- 753 BCE - Romulus and Remus found Rome
- 509 BCE - Last king of Rome is exiled, the Roman Republic is founded
- 450 BCE - First written Roman law
- 390 BCE - Gauls sack Rome
- 265 BCE - Rome completes conquest of Italian peninsula
- 264 BCE - First Punic War begins against Carthage
- 216 BCE - Hannibal Barca humiliates Roman forces at Battle of Cannae (Second Punic War)
- 146 BCE - Rome crushes Carthage in Third Punic War.
- 107 BCE - Gaius Marius' military reforms
- 73 BCE - Spartacus' rebellion
- 49 BCE - Caesar crosses the Rubicon starting a civil war against Pompey the Great
- 44 BCE - Caesar is assassinated
- 31 BCE - Octavian defeats Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium
- 27 BCE - Octavian granted extraordinary powers by the Senate; ending the Roman Republic and starting the Roman Empire
- 1 CE - Population of Rome reaches one million
- 9 CE - Roman forces are humiliated at the Battle of Teutoburg Forest
- 43 CE - Roman conquest of Britain begins
- 60 CE - Boudicca leads rebellion against Roman rule
- 64 CE - Great fire of Rome
- 79 CE - Vesuvius erupts destroying Pompeii and Herculaneum
- 80 CE - Colosseum is completed
- 117 CE - Rome's territories are at their largest under Emperor Trajan
- 122 CE - Construction of Hadrian's Wall begins
- 165 CE - First Great Plague of Rome
- 235 CE - Crisis of the Third Century begins
- 285 CE - Diocletian splits the Roman Empire into four entities ending the Crisis of the Third Century
- 325 CE - Constantine the Great reunites the Roman Empire into one entity
- 410 CE - Visigoths sack Rome
- 476 CE - Odoacer invades Italy bringing an end to the Western Roman Empire