The Romans - Timelines

  • Origins
  • The Republic
  • The Transition
  • The Empire
  • Literature

  • Outline - earliest times to 510 BC

  • Outline 510 - 78 BC
  • Cato the Censor
  • The Gracchi
  • Marius
  • Sulla
  • Outline 74 - 27 BC
  • Pompey
  • Cicero
  • Julius Caesar
  • Brutus
  • Mark Antony
  • Lepidus
  • Agrippa
  • Outline 23 BC - AD 96
  • Augustus
  • Agricola
  • Later Empire
  • Outline 753 BC - AD 400
  • Virgil
  • Horace
  • Ovid
  • Pliny
  • Tacitus

The Empire - Augustus to Domitian timeline

FROM AUGUSTUS’S ELEVENTH CONSULSHIP TO HIS DEATH
  23 BC Augustus resigns his eleventh consulship, probably because of illness. He is awarded for life full tribunician powers, and extended imperium which gives him authority over any provincial governor and over the army (renewed for five years in 18 and 13, and for ten years in 8, and AD 3 and 13.)
  22 Famine and plague. Augustus declines a dictatorship and censorship for life, but accepts the post of corn supremo. He leaves for the east for three years.
  21 Agrippa is forced to divorce his wife and marry Augustus’s daughter Julia, whose husband Marcellus has died after being married to her for two years.
  18 Senate is reduced to 600. Agrippa is granted special powers.
  17 Augustus adopts Agrippa’s and Julia’s two sons, Gaius and Lucius, as his own sons. Saecular Games celebrated.
  15 Tiberius and Drusus, Augustus’s stepsons, defeat the Raeti and Vindelici, whose territory becomes a Roman province.
  13 Tiberius’s first consulship. Augustus returns to Rome after three years in Gaul, and Agrippa after three years in the east. Agrippa’s special powers extended for five years.
  12 Following the death of Lepidus, Augustus is elected pontifex maximus. Death of Agrippa.
  11 Tiberius is forced to divorce his wife and marry Julia.
  10 Birth of the emperor Claudius.
  9 Dedication of the Ara Pacis in Rome.
  8 Tiberius scores victories in Germany.
  7 Tiberius awarded tribunician powers for five years; he retires to Rhodes.
  4 Death of Drusus. Death of Herod the Great.
  2 Banishment of Julia.
  2 AD Death of Lucius. Tiberius returns to Rome.
  4 Death of Gaius. Augustus adopts Tiberius, who is granted tribunician powers for ten years. Tiberius adopts Germanicus, son of Drusus, and departs for Germany. Law restricting manumission.
  6 Augustus establishes aerarium militare to provide for retired soldiers, and creates the post of praefectus vigilum.
  9 Varian disaster.
  12 Birth of Caligula.
  13 Augustus’s control of his provinces renewed for a further ten years. Tiberius’s powers are also renewed, with imperium equal to that of Augustus.
  14 Census enumerates 5 million Roman citizens. Death (19 August) and deification (17 September) of Augustus. Tiberius succeeds him. Mutinies in Pannonia and Germany. Sejanus appointed commander of imperial guard. Death of Julia.

THE RULE OF TIBERIUS
  16 Germanicus advances to the river Elbe, but is recalled to Rome and the attempt to extend the Roman frontier is abandoned.
  17 Germanicus celebrates a triumph, then is sent to the east with powers to reorganize the provinces.
  18 Third consulship of Tiberius, with Germanicus, who falls out with Gnaeus Piso, legate of Syria.
  19 Death of Germanicus in Syria, which Piso is forced by army pressure to leave.
  20 Piso, charged with treason and with procuring the death of Germanicus, commits suicide.
  21 Fourth consulship of Tiberius, with his son Drusus. Tiberius, however, retires for a time to Campania.
  22 Drusus awarded tribunician powers.
  23 Sejanus relocates the imperial guard to a camp immediately outside the city walls. Death of Drusus (attributed by Tacitus to Sejanus).
  26 Pontius Pilate becomes administrator of Judaea. Sejanus persuades Tiberius to leave Rome.
  27 Tiberius settles in Capri.
  28 Marriage of Agrippina, daughter of Germanicus and Agrippina (elder), with Domitius Ahenobarbus.
  29 Agrippina (elder) and her eldest son exiled. Death of Livia at the age of 86.
  31 Fifth consulship of Tiberius, with Sejanus. Acting on private information, Tiberius denounces Sejanus, on whom the senate pronounces the sentence of death. His children and his immediate supporters are also executed.
  33 Probable date of crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth under Roman law. Drusus, son of Germanicus, becomes one of over 60 well-known people executed for treason during the rule of Tiberius.
  37 Death of Tiberius (16 March). Gaius (Caligula), Tiberius’s great-nephew, becomes emperor and is suffect consul with his uncle Claudius. Death of Tiberius Gemellus, Tiberius’s grandson. Birth of the emperor Nero.

