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The 450s BC

63 sourced entries across 10 years, inside the 5th century BC. Each year below opens its own page; the lines under it are that year’s highest-ranked entries.

459 BCE3 entries

  • The Sicilian town of Morgantina was destroyed by Ducetius, Hellenised leader of the Siculi (according to Diodorus Siculus).
  • The Aequi occupied Tusculum. In response to the threat, the Roman Senate decided to send an army to help the allied city, under the command of consul Lucius Cornelius Maluginensis. In addition, the consul Fabius Vibulanus, who was at that point besieging Antium, moved his forces to attack Tusculum. The Tusculans were able to recapture their city. A truce was then arranged with the Aequi.
  • Athens allied itself with the city state of Megara which was under pressure from Corinth. This alliance leads to war between Corinth and Athens. The first battle of the war, at Haliesis in the Gulf of Argolis, resulted in a Corinthian victory, but the next battle, the battle of Cecryphalea (modern Angistrion), went Athens' way.

458 BCE7 entries

  • The Athenian playwright Aeschylus completes his trilogy The Oresteia (which comprise Agamemnon, Choephoroi (The Libation Bearers) and The Eumenides).
  • Pericles continues Ephialtes' democratising activities by making the archonship a paid office and the lower class of Athenian citizens eligible to hold the office.
  • Aegina joins the Peloponnesian alliance, but their combined fleet is defeated by the Athenians in the Battle of Aegina. The Athenians, under the command of Leocrates, land on the island of Aegina and besiege and defeat the city. Aegina is forced to pay tribute to Athens.

457 BCE6 entries

  • Athens, the leader of the Delian League, comes into conflict with Corinth and its ally Sparta (leader of the Peloponnesian League) over Megara. Nicomedes of Sparta, regent for King Pleistoanax, leads an army of 11,500 hoplites into Boeotia to help Thebes put down a rebellion by Phocis.
  • The Zeus Temple at Olympia is completed. The forty-foot statue of Zeus inside it becomes one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
  • Athenian forces block the routes back to the Peloponnese, so the Spartans decide to remain in Boeotia and await the Athenian attack. The Athenians and their allies, with 14,000 men under the command of Myronides, meet the Spartans at Battle of Tanagra. The Spartans win the battle, but they lose many men and so are unable to follow up on their victory.

456 BCE4 entries

  • The temple of Zeus in Olympia is finished.
  • The first of the Athenian sculptor Phidias' monuments to Athena, the bronze Athena Promachos, is placed on the Athenian Acropolis, measuring about 9 metres high.

455 BCE4 entries

  • Euripides presents his earliest known tragedy, Peliades, in the Athenian festival of Dionysia.
  • Athens, under Athenian general Tolmides, sends 100 ships around the Peloponnesus and they set fire to the Spartan naval base at Gythion. As a result, Athens gains the agreement of the Achaean cities to join the Delian League. Athenian forces then go on to attack the Spartan allies on the Corinthian Gulf. Athens is now able to confine Sparta to the southern Peloponnesus.
  • The Athenians suffer a severe defeat in Egypt at the hands of the Persians. After being cut off in the Nile Delta, the Athenian fleet is defeated, and the Athenian army retreats across the Sinai Desert to Byblos before its remnants are rescued. The Egyptian rebel Inaros is crucified by the Persians. The Athenians decide against any further military activity in Egypt.

454 BCE6 entries

  • The Roman Plebs, suffering from a number of economic and financial ills, force the city’s patricians to begin the reform and codification of the law. As a first act, a three-man commission is sent to Athens to study that city's laws.
  • Mahavira attains Kevala Jnana at the age of 43, according to the Śvetāmbara branch of Jain philosophy.
  • Hostilities between Segesta and Selinunte, two Greek cities on Sicily, take place over access to the Tyrrhenian Sea.

453 BCE6 entries

  • May 8 – The Chinese city of Jinyang is severely flooded in the Battle of Jinyang, where the elite families of Jin, Zhao, Zhi, Wei and Han fight. The Wei and the Han swap allegiances to side with Zhao and eliminate the Zhi house, ending the Spring and Autumn period of Chinese history.
  • Achaea, on the southern shore of the Corinthian Gulf, becomes part of what is effectively now the Athenian Empire. The Delian League had changed from an alliance into an empire clearly under the control of Athens.
  • Pericles, the ruler of Athens, bestows generous wages on all Athens' citizens who serve as jurymen on the Heliaia (the supreme court of Athens).

452 BCE2 entries

  • An outbreak of plague spreads throughout Italy.

451 BCE4 entries

  • Following the report of a three-man commission into the design of Roman law, the patricians set up in Rome a Board of Ten, the Decemviri. The first Decemviri, composed entirely of patricians is led by consuls Appius Claudius Crassus and Titus Genucius Augurinus. The first ten codes of the Roman Law of the Twelve Tables are completed by the first Decemvirate.
  • The Persian fleet moves against a rebellious Cyprus to restore order. Kimon, who returns to favour, though not to power, in Athens, plans an expedition to help Cyprus. He gains Pericles' support.
  • Hostilities among the Greek states come to a formal end with the agreement to the Five Years' Truce. Kimon negotiates a five year truce with Sparta, in which Athens agrees to abandon its alliance with Argos, while Sparta promises to give up its alliance with Thebes. During the same year Argos signs the first "Thirty-Years Peace" with Sparta.

450 BCE21 entries

  • During the siege Cimon dies and command of the fleet is given to Anaxicrates, who leaves Citium to engage the Phoenician fleet in the Battle of Salamis in Cyprus. The Greek fleet is victorious against the Persians and their allies and then returns to Athens.
  • Myron makes a bronze statue called The Discus Thrower (Discobolus). A Roman copy is now kept at Museo Nazionale Romano, Rome (approximate date).
  • The Severe (Early Classical) period of sculpture ends in Ancient Greece and is succeeded by the Mature Classical period (approximate date).