Modena, destroyed a few years earlier by Spartacus, was rebuilt and praised by Cicero in 44 BC: “a very strong, beautiful, most faithful, and most flourishing colony.” And in 39 BC, Publius Virgil wrote of the local grape variety: Lambrusca, and also mentioned pork.

Ides of March: Conspiracy and assassination of Julius Caesar by a group led by Brutus and Cassius; Mark Antony and Octavian force the conspirators to flee.

annus confusionis: 445 days. Caesar moved the New Year from the spring equinox to January 1st, introduced leap years, and 12 months of alternating 30-31 days (with February of 29-30 days).

Caesar had Cleopatra’s fleet set on fire, the Library of Alexandria, overlooking the port, also caught fire: hundreds of thousands of unique texts (or almost) were destroyed.

The Julian calendar is born

Vercingetorix gathers 250,000 Celts (mostly Gauls) to fight the decisive battle against Caesar’s Romans in the North-East of France, at Alesia, but the Roman military supremacy imposes itself: Caesar has two rings of walls built, one, internal, to besiege Vercingetorix and the civilians of the village, the other, external, to protect himself from the 250,000 Celts who came to his aid, furthermore there were earthworks and additional walls to slow down the charges.

Caesar is impressed by chicken fighting in Britain

Julius Caesar raids the southern part of Britain

Modena. Spartacus also arrives in Modena, and at the head of his gladiators, he faces ten thousand Roman legionaries, defeats them, lays waste to the castrum, and leaves the city destroyed. It will be rebuilt in a few years and praised by Cicero in 44 BC as “a very strong, beautiful, most faithful, and most flourishing colony.” And in 39 BC, Publius Virgil writes about the local grape variety: Lambrusca, and also mentions pork.

A mechanical calculator of the positions of the stars, moon, and sun sinks on a ship in Antikythera, Greece.

India. The Buddhist text Milindapanha is written in the Pali language. It contains some profound philosophical insights into our nature and the nature of time: we are processes, events, limited in space and time.

The game of chess was already known in China, and soon after it was found in India as well.

The Moche civilization flourished in Peru (near Lake Titichacha). It then collapsed suddenly around 600 AD, likely due to a sudden climate change: several decades of heavy rainfall, followed by a period of famine that destroyed the delicate ecosystem. They left behind statuettes and artifacts, testifying to warrior contests, where the loser was sacrificed by decapitation by an animal-headed figure. One of the sacrificial sites unearthed 75 male warriors sacrificed in this way, along with two executioners. The tomb also included a wooden staff still soaked in blood. Some of the sacrificed had their facial skin removed, and sometimes their arms severed from their bodies; others had their flesh removed from their skeletons, and two had their skulls transformed into a sort of container.

Ohio, North America. The “Hopewell Interaction Sphere” flourishes, a network of communities centered on Paint Creek in Ohio. They leave behind for posterity crystal, mica, and obsidian arrowheads from the Appalachians, copper and silver from the Great Lakes, shells and shark teeth from the Gulf of Mexico, grizzly bear molars from the Rocky Mountains, meteoric iron, alligator teeth from Florida, barracuda jaws, and more. They also build enormous, regular earthworks in the shape of circles, squares, and octagons, aligned according to mathematical and cosmological principles and all made of mud, known as Earthworks, in Licking County, Ohio. It’s a lunar observatory spanning 5 square kilometers, with earthworks over 5 meters high, constructed with carefully selected layers of earth, gravel, and sand designed to last, so much so that after thousands of years they have never been absorbed by the surrounding marshes. These were small seasonal towns, abandoned for much of the year, with theaters for elaborate and crowded ceremonies lasting up to a week or two at a time. The rest of the community consisted of houses scattered across the land, mostly in the highlands, families living by hunting, fishing, foraging, and occasionally cultivating local herbaceous plants like sunflowers and vegetables. This is what is called “game farming,” found throughout much of North America. It nevertheless generated a refined culture, at times artistically brilliant: pipes topped with exquisite animal carvings, used to smoke a very strong tobacco that induced trance-like states. Small sheets of copper, worn like a breastplate, cut into complex geometric shapes, have also been found. As at Poverty Point in Louisiana, social influence derived from control over esoteric forms of knowledge. These are egalitarian cultures, not in the sense that everyone is the same, on the contrary, differences are exalted, free to attract attention or to obtain a visible role in society, with incredible varieties of clothes, ornaments, playful and extravagant haircuts.

The Cimbri, a population of Celtic origins from Denmark and southern Sweden, were exterminated in an open battle by the Romans; the survivors committed suicide; the Cimbri had roamed the Empire for 19 years.

Vietnam is under the more or less direct rule of China.