THE RULES OF CALIGULA AND HIS UNCLE CLAUDIUS
  38 Death and deification of Caligula’s sister Drusilla. Riots in Alexandria between Jews and Greeks.
  39 Conspiracy of Aemilius Lepidus, widower of Drusilla, and C. Lentulus Gaetulicus, consul in 26 and now legate in Upper Germany, both of whom are executed; Caligula’s other two sisters are exiled. Caligula is on the Rhine and in Gaul over the winter.
  40 Caligula makes an expedition to the Channel. On his return to Rome, he orders a statue of himself to be set up in the Temple at Jerusalem. Deputation of Alexandrine Jews and Greeks.
  41 41 Caligula assassinated (24 January). Claudius, with the help of Herod Agrippa in bringing round the senate, is made emperor, having promised a donative to each member of the imperial guard equivalent to ten years’ pay, an unfortunate precedent. Herod Agrippa (Agrippa I), in addition to his existing territories, is made king also of Judaea, Samaria, and Idumaea, which cease to be under the jurisdiction of the governor of Syria.
  42 Mauretania is divided into two provinces.
  43 Claudius successfully invades Britain, part of which becomes a province under Aulus Plautius
  44 Claudius celebrates a triumph for his victory in Britain and names his three-year-old son Britannicus. Achaea and Macedonia become subject to the authority of the senate. Death of Agrippa I. Judaea reverts to being a province.
  46 Claudius annexes Thrace.
  47 Plautius celebrates a triumph for his successes in Britain, the last occasion on which a subject is so honoured.
  48 As censor, a post he revives, Claudius registers some 7 million citizens of Rome, and opens the way for more provincials to become senators. Death of the empress Messalina. Claudius marries Agrippina, the daughter of his brother Germanicus.
  50 Claudius adopts Nero, son of Agrippina.
  51 Final defeat in Wales of the British chief Caratacus, who is handed over by Cartimandua, queen of the Brigantes; Claudius pardons him and his family and allows them to live out their lives in Rome. Vespasian is suffect consul.
  53 Marriage of Nero and Claudius’s daughter Octavia.
  54 Death of Claudius by poison (12 October). Accession of Nero. Claudius is deified.

FROM THE ACCESSION OF NERO TO THE YEAR OF THE FOUR EMPERORS
  55 Nero rules initially with the advice of his tutor, Seneca, and Burrus, commander of the imperial guard. Claudius’s freedman who was his financial secretary, is dismissed. Britannicus is poisoned. Gn. Domitius Corbulo appointed to military command in the east.
  56 Quaestors are replaced by two imperial officers (ex-praetors) at the treasury, to which in 57 Nero transfers 40 million sesterces.
  59 Nero finally succeeds in murdering his mother.
  60 Corbulo, after several military successes, settles the Armenian problem, and is appointed governor of Syria.
  61 In Britain, the Iceni (under Boudica) and Trinovantes revolt, causing great destruction and slaughter. They are finally defeated by Suetonius Paullinus, and Boudica commits suicide.
  62 Death of Burrus. Seneca withdraws from public life. Nero marries Poppaea, having divorced and subsequently murdered Octavia.
  64 Great fire of Rome (19-28 July).
  65 In the wake of a high-level conspiracy, there are many executions and enforced suicides, including that of Seneca. Death of Poppaea.
  66 Beginning of First Jewish War; Vespasian appointed military commander in Judaea. Nero marries Statilia Messalina.
  67 Death of Corbulo, having been ordered to commit suicide.
  68 Nero returns from visits to Greece. Verginius Rufus, legate of Upper Germany, crushes rebellion of Vindex in Gaul. Death of Nero (6 June). End of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. Galba enters Rome and is accepted as emperor.
  69 Vitellius, governor of Lower Germany, is acclaimed emperor by his troops and those in Upper Germany. Galba and Piso, his nominee as successor, killed by the imperial guard, who make Otho emperor (15 January). In northern Italy Vitellius defeats Otho, who commits suicide (14 April). Vitellius in Rome (mid-July). Vespasian, in Judaea, is proclaimed emperor by Tiberius Alexander, prefect of Egypt (1 July), and is accepted as such by the troops in the east and on the Danube. The Danube legions capture Rome (21 December). Death of Vitellius (24 December).

FROM THE ACCESSION OF VESPASIAN TO THE END OF THE FLAVIAN DYNASTY

  70 Vespasian and Titus are consuls. Titus takes Jerusalem; destruction of the Temple. Vespasian reaches Rome (October).
  71 Vespasian and Nerva are consuls. Triumph of Vespasian and Titus for victories in Judaea. Titus is appointed commander of the imperial guard and receives tribunician powers.
  72 Vespasian and Titus are censors.
  73 First consulship of Domitian.
  74 Fall of Masada marks end of First Jewish War. Vespasian confers Latin rights on all parts of the Spanish peninsular. Julius Frontinus is suffect consul.
  76 Birth of Hadrian.
  78 Agricola begins his terms of office as governor of Britain after being suffect consul.
  79 Death of Vespasian and accession of Titus (23 June). Eruption of Vesuvius and destruction of Herculaneum and Pompeii (August).
  80 Fire in Rome destroys Capitoline Temple. Opening of the Colosseum.
  81 Erection of Arch of Titus. Death of Titus and accession of Domitian (13 September).
  83 Domitian campaigns in Germany.
  84 Battle of Mons Graupius in Scotland. Agricola is recalled.
  86-92 Domitian’s Danube wars.
  96 Assassination of Domitian (18 September). Nerva is elected by the senate to succeed him.
 
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