Ruined columns of the Roman Forum against a pale sky

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Ancient Rome: A Timeline

From a legendary founding on the Tiber to a Republic, an Empire, and the fall of the West.

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c. 753 BC Legendary founding 509 BC Republic begins 146 BC Carthage destroyed 44 BC Caesar assassinated 27 BC Empire begins 476 AD Western Empire falls

c. 753 BC Rome's traditional founding date

According to Roman tradition recorded by later writers, Romulus founds the city of Rome on the Tiber in 753 BC. The date comes from Rome's own founding legend rather than a contemporary record.

509 BC The last king is overthrown

Rome's monarchy ends with the traditional expulsion of Tarquin the Proud, and the Roman Republic is established, governed by elected magistrates and the Senate.

146 BC The Punic Wars end

Rome destroys Carthage, concluding more than a century of intermittent warfare (264–146 BC) and leaving Rome the dominant power in the western Mediterranean.

44 BC Julius Caesar is assassinated

Caesar, who had been declared dictator for life, is killed by a group of senators on the Ides of March, triggering more than a decade of civil war.

27 BC Augustus becomes the first emperor

Octavian, Caesar's adopted heir, is granted the title Augustus by the Senate, marking the transition from Republic to Empire under a single ruler.

476 AD The Western Roman Empire falls

The Germanic general Odoacer deposes the child emperor Romulus Augustulus, an event conventionally treated as marking the end of the Western Roman Empire.

Last updated: August 2026

History Timelines. (August 2026). Ancient Rome: A Timeline. Retrieved from https://history-timelines.org.uk/places/ancient-rome/

A Legendary Founding and the Rise of the Republic

Rome’s own tradition held that the city was founded in 753 BC by Romulus, a date fixed centuries later by Roman writers looking back on their own origins rather than by any contemporary record. Archaeological evidence shows settlement on the site of Rome from around that period, but the story of Romulus and his twin brother Remus is legend, not history, and modern scholars treat the 753 BC date as symbolic rather than precise. What is better documented is the end of Rome’s early monarchy: around 509 BC, tradition holds that the last king, Tarquin the Proud, was overthrown, and Rome became a Republic. Power passed to annually elected magistrates, chief among them two consuls, working alongside the Senate, a body of aristocratic elders whose approval shaped most major decisions. Over the following centuries, the Republic extended its control across the Italian peninsula and then further afield, most decisively through the three Punic Wars against Carthage, a rival power based in North Africa. Fought intermittently between 264 and 146 BC, these wars ended with the destruction of Carthage and left Rome the unchallenged dominant force in the western Mediterranean.

From Republic to Empire

Success abroad brought strain at home. Roman society grew wealthier and more unequal, its armies increasingly loyal to individual generals rather than to the state, and the first century BC saw repeated civil conflict. Julius Caesar, a general and politician who had extended Roman control into Gaul, emerged from this period as the dominant figure in Roman politics and was declared dictator for life. His accumulation of personal power alarmed a group of senators, who assassinated him on the Ides of March, 44 BC. Rather than restoring the old Republic, his death triggered a further round of civil war among his potential successors. It was Caesar’s adopted heir, Octavian, who emerged victorious. In 27 BC, the Senate granted Octavian the honorific title Augustus, and he became, in effect, Rome’s first emperor, ruling behind a careful facade of restored republican institutions. This transition marks the conventional beginning of the Roman Empire, a system of rule by a single emperor that would persist, in one form or another, for centuries.

A close-up of ancient bronze Roman coins beside a mosaic tile fragment

Empire, Division, and the Fall of the West

Under Augustus and his successors, the Empire brought a long period of relative internal stability historians often call the Pax Romana, during which Roman law, infrastructure, and culture spread across an enormous territory. The Empire reached its greatest territorial extent under the emperor Trajan in the early second century AD, stretching from Britain to the Near East. From the third century onward, the Empire faced mounting pressure from external invasions, internal political instability, and economic strain, and by the late third and fourth centuries it had come to be administered as separate Western and Eastern halves, each with its own emperor, though nominally still one empire. The Western half proved less able to withstand these pressures. Its end is conventionally dated to 476 AD, when the Germanic general Odoacer deposed the child emperor Romulus Augustulus, the last emperor to rule from Rome or Ravenna in the West. The Eastern half, centered on Constantinople and later known to historians as the Byzantine Empire, continued for another thousand years, carrying forward much of Rome’s law, administration, and culture long after the fall of the West.