Rome: History Timeline & Key Events
36 key events in the history of Rome, from 509 BCE to 1071 CE, with places and context on an interactive map.
Open the interactive map509 BCE · Roman Republic Founded
Rome overthrows its monarchy and establishes the Roman Republic, creating a system of elected magistrates and the Senate. (Rome) View on map
449 BCE · Twelve Tables: Foundation of Roman Law
The Twelve Tables are created, the earliest codification of Roman law and foundation of the Roman legal tradition that shaped Western civilization. (Rome) View on map
218 BCE · Hannibal Crosses the Alps
Carthaginian general Hannibal famously crosses the Alps with war elephants to invade Italy during the Second Punic War. (Alps) View on map
146 BCE · Rome Conquers Greece
Rome defeats the Achaean League and destroys Corinth, bringing Greece under Roman control and absorbing Greek culture. (Corinth, Greece) View on map
63 BCE · Cicero: Master Orator and Philosopher
Marcus Tullius Cicero delivers his famous orations against Catiline and becomes Rome's greatest orator, shaping Latin prose and republican ideals. (Rome) View on map
53 BCE · Battle of Carrhae (Roman Defeat)
Roman general Crassus is decisively defeated by the Parthian army at Carrhae, one of Rome's worst military disasters. (Carrhae (Harran)) View on map
44 BCE · Assassination of Julius Caesar
Julius Caesar is assassinated on the Ides of March by Roman senators, plunging Rome into civil war and ending the Republic. (Rome) View on map
27 BCE · Augustus Becomes First Roman Emperor
Octavian takes the title Augustus and becomes the first Roman Emperor, beginning the Pax Romana and the Roman Empire era. (Rome) View on map
19 BCE · Virgil Writes the Aeneid
Virgil composes the Aeneid, the national epic of Rome tracing Roman origins to the Trojan hero Aeneas, a masterpiece of Latin literature. (Rome) View on map
33 CE · Crucifixion of Jesus Christ
Jesus of Nazareth is crucified in Jerusalem under Roman rule, around 30–33 CE. This event gives rise to Christianity, which becomes the world's largest religion. (Jerusalem) View on map
64 CE · Great Fire of Rome Under Nero
A devastating fire destroys much of Rome during Emperor Nero's reign. Nero famously rebuilds the city and persecutes Christians. (Rome) View on map
70 CE · Rome Destroys the Temple in Jerusalem
In August 70 CE Roman legions under Titus, son of the emperor Vespasian, stormed Jerusalem and burned the Second Temple, the climax of the First Jewish–Roman War (66–73/74); many of the city's people were killed or enslaved, though Josephus' figures of over a million dead and 97,000 captives are generally thought exaggerated. The main account is by Josephus, a Jewish commander captured by the Romans in 67 who later wrote under Flavian patronage, and the Arch of Titus in Rome still shows the Temple's spoils carried in triumph. Without the Temple, Judaism was gradually reorganised around rabbis, scripture and the synagogue, Jews still mourn its loss on the fast of Tisha B'Av, and the separation of Christianity from Judaism deepened. (Jerusalem) View on map
79 CE · Vesuvius Buries Pompeii and Herculaneum
In 79 CE Mount Vesuvius erupted and buried the Roman towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum, on the Bay of Naples, under ash, pumice and pyroclastic flows. Pliny the Younger described the eruption and the death of his uncle, Pliny the Elder, in two letters to the historian Tacitus; the traditional date of 24 August comes from those letters, but a charcoal inscription found at Pompeii in 2018 points to October. Excavations since the 18th century have uncovered houses, wall paintings, graffiti and casts of victims, a detailed record of everyday life in a Roman town. (Pompeii) View on map
80 CE · Colosseum Completed
The Flavian Amphitheatre (Colosseum) is completed in Rome, the largest amphitheatre ever built, seating 50,000 spectators. (Rome) View on map
100 CE · The Mithras Cult Spreads in the Roman Empire
From the late 1st century CE, underground temples (mithraea) of Mithras appear in Rome, on the Rhine and Danube frontiers and in port cities, with soldiers, freedmen and officials among the initiates. The god bears the name of the Iranian Mithra, the god wears eastern dress and one grade of initiation was called 'Persian', but the cult's central image of Mithras slaying a bull has no known Iranian precedent. Franz Cumont saw the cult as a Roman form of Mazdaism; since the 1970s, following critiques by John Hinnells and Richard Gordon, most scholars see it as largely a new creation of the Roman world drawing on an Iranian name and Persian prestige, and how much of it is Iranian remains debated. (Rome) View on map
117 CE · Roman Empire at Greatest Extent Under Trajan
