and wins at Zama in 202. Map.

  Hannibal
• 200–196 B.C.

  Cynoscephalae

  Flamininus breaks the Macedonian phalanx in 197, and at the Isthmian games of 196 proclaims the Greeks free. Rome has entered the Greek world. The Republic conquers the East.

  Flamininus
• 190–188 B.C.

  Magnesia and the peace of Apamea

  Antiochus III, the greatest of the Seleucids, is beaten in Asia Minor and pushed behind the Taurus mountains. Rome's friends Pergamum and Rhodes are rewarded with his lands.

  Antiochus III
• 168 B.C.

  Pydna

  Aemilius Paullus defeats Perseus; the Macedonian monarchy of Philip and Alexander is abolished. Polybius comes to Rome as a hostage and writes the history of how it happened.

  Perseus
• 146 B.C.

  Carthage and Corinth destroyed

  Scipio Aemilianus razes Carthage after a three-year siege; Mummius sacks Corinth the same year. Africa and Macedonia become provinces. Rome has no rival left in the Mediterranean.

  Scipio Aemilianus

A century of civil conflict, from the first tribune killed in the street to the last battle between Roman fleets. This is the core of the atlas, and the densest stretch of the line.

• 133 B.C.

  Tiberius Gracchus

  A tribune carries a land law over the Senate's head, seeks re-election, and is clubbed to death with three hundred followers. Political killing has entered Roman life. The same year Attalus III wills Pergamum to Rome. Blood in the Forum.

  Ti. Gracchus
• 123–121 B.C.

  Gaius Gracchus

  His brother builds a whole programme: cheap grain, colonies, roads, the courts handed to the equestrian order, citizenship offered to the Italians. He dies under the Senate's first emergency decree.

  C. Gracchus
• 112–105 B.C.

  The Jugurthine war

  A Numidian king buys senators and defies Rome for years. Marius, a new man, takes the command from the nobility and ends the war; his quaestor Sulla takes Jugurtha's surrender.

• 107–101 B.C.

  Marius and the new army

  Marius enrols volunteers with no property, men whose future depends on their general. After the disaster at Arausio (105) he destroys the migrating Teutones at Aquae Sextiae and the Cimbri at Vercellae. Theme: the army.

  Marius
• 91–88 B.C.

  The Social War

  The Italian allies, refused citizenship, rise and found a rival state at Corfinium. Rome wins the war by conceding the demand: all Italy south of the Po becomes Roman. Map.

• 88 B.C.

  Sulla marches on Rome

  Deprived of the eastern command by a tribune's law, the consul Sulla leads his legions into the city, the first Roman to do so. In Asia, Mithridates of Pontus has thousands of resident Romans killed in a single day. Map: Sulla in the East.

  Mithridates
• 82–79 B.C.

  Sulla's dictatorship

  Victor in civil war at the Colline Gate, Sulla posts proscription lists, kills thousands, doubles the Senate, muzzles the tribunes, and then retires. The settlement lasts a decade.

  Sulla
• 80–72 B.C.

  Sertorius in Spain

  A Marian officer builds a Roman government in exile among the Spanish tribes and holds off Metellus and Pompey for eight years, until his own officers murder him. Episode.

• 73–71 B.C.

  Spartacus

  Gladiators escape from Capua and gather an army of slaves that beats consular forces before Crassus corners it in the south. Six thousand crucified along the Appian Way, Appian reports.

  Crassus
• 67–62 B.C.

  Pompey's East

  Given extraordinary commands by popular vote, Pompey clears the sea of pirates in one season, finishes Mithridates, ends the Seleucid kingdom, and takes Jerusalem in 63. Pompey and Caesar.

  Pompey
• 63 B.C.

  Cicero and Catiline

  The consul Cicero exposes a conspiracy of ruined nobles and has the ringleaders executed without trial. He never lives it down.

  Cicero
• 60–59 B.C.

  The pact of Pompey, Crassus and Caesar

  Three men agree privately to run the state; historians later called it the first triumvirate. Caesar's consulship of 59 delivers what each wanted and gives him Gaul for five years.

• 58–50 B.C.

  Caesar conquers Gaul

  Eight campaigns from the Helvetii to the siege of Alesia (52), where Vercingetorix surrenders. Caesar's own commentaries are the main source, and they were written to be read in Rome. Gaul, people by people.

  Caesar
• 53 B.C.

  Carrhae

  Crassus invades Parthia and loses his army and his life to horse-archers in the Mesopotamian desert. Rome's eastern frontier has found its limit.

• 49–45 B.C.

  The civil war

  Caesar crosses the Rubicon in January 49. Pharsalus (48), Pompey murdered in Egypt, Thapsus (46), Munda (45). Caesar is dictator for life. Map.

• 15 March 44 B.C.

  The Ides of March

  Some sixty senators led by Brutus and Cassius stab Caesar at a meeting of the Senate. They have no plan for what follows.

  Brutus
• 43–42 B.C.

  The triumvirate and Philippi

  Antony, Lepidus and the young Caesar (Octavian) take legal power together and proscribe their enemies; Cicero is killed. At Philippi in 42 Brutus and Cassius are defeated and die.

