The Battle of the Teutoburg Forest, described as the Varian Disaster by Roman historians, took place in the Teutoburg Forest in 9 CE, when an alliance of Germanic peoples ambushed and destroyed three Roman legions and their auxiliaries, led by Publius...
On 19 August AD 14, Augustus died while visiting Nola where his father had died. Both Tacitus and Cassius Dio wrote that Livia was rumored to have brought about Augustus’s death by poisoning fresh figs.
Jesus was a first-century Jewish preacher and religious leader. He is the central figure of Christianity, the world’s largest religion. Most Christians believe he is the incarnation of God the Son and the awaited messiah (the Christ) prophesied in the Old Testament.
Amanirenas was a queen of the Kingdom of Kush from c. 40 BC to c. 10 BC. Her full title was Amnirense qore li kdwe li.
Caesar Augustus (born Gaius Octavius or simply Octavian) was the first Roman emperor, reigning from 27 BC until his death in AD 14.
Tiberius Caesar Augustus was the second Roman emperor, reigning from AD 14 to 37. He succeeded his stepfather, Augustus.
Mauretania is the Latin name for a region in the ancient Maghreb. It stretched from central present-day Algeria westwards to the Atlantic, covering northern Morocco, and southward to the Atlas Mountains. Its native inhabitants, seminomadic pastoralists of...
Caligula, formally known as Gaius, was the third Roman emperor, ruling from AD 37 to 41. The son of the popular Roman general Germanicus and Augustus' granddaughter Agrippina the Elder, Caligula was born into the first ruling family of the Roman Empire,...
The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of ancient Rome. As a polity it included large territorial holdings around the Mediterranean Sea in Europe, Northern Africa, and Western Asia ruled by emperors. From the accession of Caesar Augustus to the...
Claudius was Roman emperor from AD 41 to 54. Born to Nero Claudius Drusus and Antonia Minor at Lugdunum in Roman Gaul, where his father was stationed as a military legate, he was the first Roman emperor to be born outside Italy. Nonetheless, Claudius was...
Nero was the fifth Roman emperor, ruling from 54 to 68. His infamous reign is usually associated with tyranny, extravagance and debauchery. Nero, originally named Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, belonged to the Julio-Claudian dynasty, and was adopted as heir...
Jerusalem is a city in Western Asia, on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. It is one of the oldest cities in the world, and is considered holy to the three major Abrahamic religions—Judaism, Christianity, and...
Pompeii was an ancient city located in what is now the comune of Pompei near Naples in the Campania region of Italy. Pompeii, along with Herculaneum and many villas in the surrounding area, was buried under 4 to 6 m of volcanic ash and pumice in the...
Nerva ; was Roman emperor from 96 to 98. Nerva became emperor when aged almost 66, after a lifetime of imperial service under Nero and the rulers of the Flavian dynasty. Under Nero, he was a member of the imperial entourage and played a vital part in...
The Kingdom of Aksum, also known as the Kingdom of Axum or the Aksumite Empire, was an ancient kingdom centered in Northern Ethiopia, and parts of what is now Eritrea. Axumite rulers styled themselves as King of kings, king of Aksum, Himyar, Raydan, Saba,...
Trajan was Roman emperor from 98 to 117. Officially declared by the Senate optimus princeps, Trajan is remembered as a successful soldier-emperor who presided over the second-greatest military expansion in Roman history, after Augustus, leading the empire...
Hadrian was Roman emperor from 117 to 138. He was born into a Roman Italo-Hispanic family that settled in Spain from the Italian city of Atri in Picenum. His father was of senatorial rank and was a first cousin of Emperor Trajan. He married Trajan's...
Hadrian's Wall, also known as the Roman Wall, Picts' Wall, or Vallum Hadriani in Latin, is a former defensive fortification of the Roman province of Britannia, begun in AD 122 in the reign of the emperor Hadrian. It ran from the banks of the River Tyne...
The Pantheon is a former Roman temple, now a Catholic church, in Rome, Italy, on the site of an earlier temple commissioned by Marcus Agrippa during the reign of Augustus. It was rebuilt by the emperor Hadrian and probably dedicated about 126 AD. Its date...
Antoninus Pius was Roman emperor from 138 to 161. He was one of the Five Good Emperors in the Nerva–Antonine dynasty.
Antoninus Pius was Roman emperor from 138 to 161. He was one of the Five Good Emperors in the Nerva–Antonine dynasty.
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus was Roman emperor from 161 to 180 and a Stoic philosopher. He was the last of the rulers known as the Five Good Emperors, and the last emperor of the Pax Romana, an age of relative peace and stability for the Roman Empire. He...
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus was Roman emperor from 161 to 180 and a Stoic philosopher. He was the last of the rulers known as the Five Good Emperors (a term coined some 13 centuries later by Niccolò Machiavelli), and the last emperor of the Pax Romana, an age of relative peace and stability for the Roman Empire.
Commodus was Roman emperor jointly with his father Marcus Aurelius from 176 until his father's death in 180, and solely until 192. His reign is commonly considered to mark the end of the golden period of peace in the history of the Roman Empire known as...