Emperor Trajan expands the Roman Empire to its greatest territorial extent, conquering Dacia and briefly Mesopotamia, bordering the Parthian Empire. (Rome) View on map
122 CE · Hadrian's Wall Built
Emperor Hadrian orders construction of a wall across northern Britain, marking the frontier of the Roman Empire. (Northern England) View on map
126 CE · Hadrian's Pantheon Completed in Rome
The Pantheon, a temple to the gods of Rome, was rebuilt on the site of an earlier temple of Marcus Agrippa, whose name it still carries in its inscription; brick stamps suggest work began late in Trajan's reign, about 113–117, and Hadrian probably dedicated it around 125–128. Its unreinforced concrete dome, about 43 metres across and open to the sky through a central oculus, shows the Roman mastery of concrete construction. Consecrated as a church in 609, it has stayed in use and largely intact, and it became a model for domed buildings from the Renaissance onwards. (Pantheon, Rome) View on map
150 CE · Ptolemy Writes the Almagest
Claudius Ptolemy, an astronomer writing in Greek in Roman Alexandria, completed his Mathematical Syntaxis around 150 CE, shortly after his Canopus inscription of 147/148. It set out a geocentric model of the planets, with a star catalogue and tables for predicting their positions, building on Hipparchus and on Babylonian observations. Translated into Arabic in 9th-century Baghdad, where it gained the name al-Majisṭī (Almagest), and from Arabic into Latin in 12th-century Toledo, it remained the standard reference for astronomers in the Islamic world and Latin Europe, edited and criticised by scholars such as Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī, until the models of Copernicus and Kepler displaced it in the 16th and 17th centuries. (Alexandria, Egypt) View on map
161 CE · Marcus Aurelius: Philosopher Emperor
Marcus Aurelius becomes Roman Emperor and writes his Meditations, one of the greatest works of Stoic philosophy, while defending the empire's borders. (Rome) View on map
170 CE · Galen: Foundations of Medical Science
Galen of Pergamon (129–c. 216), a Greek physician who treated gladiators in his home city before settling in Rome around 162 and serving Marcus Aurelius and later emperors, wrote extensively in Greek on anatomy, physiology, pharmacology and therapy. He combined Hippocratic humoral theory with experiments and dissections on animals, since human dissection was not practised in his day, so parts of his anatomy were later corrected, notably by Vesalius in 1543. Translated into Syriac and Arabic by Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq and his circle in 9th-century Baghdad, his works shaped medicine in the Islamic world, where al-Rāzī questioned them in his Doubts about Galen and Ibn Sīnā built on them in the Canon, and in Latin Europe into the 17th century. (Pergamon) View on map
260 CE · Shapur I Captures Roman Emperor Valerian
Sasanian King Shapur I defeats and captures Roman Emperor Valerian at the Battle of Edessa, a humiliation for Rome immortalized in rock reliefs. (Edessa (Urfa)) View on map
325 CE · Council of Nicaea
In 325 the emperor Constantine, sole ruler of the empire since the previous year, summoned bishops to Nicaea in Bithynia; modern estimates put their number at about 250–300, while later tradition says 318. The council condemned the teaching of the Alexandrian priest Arius that the Son was created, adopted a creed declaring the Son 'of one substance' (homoousios) with the Father, issued canons on church discipline and agreed that all churches should keep Easter on the same Sunday. Disputes over the creed continued for decades, and its expanded form of 381, known as the Nicene Creed, is still recited in most Christian churches. (Nicaea (İznik)) View on map
330 CE · Constantinople Founded
Emperor Constantine I dedicates Constantinople (modern Istanbul) as the new capital of the Roman Empire, shifting power eastward. (Constantinople) View on map
380 CE · Christianity Becomes Roman State Religion
Emperor Theodosius I makes Christianity the official state religion of the Roman Empire, banning pagan practices. (Rome) View on map
410 CE · Visigoths under Alaric Sack Rome
On 24 August 410 Gothic forces led by Alaric, the people later known as the Visigoths, entered Rome and plundered it for three days, killing some of its people and carrying off captives, among them the emperor's half-sister Galla Placidia; the city had not fallen to a foreign army since the Gallic sack of about 390 BCE. Alaric, who had held a Roman military command, had besieged the city twice before while seeking land, pay and office for his followers from the western emperor Honorius, who stayed in Ravenna. The physical damage was smaller than the shock: followers of the old Roman cults blamed the abandonment of the gods, and Augustine answered them in The City of God. (Rome) View on map
