Traditional foundation of the Roman Republic
Roman tradition dates the expulsion of the kings and the establishment of annual consuls to 509 BCE. The date is a later reconstruction from consular lists of uncertain reliability, and modern historians treat the whole early republican chronology as approximate. It is included because the story the Romans told about themselves - that they were a republic that acquired an empire without meaning to - shaped how they governed one.
Uncertain — sources disagree, or the dating is contested. Stated here, not resolved.
Subjects
Evidence
Partly verified — Core facts are sourced; some optional detail is deliberately absent.
Polybius, The Histories
A Greek hostage in Rome writing to explain how Rome conquered the Mediterranean in fifty-three years, Polybius supplies the main narrative of the first two Punic Wars and the classic analysis of the Roman constitution as a mixed regime. He is a near-contemporary but a partisan of his Roman patrons, and his fleet and casualty numbers are not independently checkable.
Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press (trans. W. R. Paton, rev. F. W. Walbank & C. Habicht) · written c. 150s-120s BCE; Loeb revision 2010-2012 · Partly verified
Polybius, Historiae, Books 1-6 and 38-39 (Loeb Classical Library 128, 137, 138, 159, 160, 161); Book 6 on the Roman constitution, Books 1-3 on the Punic Wars
Recorded on Rome
- Traditional foundation of the Roman Republic
- Construction of the Via Appia begins
- The Punic Wars
- The Augustan settlement: Octavian becomes Augustus
- Assassination of Julius Caesar
- Caesar crosses the Rubicon
- Inauguration of the Flavian Amphitheatre
- The Antonine Constitution (Constitutio Antoniniana)
- Dedication of Constantinople
- Administrative division of the empire on the death of Theodosius I
- Alaric's Goths sack Rome
- Odoacer deposes Romulus Augustulus - the contested 'fall' of the Western Roman Empire
- Ottoman capture of Constantinople
Related
Related because they share a subject in the Atlas — never because the text looks similar.
- Ottoman capture of Constantinople · 1453-05-29
- Odoacer deposes Romulus Augustulus - the contested 'fall' of the Western Roman Empire · 0476-09-04
- Alaric's Goths sack Rome · 0410-08-24
- Administrative division of the empire on the death of Theodosius I · 0395
- Dedication of Constantinople · 0330-05-11
- The Antonine Constitution (Constitutio Antoniniana) · 0212
- Inauguration of the Flavian Amphitheatre · 0080
- Caesar crosses the Rubicon · -0049-01-10