The period of stability achieved during the reign of Augustus Caesar has been given the name Pax Romana ('Roman peace')

The death of Augustus introduces half a century of chaos, as the members of his family compete ruthlessly for power

Tiberius succeeds his stepfather Augustus Caesar as the Roman emperor

Germanicus, nephew and heir of the emperor Tiberius, dies when far away with the army in Syria

Within the tangled and tormented web of the Roman imperial family, Gaius Caesar - nicknamed Caligula - inherits the throne

Claudius, after the assassination of his nephew Caligula, is selected as emperor by the praetorian guards

The Roman surgeon Cornelius Celsus describes in De Medicina how to cut stones from a patient's bladder

A working week of seven days is adopted in Rome, based on the seven known planets (whose names provide the days)

The 16-year-old Nero is proclaimed emperor by the praetorian guards after the death of Claudius, supposedly poisoned by toadstools

St Peter, believed to have come to Rome as leader of the Christian community, is subsequently considered the first pope

St Paul arrives in Rome a prisoner, but then spends two years freely preaching Christianity

A great fire in Rome is popularly believed to have been started by Nero, whom legend also accuses of fiddling while the city burns

Early Christian tradition states that both Peter and Paul meet death in Rome as martyrs, possibly as a result of the fire of AD 64

Nero comes to Athens to give some of his officially celebrated performances at the Greek games

A rebellion in Spain prompts such chaos that Rome has four emperors within a year, after the suicide of Nero in 68

Vespasian, proclaimed emperor by his troops in Alexandria, is the survivor among this year's four emperors

Titus becomes emperor on the death of his father, Vespasian, and begins a brief two-year reign of lavish public generosity

A sudden eruption of Vesuvius buries the town of Pompeii in volcanic ash, in places twelve feet deep

The Colosseum is inaugurated by the emperor Titus with games lasting 100 days, in which some 9000 large animals are killed

Dying after a reign of only two years, Titus is succeeded on the imperial throne by his brother, Domitian

Tacitus begins his career with two specialized but influential works of history, one on Britain and the other on Germany

Trajan, succeeding to the imperial throne in AD 98, is sufficiently confident to spend a year in Germany before returning to Rome

A cult develops in Rome of the Egyptian goddess Isis, credited with restoring to life her hushand, Osiris, after he has been hacked to pieces

Sculptors in the Roman empire develop the most brutally realistic convention in the history of portraiture

Hadrian, governing Syria when he is declared emperor, is confident enough to delay almost a year before returning to Rome