  Antony
• 31–30 B.C.

  Actium

  Agrippa's fleet defeats Antony and Cleopatra off the coast of Epirus. Both take their own lives at Alexandria the next year, and Egypt becomes the young Caesar's possession.

  Cleopatra

One man rules while the Republic's forms continue. Two centuries of internal peace, the empire at its widest, and a succession that works only when there is no son.

• 27 B.C.

  Augustus

  The Senate votes the young Caesar the name Augustus and a ten-year command over the frontier provinces. He calls it the restored Republic; it is the beginning of the monarchy. Chapter XVIII.

  Augustus
• A.D. 9

  The Teutoburg Forest

  Arminius destroys three legions under Varus. Rome keeps the Rhine, not the Elbe, as its frontier for the rest of its history.

• A.D. 14

  Tiberius succeeds

  Augustus dies at seventy-five after forty-one years of sole rule. The succession of his stepson shows that the new order can outlive its founder. Deep edition: Tiberius.

  Tiberius
• A.D. 43

  Claudius invades Britain

  Four legions cross the Channel. In 60 or 61 Boudica burns Colchester, London and St Albans before Suetonius Paulinus crushes the revolt. Map.

  Claudius
• A.D. 64–68

  Nero's fire and fall

  The Great Fire of Rome; Christians blamed, Tacitus reports. Revolt in Gaul and Spain leaves Nero abandoned, and he kills himself in 68, ending the Julio-Claudian line. Chapter XIX.

  Nero
• A.D. 69

  The year of four emperors

  Galba, Otho, Vitellius and Vespasian in turn. Tacitus's secret of empire: an emperor could be made elsewhere than at Rome. The Flavian dynasty follows.

  Vespasian
• A.D. 70

  Jerusalem falls

  Titus takes the city after a five-month siege and the Temple burns. Masada holds out until 73 or 74. Chapter XX.

  Titus
• A.D. 79–80

  Vesuvius, and the Colosseum

  Pompeii and Herculaneum are buried; Pliny the Younger describes his uncle's death. The next year Titus opens the Flavian amphitheatre.

• A.D. 96–98

  Nerva adopts Trajan

  Domitian is murdered; the elderly Nerva adopts the commander of the Rhine armies. For eighty years each emperor chooses his successor, and none has a surviving son.

  Nerva
• A.D. 101–106

  Trajan conquers Dacia

  Two wars across the Danube end the kingdom of Decebalus. Dacian gold pays for Trajan's Forum and column. Chapter XXI.

  Trajan
• A.D. 117

  The empire at its widest

  Trajan dies with Armenia and Mesopotamia briefly annexed. Hadrian gives them up, builds his wall in Britain from 122, and spends his reign inspecting the frontiers.

  Hadrian
• A.D. 132–135

  Bar Kokhba

  The last Jewish revolt is crushed; Jerusalem is refounded as a Roman colony. Map: Roman arms in Judaea.

• A.D. 165–180

  Plague and the Marcomannic wars

  Troops returning from Parthia bring an epidemic that recurs for years. Marcus Aurelius spends the rest of his reign on the Danube and dies there in 180, leaving the empire to his son.

  Marcus Aurelius
• A.D. 192

  Commodus murdered

  The end of the Antonine peace. Five men claim the throne in 193; Septimius Severus, commander in Pannonia, wins and founds a military dynasty. Provinces held and lost, 192–700.

  Commodus

The third century nearly ends the empire; the soldier-emperors of Illyricum save it. Diocletian and Constantine rebuild it as a different state, Christian and centred on the East.

• A.D. 212

  Citizenship for all free inhabitants

  Caracalla's edict makes nearly every free man in the empire a Roman citizen. Cassius Dio thought it was done for the inheritance tax.

  Caracalla
• A.D. 224

  The Sasanian revival of Persia

  Ardashir overthrows the Parthians. His son Shapur I will defeat three Roman emperors and capture one.

  Shapur I
• A.D. 235–284

  The crisis of the third century

  Fifty years, some twenty emperors, most killed by their own troops. Decius falls to the Goths in 251; Valerian is captured by Shapur in 260; Gaul and Palmyra break away. The coinage collapses.

  Maximinus Thrax
• A.D. 270–275

  Aurelian restores the empire

  In five years Aurelian abandons Dacia, walls Rome, and recovers Palmyra and Gaul. Murdered by his officers. Chapter XXIV.

  Aurelian
• A.D. 284–305

  Diocletian

  Four emperors, a hundred small provinces, an army doubled, taxes assessed by census, prices fixed by edict (301), Christians persecuted (303). Then, uniquely, he retires. Chapter XXV.

  Diocletian
• A.D. 312–313

  The Milvian Bridge

  Constantine wins Italy at the gates of Rome, under a sign Eusebius and Lactantius describe differently. The next year he and Licinius grant Christians freedom of worship.

  Constantine
• A.D. 325–330

  Nicaea and Constantinople

  Constantine presides over the first general council of the Church, then dedicates a new capital on the Bosporus. The centre of the empire has moved east for good.

