Rome expelled its last king in 509 BC and Athens got democracy from Cleisthenes in 508: republic and democracy were born almost side by side.
The events
- Founding of the Roman Republicc. 509 BC · Rome. According to tradition, the Romans expelled their last king, Tarquin the Proud, and created a republic led by two annually elected consuls. The Republic lasted nearly five centuries and inspired modern political thought.
- Cleisthenes' reforms and the birth of democracy508 BC · Athens. Cleisthenes reorganised Athenian society into ten territorial tribes and gave the citizens' assembly supreme power. His reforms are regarded as the birth of democracy, government in which citizens themselves decide.
More amazing facts
- 776 BC · 753 BC The Olympic Games are older than Rome: the first were held in 776 BC, and by tradition the city was founded only 23 years later.
- 650 BC · 612 BC The fire that destroyed Nineveh in 612 BC baked the clay tablets of Ashurbanipal's library — helping them survive to the present day.
- 563 BC · 551 BC · 530 BC By traditional dating, the Buddha, Confucius and Pythagoras were contemporaries: all three lived in the 6th century BC.
- 480 BC · 479 BC Confucius died in 479 BC — one year after the Greeks defeated the Persian fleet at Salamis.
- 323 BC · 322 BC India's Maurya Empire arose about a year after Alexander the Great died — and its founder, Chandragupta, is said to have met Alexander himself.
- 261 BC · 260 BC Almost simultaneously, Ashoka conquered Kalinga (261 BC) and repented the bloodshed, while China saw the Battle of Changping (260 BC), one of antiquity's bloodiest.