Fasti Republic & Empire · 300 BC – AD 220

Reading the timeline

• Lanes: wars, people, emperors, religion, literature (and offices, off by default). The lane buttons at the bottom switch them; their ▾ menus filter by rank or kind.
• Leading figures: the 60 best-known people of the period (by Wikipedia coverage) at the top of People, most famous on the top rows. Find (bottom bar, or press /) jumps to anyone or any battle by name.
• Couples: a spouse sits on the row right under their partner, joined by a gold line at the wedding (dotted where Wikidata doesn't date it). Hover or pin someone to see the marriage years.
• Solid bar: dates are known. Faint bar: uncertain dates, or a life with no recorded death (drawn as 60 years).
• Coloured stripes in a life: offices held, coloured by rank (consul red, praetor plum, aedile violet, …).
• Emperors: the dim bar is the life, the bright part the reign. The gold strip at the top shows who reigned when.
• Click a name to pin it: its details open beside it, and its wars, offices and dated events open in a gold band right under it. A pinned battle opens its commanders (from Wikipedia's battle infoboxes) and moves the year to it. Click it again, the background, or press Esc to let go.
• Gold flags (top and bottom): the selected year. Drag either one, or click the year axis; hold a flag at the edge to scroll. ← → step a year, Shift a decade.
• Wheel to zoom, drag to pan. The ⚙ menu has display options, light/dark mode and the map layers.

Reading the map

The map shows the selected year (the gold flags) and whatever is pinned on the timeline. Hovering the timeline never moves it.

• Gold fill: Roman territory that year, meaning Italy plus the provinces then in force.
• Thin outlines, small capitals: provinces. Dashed: Italy, never a province. Bright gold, pulsing: a province created that year. Borders before about AD 117 are approximate.
• Shield and swords: fighting that year, placed at the recorded battle. Red area: where that war's recorded battles were. Click the shield for what happened, the result and who commanded on each side. Hover a shield and its battle is outlined on the timeline; hover a war on the timeline and its shields glow. Pin a war or battle and the map draws its whole theatre.
• Dots: ancient places that existed that year (Pleiades): town fort sanctuary road station. Bigger dots are mentioned more by ancient authors; zoom in for more. Click one for its history, with links into the timeline.
• Line and points in a lane colour: where the pinned person went: birth, death, dated events, battles they fought (ringed red) and provinces they governed (ringed gold, at the province's centre, for the whole term). Stops up to the selected year are solid, later ones faint; this year's are labelled.

Places: Pleiades (CC BY), ranked by ToposText. Provinces: DARE (CC BY-SA). Place dates are broad periods, not founding years.

Reading the year

• The year in Roman numerals, with its Ab Urbe Condita date (years since Rome's founding) and the consuls it was named after.
• Medallions: purple, the emperor; gold, consuls (half-wreath: suffect consul); silver, dictator's deputy, censors, praetors; bronze, aediles. Faded medallions are seats nobody is recorded in: "College of 8 · 2 recorded".
• Provinces: what was created, reorganized or given up this year, or when the map last changed.
• At war: conflicts under way that year. Click any name to pin it on the timeline.
• −10 −5 −1 / +1 +5 +10 step through the years. Pin this year keeps a shortcut under the scroll (saved in this browser).
• Some years have hand-written notes; the rest is built from Wikidata, which is patchy for praetors and aediles.