• A.D. 361–363

  Julian

  The last pagan emperor tries to revive the old cults and dies invading Persia after nineteen months.

  Julian
• A.D. 376–378

  Adrianople

  Goths fleeing the Huns are admitted across the Danube, mistreated, and rise. At Adrianople they destroy the eastern field army and kill the emperor Valens. Chapter XXVI.

• A.D. 380–395

  Theodosius

  Nicene Christianity becomes the religion of the state; the pagan temples are closed. At his death in 395 the empire is divided between his two young sons, and it is never reunited.

  Theodosius

Eighty years in which the western government loses its provinces one by one to peoples it had let inside, until there is nothing left to govern.

• 31 December 406

  The Rhine crossing

  Vandals, Alans and Sueves cross the frozen river into Gaul. Britain is abandoned to its own defence within a few years.

  Stilicho
• A.D. 410

  Alaric sacks Rome

  The Visigoths enter the city for three days, the first foreign army since Brennus eight centuries before. Jerome in Bethlehem said his voice failed him at the news. Map: the invasions.

• A.D. 429–439

  The Vandals take Africa

  Gaiseric crosses from Spain and takes Carthage in 439. Rome loses the grain and taxes of its richest western province.

• A.D. 451–453

  Attila

  Aetius, with Visigothic allies, halts the Huns at the Catalaunian Plains. Attila raids Italy the next year and dies in 453; his empire dissolves at once.

  Aetius
• A.D. 476

  The last western emperor deposed

  Odoacer, commander of the barbarian troops in Italy, removes the boy Romulus Augustulus and sends the imperial insignia to Constantinople. No one at the time called it the end of anything. Peoples and nations after 476.

The East tries to take the West back and nearly succeeds; then Islam takes half of the East. In the ruins of Gaul the Franks build the kingdom that will crown itself an empire.

• A.D. 493

  Theodoric rules Italy

  The Ostrogothic king kills Odoacer at a banquet in Ravenna and governs Italy for thirty years with Roman ministers and Roman law.

  Theodoric
• A.D. 496–511

  Clovis and the Franks

  Clovis unites the Franks, accepts Catholic baptism, and at Vouillé in 507 drives the Visigoths out of most of Gaul. The Merovingian kingdom will last two and a half centuries.

• A.D. 527–565

  Justinian

  Roman law is codified in the Digest and Code (529–534), the Nika riot nearly costs him the throne (532), Hagia Sophia rises (537), and plague strikes in 541. Chapter XXVII.

  Justinian
• A.D. 533–554

  Belisarius and the reconquest

  Vandal Africa falls in a single year; Ostrogothic Italy takes twenty and is left in ruins. Spain's coast follows. The Mediterranean is a Roman lake once more, briefly.

  Belisarius
• A.D. 568

  The Lombards enter Italy

  Three years after Justinian's death a new people takes the Po valley and much of the interior. Italy is divided between Lombard dukes and imperial Ravenna for two centuries.

• A.D. 590–604

  Gregory the Great

  A Roman senator turned monk governs the Church, feeds the city, negotiates with the Lombards, and sends a mission to the English. The papacy begins to act as a state.

• A.D. 622

  The Hijra

  Muhammad moves from Mecca to Medina, the year from which the Islamic calendar counts. The same year Heraclius begins the campaigns that will destroy Sasanian Persia by 628.

• A.D. 636–651

  The Arab conquests

  The Roman army is destroyed at the Yarmuk (636); Jerusalem, Syria, Egypt (642) and all of Persia (651) are lost within a generation. The empire keeps Anatolia and the sea.

• A.D. 674–718

  Constantinople besieged

  Two Arab sieges fail against the walls, the fleet and Greek fire. The second, 717–718, is often reckoned the turning point that saved the eastern empire.

• A.D. 711

  The Arabs cross into Spain

  The Visigothic kingdom collapses after one battle. Within a decade Muslim rule reaches the Pyrenees.

• A.D. 732

  Tours

  Charles Martel, mayor of the palace, defeats an Arab raiding army between Tours and Poitiers. The Carolingian family now rules the Franks in all but name.

• A.D. 751–756

  Pippin becomes king

  With papal approval Pippin deposes the last Merovingian. He then rescues the pope from the Lombards and gives him the lands around Ravenna and Rome: the origin of the Papal States.

• A.D. 768–804

  Charlemagne's wars

  The Lombard kingdom taken (774), the disaster at Roncevaux (778), the Avars destroyed, and thirty years of war to conquer and baptise the Saxons. Chapter XXX.

• 25 December 800

  Crowned emperor at Rome

  Pope Leo III crowns Charlemagne in St Peter's. Einhard claimed the king would not have entered the church had he known what was intended; historians have argued about that sentence ever since.

• 28 January 814

  Charlemagne dies at Aachen

  Buried in his palace chapel. His empire stretches from the Ebro to the Elbe; within thirty years his grandsons divide it. The timeline ends here, where the atlas's medieval chapters begin.