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The 90s

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

90 CE6 entries

  • The Young Flavian Woman is made. It is now kept at Musei Capitolini, Rome (approximate date).

91 CE7 entries

  • Rome is described by Statius in his poems.
  • Manius Acilius Glabrio and Marcus Ulpius Traianus become Roman Consuls.
  • Pliny the Younger is named a tribunus plebis.

92 CE9 entries

  • Emperor Domitian becomes a Roman Consul.
  • The Flavian Palace is completed on the Palatine.
  • In spring, several tribes (probably Marcomanni, Quadi, Jazyges) cross the Danube and attack Pannonia, probably destroying Legio XXI Rapax. These tribes are defeated from May to December 92, and chased back over the river. The Romans do not pursue the retreating tribes.

93 CE8 entries

  • The Xianbei incorporates 100,000 Xiongnu, and establishes the Xianbei State in Mongolia (approximate date).
  • Josephus completes his Jewish Antiquities (or in AD 94).
  • Pliny the Younger is named a praetor.

94 CE6 entries

  • Emperor Domitian rebuilds and rededicates the Curia Julia (meeting place of the Roman Senate), which had burned down in AD 64.
  • The Chinese General Ban Chao completes his conquest of the Tarim Basin by taking Yānqi, which is located on the strategic Silk Road.
  • The Roman poet Publius Papinius Statius retires to Naples from Rome (approximate date).

95 CE11 entries

  • Domitian executes senators out of paranoiac fears that they are plotting to kill him.
  • In Rome a severe form of malaria appears in the farm districts and will continue for the next 500 years, taking out of cultivation the fertile land of the Campagna, whose market gardens supply the city with fresh products. The fever drives small groups of farmers into the crowded city, bringing the malaria with them, and lowers Rome's live-birth rate while rates elsewhere in the empire are rising.
  • The Roman consul Manius Acilius Glabrio is ordered by Domitian to descend into the arena of the Colosseum to fight a lion. After he kills the animal, Domitian banishes and puts him to death.

96 CE11 entries

  • September 18 – Emperor Domitian is stabbed to death by a freedman at the age 44 after a 15-year reign, in a palace conspiracy involving officers of the Praetorian Guard. The Flavian Dynasty ends.
  • Nerva is declared emperor by the Roman Senate as the new ruler of the Roman Empire. He recalls citizens exiled by Domitian; this is the beginning of the Era of the Five Good Emperors. The Antonines Dynasty starts.
  • A schism in Buddhism creates a new, popular religion in India, Mahâyâna ("Great Vehicle").

97 CE12 entries

  • October 28 – Emperor Nerva recalls his general Marcus Ulpius Trajanus, age 44, from the German frontier and is forced by the Praetorian Guard to adopt him as his successor.
  • Nerva recognizes the Sanhedrin of Jamnia as an official governmental body of the Jews, and the patriarch or nasi is designated as the representative of the Jewish people in Rome.
  • Sextus Julius Frontinus is appointed superintendent of the aqueducts (curator aquarum) in Rome. At least 10 aqueducts supply the city with 250 e6USgal m3 of water per day. The public baths use half the supply.

98 CE6 entries

  • January 1 – Emperor Nerva suffers a stroke during a private audience.
  • Tacitus finishes his Germania (approximate date).
  • Trajan elevates Ladenburg to city status (civitas).

99 CE6 entries

  • August 29 – Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 581, recording the sale of a slave girl, is written.
  • November 23 – Pope Evaristus succeeds Pope Clement I as the fifth pope according to Roman Catholic tradition.
  • Emissaries of the Kushan Empire reach the Roman Empire.