Sulla, campaigning to the east, besieges Athens and then allows his army to loot the city

Sulla takes Rome for the second time, after a battle at the Colline Gate, and then publishes his lethal 'proscriptions'

Cicero, whose speeches become models of oratory, makes his first appearance in a Roman court

Julius Caesar, captured by pirates on his way to Rhodes, warns them that he will crucify them - and later keeps his word

A rebellion by Spartacus and other slaves from a gladiators' training camp at Capua lasts for two years before it is suppressed

Julius Caesar persuades Pompey and Crassus to join him in a political alliance to their mutual advantage, known now as the first triumvirate

At the end of his year as consul, Caesar travels north to become governor of northern Italy and southern France

Julius Caesar makes the first of his two invasions of Celtic Britain

Julius Caesar returns to Britain for a second visit, this time reaching north of the Thames into the kingdom of Cassivellaunus

The death of Crassus at Carrhae brings to an end the first triumvirate

The Celtic leader Vercingetorix inflicts an unaccustomed defeat on Julius Caesar, at Gergovia, but is captured later in the year

In his winter quarters Julius Caesar writes The Gallic War, an account of his own achievements in suppressing the Gauls

Gladiators have metal studs on their boxing gloves, and a public bout is expected to go on until the loser dies

Julius Caesar crosses the river Rubicon (the southern boundary of Gaul) with his army – and in doing so launches a civil war

Julius Caesar defeats his rival Pompey at Pharsalus, in Greece, and makes himself master of the Roman world

Cleopatra gives birth to a son and calls him Ptolemy XV Caesar (later known by the nickname Caesarion)

Vercingetorix is a prize exhibit in Caesar's great triumph in Rome, but the Celtic chieftain is strangled once the procession is over

Julius Caesar's new calendar is introduced, at a time when its predecessor has become out of step with the seasons by three months

On March 15, the Ides of March, Julius Caesar is stabbed to death during a meeting of the senate

Octavian, an 18-year-old student in Apollonia, hears that he has been named by his uncle, Julius Caesar, as his successor and heir

Octavian, Mark Antony and Lepidus meet in Bologna and form an alliance known as the second triumvirate

Octavian and Mark Antony defeat the armies of Brutus and Cassius at Philippi, after which Brutus and Cassius commit suicide

Virgil's reputation is established by his ten Eclogues, influenced by the Italian countryside in the region of his birth near Mantua

Maecenas buys a farm for Horace, in the Sabine hills near Tivoli - the most fruitful of his many acts of patronage

Octavian defeats the forces of Antony and Cleopatra (both are at sea with their fleets) in a battle off the Greek coast at Actium