415 CE · Hypatia: Philosopher and Mathematician of Alexandria
Hypatia, daughter of the mathematician Theon, taught Neoplatonist philosophy, mathematics and astronomy in Alexandria and is credited with commentaries on Diophantus, Apollonius and Ptolemy, though which surviving texts are hers is uncertain. In March 415 a Christian mob killed her during a power struggle between the bishop Cyril and the imperial prefect Orestes, whom she advised; the Christian historian Socrates Scholasticus condemned the murder. Modern retellings made her 'the last pagan scientist' and linked her death to the end of the Library of Alexandria, but philosophy and mathematics went on being taught in the city for generations. (Alexandria, Egypt) View on map
476 CE · Fall of the Western Roman Empire
The last Western Roman Emperor, Romulus Augustulus, is deposed by the Germanic chieftain Odoacer, marking the traditional end of ancient Rome. (Ravenna, Italy) View on map
532 CE · Empress Theodora and the Nika Riots
In January 532 the Blue and Green chariot-racing factions of Constantinople joined in revolt against Justinian I, chanting 'Nika!' ('Conquer!'), burned much of the city centre and proclaimed a rival emperor. According to the historian Procopius, Justinian was ready to flee until the empress Theodora, a former actress, declared she would rather die in the imperial purple; the speech may be partly Procopius' own composition. Troops under Belisarius and Mundus then trapped the crowd in the Hippodrome and killed, by Procopius' figure, some 30,000 people; weeks later Justinian began rebuilding the burned Hagia Sophia. (Hippodrome, Constantinople) View on map
534 CE · Justinian's Code of Laws
Emperor Justinian codifies Roman law into the Corpus Juris Civilis, which becomes the foundation of civil law in much of Europe. (Constantinople) View on map
537 CE · Hagia Sophia Completed
Emperor Justinian completes the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, the world's largest cathedral for nearly a thousand years. (Constantinople) View on map
678 CE · Greek Fire Defends Constantinople
The Byzantines use Greek fire, a devastating incendiary weapon, to repel the Arab siege of Constantinople, saving the empire. (Constantinople) View on map
726 CE · Byzantine Iconoclasm Controversy
From the reign of Leo III, traditionally from 726 or 730, Byzantine emperors and church councils restricted or banned the veneration of religious images (icons), a policy pressed hardest by Constantine V, whose council of 754 condemned them. The Second Council of Nicaea restored icons in 787, a second iconoclast period began in 815, and the empress-regent Theodora ended it in 843, a restoration the Orthodox Church still celebrates as the Triumph of Orthodoxy. Almost all surviving sources were written by the victorious supporters of icons, and recent scholarship (Brubaker and Haldon) argues that Leo III's own measures were limited and later exaggerated. (Constantinople) View on map
863 CE · Cyril and Methodius Mission to Moravia
In 863, answering a request from Prince Rastislav of Great Moravia, the Byzantine emperor Michael III sent the brothers Constantine (later called Cyril) and Methodius of Thessalonica to teach Christianity in the Slavs' own language. Constantine devised the Glagolitic alphabet, and the brothers translated the Gospels and liturgy into the language now called Old Church Slavonic, a practice the pope approved in Rome in 867–868 despite opposition from Frankish clergy. After Methodius died in 885 their disciples were expelled from Moravia and carried the work to Bulgaria, where the Cyrillic script was developed; the exact centre of Great Moravia, possibly Mikulčice, is uncertain. (Great Moravia (Mikulčice, approx.)) View on map
1054 CE · East–West Schism: The Excommunications of 1054
On 16 July 1054 papal legates led by Cardinal Humbert laid a bull excommunicating Patriarch Michael Keroularios (Cerularius) on the altar of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, and a synod under the patriarch condemned the legates in turn. The quarrel was over papal authority, the filioque clause of the Creed and the use of unleavened bread, and the legates' standing was doubtful, since Pope Leo IX had died in April. Historians see the split between the Latin and Greek churches as a slow process rather than a single break: the crusader sack of Constantinople in 1204 hardened it, and the mutual excommunications were lifted only in 1965. (Hagia Sophia, Constantinople) View on map
1071 CE · Battle of Manzikert
The Seljuk Turks decisively defeat the Byzantine Empire at Manzikert, opening Anatolia to Turkish settlement and leading to the Crusades. (Manzikert (Malazgirt)) View on map