Timeline
Roman Republic Timeline
A chronology of the Roman Republic — from the expulsion of the kings through the conquest of the Mediterranean to the civil wars that destroyed it and brought Augustus to power.
For nearly five centuries the Roman Republic governed by a mixed constitution of consuls, Senate and people, until the ambitions of its great generals and the loyalty of its armies to them brought it down.
509 BCE
Expulsion of the kings; foundation of the Republic.
494–287 BCE
The Conflict of the Orders — the plebeians win political rights.
451–450 BCE
The Twelve Tables, Rome's first written law.
264–146 BCE
The Punic Wars against Carthage; Rome masters the western Mediterranean.
216 BCE
Hannibal's victory at Cannae; Fabius's strategy of delay.
146 BCE
Destruction of Carthage and Corinth.
133–121 BCE
The Gracchi and the beginning of the Republic's crisis.
107–86 BCE
Marius's reforms; the army becomes loyal to its general.
88–82 BCE
Sulla marches on Rome; civil war and proscriptions.
60 BCE
The First Triumvirate — Caesar, Pompey, Crassus.
58–50 BCE
Caesar's conquest of Gaul.
49–45 BCE
Civil war between Caesar and Pompey; Caesar victorious.
44 BCE
Assassination of Julius Caesar.
31 BCE
Octavian defeats Antony and Cleopatra at Actium.
27 BCE
Octavian becomes Augustus; the Republic gives way to the Principate.
The Republic fell not from a single blow but from the long erosion of the civic discipline its constitution assumed, as its great men outgrew the order that had made them.