Position:Home>History> When did these famous Roman things start and end??

The Monarchy was from 753 BC to 509 BC
The Republic was from 510 BC to 27 BC, some sources 23 BCE
The Empire was from 27 AD to 476AD (Western Empire) and 1453AD (Eastern Empire)Www@QuestionHome@Com

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According to legend, the city of Rome was founded by Romulus in 753 BC!. It was a kingdom until 510 BC, when the last King, Lucius Tarquinius Superbus was overthrown!. With that date, the Roman Republic began!.

The end of the republic is still a matter of dispute; different scholars will give different dates for it!. Usually, the dates of the start of the First Triumvirate or the Second Triumvirate are given!. (The Triumvirates were groups of men who had much power)

The end of the republic is often said to be when Gaius Julius Caesar was appointed as dictator (single ruler) by the Senate of Rome!. This happened after a series of civil wars that lasted from about 49 BC to the year 44 BC!.

Some people say the republic ended with the naval Battle of Actium between Marcus Antonius and Octavian!. They both had been in the Second Triumvirate!. It was fought on September 2, 31 BC)!. Octavian won!. Later on, he was proclaimed Roman Emperor!. The end date could also be when Octavian was given the title of the first Augustus!. This was on January 16, 27 BC!.

These are modern views though!. In the view of the early emperors, the res publica (what is translated to Republic) still existed!. It was simply "under their protection"!. They promised it would some day be restored to its original form, even though this never happened!. After the Roman Republic ended, the Roman Empire began!.

The Roman Empire was a very large empire with its capital in Rome, that was ruled by an Emperor!. The first Emperor of Rome was Augustus Caesar, from the year 27 BC!.
The city of Rome was taken over several times by barbarians, notably in 410 A!.D!. when the Goths sacked the city!. The last Western Roman Emperor, Romulus Augustulus, resigned in 476 A!.D!. The Roman Empire would last another 1,000 years as the Byzantine Empire in the east!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

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The first era of Rome was the Roman Kingdom!. Rome's traditional founding date was 753 BC, and its first king was Romulus, a semi-mythical character!. After Romulus, the King of Rome was elected by the people to serve as king for life, there were nothing hereditory about it!. Roman kings were Numa Pompilius, Tullus Hostilius, Ancus Marcius, Tarquinias Priscus, Servius Tullius, and Tarquinius Superbus!. In 510 B!.C Tarquinius Superbus raped a noblewoman named Lucretia!. Her kinsman, Lucius Junius Brutus (ancestor to Marcus Brutus) rallied the senate and had the monarchy expelled and executive power was placed in the hands of the annually elected consuls, thus starting the Roman Republic!. The exact date when this happened is unknown!.

For about the next 500 years, the Republic reigned!. However, a series of events rocked the stability of the Republic!. Overseas territories were not represented, and slave labor was forcing many people off their farms, forcing them to migrate to the city looking for employment!. The first attempt at reform was by the Gracchi brothers in the mid to late 2nd century B!.C, who were assassinated!. The next series of Reforms was by the political rivals Gaius Marius and Lucius Sulla in the late 2nd century to early 1st century B!.C!. Marius reformed the legions to be a professional force, and Sulla seized power and reinstated the conservative faction as the ruling force!. It is also important to remember that Sulla had been elected dictator perpetuus, Dictator-for-life, but had resigned from power when his reforms had been enacted!. The Republic would exist in feeble form until the Roman civil war between Pompey Magnus and the conservatives against Julius Caesar and the Progressives!. Caesar won the day and was following in Sulla's footsteps of using his dictatorial powers for political reform until he was assassinated by the senate and Marcus Junius Brutus!. The powers of Caesar passed on to his heir, Octavian, who was much less of an idealist than Caesar had been!. After defeating Mark Anthony, he consolidated his power, interestingly enough avoiding both the titles of Rex (the King) and Dictator Perpetuus (Dictator for life)!. Generally, when the senate granted him the title Augustus on January 16, 27 B!.C was considered the traditional point for the end of the Republic and the beginning of the Principate phase of the Empire, though no Roman comprehended such change and Augustus always billed himself as the protector of the Republic, not its destroyer!.

The Principate is known as the Roman high period, as it was an era of peace that was virtually unknown to the world, and commerce and trade flourished!. The Emperors, while absolute in power, were also known to work with the senate, at least to some degree!. Trajan in particular was a well known friend of the senate, and his unassuming nature as Emperor earned him the title Princeps Optimax, the greatest of the First-Citizens (First-Citizen was how contemporary Romans addressed the Emperor)!. The high period was said to have peaked under the reign of Marcus Aurelius, though the Principate continued on until the assassination of Alexander Severus in 235 A!.D, which plunged the empire into a period of chaos and anarchy that is know known as the crisis of the 3rd century!.

The Crisis of the Third century was a period of near lawlessness in which the Empire nearly collapsed!. Multiple civil wars, dozens of claimants to the throne, the collapse of the currency and the breakdown of trade routes rocked the empire and nearly caused it to vanish entirely!. It was only a series of able Emperors (interestingly enough, who were not Italian) who were able to piece the empire back together, but the Crisis is not considered to have been officially over until the ascension of Diocletian in 285 A!.D!. This also marks the start of the final phase of The Romans, the Dominate!.

The Dominate was a feeble shadow of its predecessor, the Principate, and over the course of the 4th century saw it gradually decline!. The Emperor Constantine also split the Empire into two administrative centers, which eventually became autonomous political entities!. By the 5th century, Rome was for all intends dead, but it was kept together by able military commanders, including the German Stilicho and the cunning Roman Flavius Aetius!. When Aetius was assassinated by a jealous Emperor in 454 A!.D, there was a massive power vacuum and none rose to the occassion!. The facade ended in the west on September 4, 476 A!.D when Odoacer the Ostrogoth deposed the last Roman Emperor, Romulus Augustulus, and instituted himself as the King of Italy!.

The Eastern Roman Empire, now called the Byzantine Empire, continued on very well by medieval standards (though never reaching the splendor and prosperity of the Roman high period) for another thousand years of ups and downs, but was gradually dismantled by a jealous west and an eager middle east, and finally collapsed on May 29, 1453 A!.D when Constantinople, its capital, was finally captured!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

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