Rome — Speck in Time Archive

476 CE

The last western emperor is deposed. Nothing dramatic happens that day; the structure had already gone.

395 CE

East and West are formally separated. The West has eighty years left; the East has a thousand.

312 CE – 337 CE

The emperor converts, and Christianity moves from persecuted sect to imperial favourite.

96 CE – 180 CE

Rome at its most stable and largest — Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, Marcus Aurelius.

70 CE

Rome crushes the Jewish revolt and levels the Temple in Jerusalem, scattering the population.

4 BCE – 30 CE

A Jewish preacher executed in a minor province. The movement that follows reshapes the empire that killed him.

27 BCE

The Republic ends without ever being formally abolished. Rome becomes an empire with a first citizen at its head.

27 BCE – 476 CE

At its height it runs from Scotland to the Sahara, held together by roads, law and army.

52 BCE

Eight years of campaigning make Caesar rich, famous and dangerous to the Republic.

218 BCE

Carthage brings war to Italy with elephants over the mountains. Rome wins anyway, and destroys Carthage.

509 BCE – 27 BCE

Rome expels its kings and governs by senate and elected magistrates for nearly five centuries.

753 BCE

Traditional date for the founding of a small town on the Tiber that would take the Mediterranean.