The Romans are in Spain, southern France, Greece, Türkiye

Numantia, now central Spain. The Roman army of Tarraconensis was entrusted, in 134 BC, to Publius Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus, nephew of the hero of the Second Punic War who conquered Carthage and himself a general in the Third Punic War. After sacking the country of the Vaccei, he besieged Numantia in 134–133 BC. The army commanded by Scipio was supplemented by a large contingent of Numidian cavalry, provided by his ally Micipsa, commanded by the king’s young nephew, Jugurtha. Scipio first worked to reassure and reorganize the army, discouraged by the stubborn and effective resistance of the rebel city; then, certain that the citadel could only be taken by starvation, he built a double ring road designed to isolate Numantia and deprive it of any external aid. The consul then worked to discourage the Iberians from aiding the rebel city, appearing with his army at the gates of the city of Lutia and forcing it to submit and hand over hostages. After nearly a year of siege (the siege of Numantia inspired Cervantes’ play, El cerco de Numancia), the starving Numantians sought a parley with Scipio, but, learning that he would accept nothing less than unconditional surrender, the few men still able to fight chose to launch a final, desperate assault against the Roman fortifications. The failure of this sortie drove the survivors, according to legend, to burn the city and throw themselves into the flames. Not all, however, lost their lives; some, reduced to slavery, paraded in Rome during Scipio’s triumph. The city was razed to the ground, like Carthage a few years earlier. The bellum numantinum takes on particular importance, because it marks the full affirmation of Roman hegemony in central-northern Hispania and the definitive pacification of most of the Iberian peninsula.

Fierce political struggles shake the Roman Senate and the foundations of the Republic

After 50 years of Roman incursions, mainland Greece becomes part of the Roman Empire.

Destruction of Carthage and Corinth by the Romans

Third Punic War which ends with the destruction of Carthage

Numantia, now central Spain. In 153 BC, a Numantine army, led by a certain Segeda Carus, managed to defeat a Roman army of 30,000 men, led by the consul Quintus Fulvius Nobilior. After twenty years of uninterrupted warfare between the Arevaci, supported by the other Celtiberian tribes, and the Romans, who had unsuccessfully attempted to capture the city five times, the Roman army of Tarraconensis was entrusted, in 134 BC, to Publius Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus, who conquered Numantia and established full Roman hegemony in central and northern Hispania and the definitive pacification of most of the Iberian Peninsula.

Israel. Maccabean Revolt.

Israel. Antiochus IV Epiphanes ascends the throne, promoting a decisive policy of Hellenization of the Jewish people and Jerusalem.

Modena becomes a colony, the Gallic language is abandoned and Latin is spoken. A colony becomes mutina la dveinta ‘na. Al ladein as taca a descàrer insàm a la lèngua di Gâl

Modena. Construction of the city walls is completed.

Modena. Decisive and final battle between Gauls and Romans. Consul Cornelius Merula achieves victory and captures all the Gaulish warriors. The Gaulish Boii had previously driven out the Etruscans and now must cede their lands to the Romans, who will turn Mutina into an important Roman military fort.

El-Rashid, Egypt. For the first anniversary of the coronation of Ptolemy V, the Rosetta Stone is made. It is an edict to Egyptian priests, declaring that Ptolemy, a teenager at the time, has become a living god. Then in 1798 AD, Napoleon seizes it, but when he is defeated by Nelson in the Battle of the Nile, the terms of surrender include the surrender of the artworks seized by Napoleon, including the Rosetta Stone, which thus ends up in the British Museum, available for viewing free of charge.

Africa. Bantu peoples from Nigeria and Cameroon spread to the coasts of the Indian Ocean in 200 BC. They reached South Africa by 500 AD.

Second Macedonian War: Philip V, defeated by the Romans, renounces Greece

Roman hegemony extends to the Po Valley and Sardinia, Corsica, Sicily

The Roman general Scipio defeats Hannibal at Zama

Beginning of Roman incursions into Greece

First Macedonian War between Macedonians and Romans

Battle of Cannae. Speaking of this battle, Cicero, derisively mocking horoscopes, wondered if all 60,000 fallen Roman soldiers (of a total of 80,000) were born under the same zodiac sign, since they certainly met the same fate… The Battle of Cannae on August 2, 216 BC, was one of the major battles of the Second Punic War and took place near the city of Cannae in ancient Apulia. The Carthaginian army, commanded with extreme skill by Hannibal, encircled and almost completely destroyed a numerically superior army of the Roman Republic, led by the consuls Lucius Aemilius Paullus and Gaius Terentius Varro. It was, in terms of combat casualties, one of the heaviest defeats suffered by Rome, second only to the Battle of Arausio, and is considered one of the greatest tactical maneuvers in military history. Regrouping after previous defeats at the Battles of the Trebia (218 BC) and Lake Trasimene (217 BC), the Romans decided to confront Hannibal at Cannae, with approximately 86,000 Roman and allied troops. The Romans massed their heavy infantry in a tighter formation than usual, while Hannibal employed the pincer tactic. This maneuver proved so effective that the Roman army was annihilated as a fighting force. Following the Battle of Cannae, the city of Capua, once an ally of Rome, and other city-states switched allegiances to Carthage.

Modena. The Celts (or Gauls) rebel against the Romans before the arrival of Hannibal (with whom they had agreed). The army of the Roman general Lucius Manlius arrives, but is late because it gets lost in the woods and emerges at Parma instead of Modena.