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The 70s BC

88 sourced entries across 10 years, inside the 1st century BC. Each year below opens its own page; the lines under it are that year’s highest-ranked entries.

79 BCE2 entries

  • Sulla renounces his dictatorship.
  • Cicero travels to Athens and then to Rhodes to continue his studies of philosophy and oratory.

78 BCE7 entries

  • The Tabularium is built in the Forum.
  • The Senate sends Publius Servilius Vatia to Cilicia as governor, where he fights a successful campaign against the Piracy in southern Anatolia (Lycia, Pamphylia and Isauria), he is thereafter known by the agnomen Isauricus.
  • In Rome, Marcus Aemilius Lepidus becomes consul. He attempts to undermine the Sullan reforms, quarrels with his consular colleague, is sent to govern Transalpine Gaul, and initiates a rebellion against the Senate with his army there.

77 BCE10 entries

  • Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, Roman proconsul of Transalpine Gaul and leader of the Populares faction in the senate, is defeated by Quintus Lutatius Catulus at the Milvian bridge outside Rome. The remnants of the rebels are wiped out by Pompey in Etruria.
  • Pompeius marches along the Via Domitia through Gallia Narbonensis crossing the Pyrenees to Spain. He joins with Quintus Metellus Pius to suppress the revolt of Quintus Sertorius, but is at first unsuccessful.
  • Lepidus, with some 21,000 troops, manages to escape to Sardinia. Soon afterwards he becomes ill and dies, his battered army, now under command by Marcus Perperna Vento, sails on to the Iberian Peninsula.

76 BCE5 entries

  • On the Iberian Peninsula, in the Roman province of Hispania Citerior, the rebel forces of Quintus Sertorius defeat the republican army of Pompey the Great at the Battle of Lauron.
  • Salome Alexandra becomes queen of Judea, after the death of her husband, Alexander Jannaeus, until 67 BC.
  • Hyrcanus II becomes high priest of Jerusalem for the first time, on the death of his father, Alexander Jannaeus, until 66 BC.

75 BCE17 entries

  • At the Battle of Saguntum the republican forces on the Iberian Peninsula and the Sertorian rebels fight each other to a draw. Quintus Sertorius is forced to withdraw leaving the battlefield to Pompey and Metellus (the republican commanders).
  • In the Roman province of Hispania Citerior an army of Sertorian rebels under Quintus Sertorius himself defeats a republican army under Pompey the Great at the Battle of Sucro.
  • Julius Caesar travels to Rhodes to study under Apollonius Molon. On his way across the Aegean Sea, he is kidnapped by Cilician pirates and held prisoner in the Dodecanese islet of Pharmacusa. The young Caesar is held for a ransom of twenty talents, but he insists they ask for fifty. After his release Caesar raises a fleet at Miletus, pursues and crucifies the pirates in Pergamon.

74 BCE9 entries

  • Third Mithridatic War: Battle of Cyzicus: Roman forces under Lucius Lucullus defeat the forces of Mithridates VI of Pontus.
  • Publius Servilius Vatia returns to Rome, where he has triumphed against the pirates in Anatolia, and is given the agnomen Isauricus.
  • Nicomedes IV, last king of Bithynia bequeaths his kingdom to the Roman Senate upon his death (75/4 BC)

73 BCE8 entries

  • Third Servile War: Spartacus, a Thracian gladiator, escapes with around 70 slave-gladiators from a gladiator school at Capua. They defeat a small Roman force and equip themselves with captured military equipment as well with gladiatorial weapons. Spartacus and his band of gladiators plunder the region surrounding Capua and retire to a defensible position on Mount Vesuvius.
  • Battle of Mount Vesuvius: Spartacus defeats a Roman militia force (3,000 men) under Gaius Claudius Glaber. The rebel slaves spend the winter of 73–72 BC training, arming and equipping their new recruits, as well as expanding their raiding territory, which includes the towns of Nola, Nuceria, Thurii and Metapontum.

72 BCE11 entries

  • Third Servile War: Spartacus moves with his followers northward to the Po Valley. Roman forces under Lucius Gellius Publicola defeat a group of slaves (30,000 men) led by Crixus near Mount Gargano. He kills two-thirds of the rebels, including Crixus himself.
  • Battle of Cabira: Lucius Lucullus defeats King Mithridates VI and overruns Pontus. Mithridates flees to Armenia, ruled by his son-in-law Tigranes, who refuses to turn his father-in-law in to Lucius Lucullus.
  • Perperna is defeated by Pompey the Great at the Battle of Osca, ending the Sertorian War in Spain.

71 BCE9 entries

  • Marcus Antonius is defeated by the Cretans, who have made an alliance with the pirates. He is compelled to concede a humiliating peace. Antonius dies in office the same year and is awarded, posthumously, with the cognomen Creticus.
  • Nessebar in modern-day Bulgaria comes under Roman rule.
  • Third Servile War ends; Slave rebellion under leadership of Spartacus is crushed by a Roman army under Marcus Licinius Crassus. Slaves taken prisoner are crucified naked along the Via Appia.

70 BCE10 entries