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The 510s BC

40 sourced entries across 9 years, inside the 6th century BC. Each year below opens its own page; the lines under it are that year’s highest-ranked entries.

519 BCE4 entries

  • Zhou Jing Wang/Ji Gail becomes King of the Zhou Dynasty of China.
  • Herodotus tells that Cleomenes happened to be in the vicinity of Plataia, when the Plataians requested an alliance with Sparta, which he rejected, but instead he advised them to ally with Athens, because he wanted to stir a border conflict between Thebes and Athens, two of the most powerful poleis of central Greece.

518 BCE4 entries

  • Construction begins on the Apadana (audience hall) of Darius and Xerxes, ceremonial complex, at Persepolis, Persia.
  • Darius I begins constructing Persepolis, a new capital for the Persian Empire (approximate date).

516 BCE3 entries

  • Cleomenes I of Sparta receives an embassy from Maeandrius of Samos asking for help to expel the tyrant Syloson, a puppet of the Persian Empire, which is at the time subjugating the city-states of the eastern Aegean Sea.
  • The Persian king Darius I occupies Punjab (approximate date).

515 BCE9 entries

  • February 25 – The Second Temple in Jerusalem is completed.
  • Construction of Persepolis begins.
  • Euphronios creates the Death of Sarpedon, a red-figure decoration on a calyx krater. It is now in the collection of the National Archaeological Museum of Cerveteri.

514 BCE3 entries

  • Hipparchus, son of Pisistratus and co-ruler of Athens, is assassinated by Harmodius and Aristogeiton at the Panathenaea.
  • King Helü of Wu ascends to the throne of the state of Wu and orders Wu Zixu to build a new capital at what is now Suzhou.

513 BCE4 entries

  • Western India, which includes the Indus Valley, becomes the Persian satrapy Hindush.
  • Darius the Great subdues the Getae and east Thrace in his war against the Scythians. To accomplish this, he builds a massive pontoon bridge across the Bosphorus Strait.
  • Amyntas I of Macedon submits to Darius and offers women as concubines to a Persian embassy. His son, Alexander I, objects to this and tricks them by substituting the women with clean-shaven men (or 512 BC).

512 BCE3 entries

  • Sun Tzu, author of The Art of War, begins serving King Helü of the State of Wu as his general and military strategist (approximate date).
  • The State of Xu is disestablished following attacks by the states of Wu and Chu.

511 BCE2 entries

  • The Greek tragic poet Phrynicus wins his first theatrical contest in Athens.

510 BCE8 entries

  • Stelae begin to be banned in Athenian cemeteries (approximate date; ends c. 430 BC).
  • Scylax of Caryanda becomes the first mariner to have passed the Indian Ocean.
  • The reign of Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, last king of the traditional seven Kings of Rome, concludes. The Kingdom of Rome falls and is replaced by the Roman Republic. (or 509 BC)