The Shunga Empire was an ancient Indian dynasty from Magadha that controlled areas of the central and eastern Indian subcontinent from around 185 to 75 BCE. The dynasty was established by Pushyamitra Shunga, after taking the throne of the Maurya Empire....
Champa was a collection of independent Cham polities that extended across the coast of what is today central and southern Vietnam from approximately the 2nd century AD until 1832 when it was annexed by the Vietnamese Empire under Minh Mạng.
Nanyue was an ancient Chinese and Vietnamese kingdom that covered the modern Chinese subdivisions of Guangdong, Guangxi, Hainan, Hong Kong and Macau, as well as parts of southern Fujian and northern Vietnam.
The Three Kingdoms from 220 to 280 AD was the tripartite division of China among the states of Wei, Shu, and Wu. The Three Kingdoms period started with the end of the Han dynasty and was followed by the Jin dynasty. The short-lived Yan kingdom in the...
The Parthian Empire (also known as the Arsacid Empire) was a major Iranian political and cultural power in ancient Iran from 247 BC to 224 AD.
Gordian III was Roman emperor from AD 238 to 244. At the age of 13 years and 190 days, he became the youngest sole Roman emperor. Gordian was the son of Antonia Gordiana and Junius Balbus who died before 238. Antonia Gordiana was the daughter of Emperor...
The Jin dynasty was a Chinese dynasty traditionally dated from 266 to 420 AD. It was founded by Sima Yan, eldest son of Sima Zhao, who was made the King of Jin and posthumously declared one of the founders of the dynasty, along with Sima Zhao’s elder brother Sima Shi and father Sima Yi.
Diocletian was a Roman emperor from 284 to 305. Born to a family of low status in Dalmatia, Diocletian rose through the ranks of the military to become a cavalry commander of the Emperor Carus's army. After the deaths of Carus and his son Numerian on...
Diocletian was a Roman emperor from 284 to 305. Born to a family of low status in Dalmatia, Diocletian rose through the ranks of the military to become a cavalry commander of the Emperor Carus's army. After the deaths of Carus and his son Numerian on...
Milan is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the second-most populous city in Italy after Rome. Milan served as the capital of the Western Roman Empire, the Duchy of Milan and the Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia. The city proper has a...
Euclid, sometimes called Euclid of Alexandria to distinguish him from Euclid of Megara, was a Greek mathematician, often referred to as the "founder of geometry" or the "father of geometry". He was active in Alexandria during the reign of Ptolemy I. His...
Acharya Pingala was the ancient Indian author of the Chandaḥśāstra, the earliest known treatise on Sanskrit prosody.
Azania is a name that has been applied to various parts of southeastern tropical Africa. In the Roman period and perhaps earlier, the toponym referred to a portion of the Southeast Africa coast extending from Somalia and Kenya, to perhaps as far south as...
The Edict on Maximum Prices was issued in 301 AD by Roman Emperor Diocletian.
Chandragupta Maurya (reign: 321–297 BCE) was the founder of the Maurya Empire in ancient India. He was taught and counselled by the philosopher Chanakya, who had great influence in the formation of his empire.
The Edict of Milan was the February AD 313 agreement to treat Christians benevolently within the Roman Empire. Western Roman Emperor Constantine I and Emperor Licinius, who controlled the Balkans, met in Mediolanum and, among other things, agreed to...
Chandragupta Maurya (reign: 321–297 BCE) was the founder of the Maurya Empire in ancient India. He was taught and counselled by the philosopher Chanakya, who had great influence in the formation of his empire. Together, Chandragupta and Chanakya built one...
Aristotle died on the Greek island of Euboea of natural causes in 322BC. He named his student Antipater as his chief executor and left a will in which he asked to be buried next to his wife.
The death of Alexander the Great and subsequent related events have been the subjects of debates. According to a Babylonian astronomical diary, Alexander died between the evening of June 10 and the evening of June 11, 323 BC, at the age of thirty-two. This happened in the palace of Nebuchadnezzar II in Babylon.
Constantine I, also known as Constantine the Great, was a Roman emperor from 306 to 337. Born in Naissus, Dacia Mediterranea (now Niš, Serbia), he was the son of Flavius Constantius, an Illyrian army officer who became one of the four emperors of the Tetrarchy. His mother, Helena, was Greek and of low birth.
Porus was an ancient Indian king, whose territory spanned the region between the Hydaspes (Jhelum River) and Acesines (Chenab River), in the Punjab region of the Indian subcontinent. He is credited with having been a legendary warrior with exceptional skills.
Constantinople was the capital city of the Roman Empire (330–395), the Byzantine Empire, the brief Crusader state known as the Latin Empire (1204–1261), and the Ottoman Empire (1453–1923).
Alexander III of Macedon, commonly known as Alexander the Great, was a king (basileus) of the ancient Greek kingdom of Macedon and a member of the Argead dynasty. He was born in Pella in 356 BC and succeeded his father Philip II to the throne at the age...
Samudragupta (Gupta script: Sa-mu-dra-gu-pta, r. c. was a ruler of the Gupta Empire of Ancient India. As a son of the Gupta emperor Chandragupta I and the Lichchhavi princess Kumaradevi, he greatly expanded his dynasty's political power.