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An arrest mission interrupted outside Damascus

This timeline lists the event at approximately AD 34, one published reconstruction among several. In the account in Acts, Saul of Tarsus was traveling toward Damascus carrying letters from the high priest that authorized him to seize members of "the Way" when a light from heaven surrounded him and he fell to the ground.

A voice asked why he was being persecuted, identified itself as Jesus, and told him to go into the city and wait for instructions. He got up unable to see, and had to be led by the hand the rest of the way.

Acts says he then spent three days in Damascus without sight and without food or drink.

Why the year is written 34 and cannot be pinned

No ancient source dates the encounter. The Cambridge Companion to St Paul uses AD 32–33 illustratively; another published reconstruction puts it at AD 34.

The surviving sources do not resolve the choice between these reconstructions.

Paul's own letters supply no year at all. Galatians measures intervals instead: he did not go up to Jerusalem until three years after the revelation, and then stayed fifteen days with Cephas.

What Paul reports, and what Acts adds

Paul's own version is compact — God revealed his Son to him so that he might proclaim him among gentiles — and he says he went first to Arabia and returned to Damascus. He mentions no road, no light, no blindness, no Ananias and no baptism.

Those details come from Acts, which retells the experience three times with variations in what Saul's companions heard or saw. In it a Damascus disciple named Ananias, who first objected that Saul was dangerous, laid hands on him; his sight returned, he was baptized, and he ate.

Acts then has him lodging with the disciples he had come to arrest and arguing in the city's synagogues that Jesus was the Messiah. He did not take the name Paul here: Acts introduces "Saul, also known as Paul" only much later, at 13:9.

The day the sanctuary caught

Josephus dates the decisive fire to 10 Lous/Av in the year 70. After renewed fighting, Roman troops drove the defenders back into the Temple’s inner court.

In his version an unnamed Roman soldier, acting without orders and helped by another, threw burning material through a golden opening into rooms on the sanctuary’s north side. Greed then outran discipline: Josephus says the soldiers expected the gold-covered sanctuary to be full of treasure.

Did Titus try to stop it?

Josephus says Titus ran from his tent and repeatedly tried to have the fire extinguished, but the troops ignored him or could not hear him; looting, fighting and additional fires consumed the sanctuary.

A conflicting late-antique account preserved by Sulpicius Severus says Titus’s council deliberately decided to destroy the Temple, and scholars debate whether that passage preserves material from Tacitus’s lost Histories. Josephus wrote in a pro-Flavian setting, which is a strong reason to scrutinize his absolution of Titus.

Which day, and what was still standing

The date is contested too. Josephus gives 10 Av while the Mishnah’s commemorative tradition gives 9 Av, and one modern analysis argues that Josephus may have shifted the destruction by a day for ideological reasons.

“About August 4” is not a secure conversion: modern reconstructions of Josephus’s calendar produce 6, 10 or 29 August, depending on the system assumed.

Nor did the Temple’s fall mean the fall of Jerusalem. Simon bar Giora and John of Gischala still controlled the Upper City, which the Romans captured later.

What the court record says

The Book of the Later Han records that in the first year of the Yuanxing era — 105 CE — Cai Lun presented the emperor with paper made from tree bark, hemp scraps, worn cloth and fishing nets. No exact day within that year is preserved.

Emperor He praised Cai’s ability. The same account says the material was subsequently adopted and became known as “Cai Hou paper.”

An improvement, not an invention

Modern scholarship reads the presentation as an improvement and promotion of existing papermaking technology rather than the invention of paper itself. Archaeological paper from Baqiao has been dated to the second century BCE.

Paper did not push bamboo aside either. Scholarship finds bamboo and paper in simultaneous use from the mid-to-late Eastern Han into the early Three Kingdoms period.

How thin the record is

The episode survives principally through the Book of the Later Han, the official history compiled by Fan Ye roughly three centuries later from earlier materials. Its passage lists ingredients, not a step-by-step manufacturing process.

That history frames Cai’s work as a response to the expense of silk and the weight of bamboo slips, and reports imperial praise and wider use. It gives no production totals and no rate of adoption.

28 April 224, on a plain nobody can find

Ardashir I fought his Parthian overlord Artabanus on the plain of Hormozdgan on 28 April 224. Artabanus — numbered V in older scholarship, IV in newer — was defeated and killed, and the authority of the dominant Arsacid king went with him.

Where that plain lay is unresolved. Ram-Hormoz and the Golpayegan region are competing proposals; the battlefield has not been securely identified.

The tactics come from a late book

The vivid version — Ardashir reaching the field early, digging a defensive ditch, taking control of its spring before Artabanus arrived — reaches us through al-Tabari, probably drawing on a Sasanian official tradition written down long after the day itself.

The same tradition gives Ardashir about 10,000 horsemen and contrasts the two cavalries: some of his men in flexible chain mail, Artabanus's troops in heavier lamellar armor.

The rock relief at Firuzabad that commemorates the battle is a royal image rather than an eyewitness record — 18 meters long and nearly 4 meters high.

What survived Artabanus

One scholarly reconstruction has Ardashir assuming the title shahanshah, king of kings, while still on the battlefield. Others place a coronation at Ctesiphon around 226; the sources disagree.

The victory brought the Sasanians to power, but the conquest and consolidation of former Parthian territory continued afterward, and Artabanus's brother Vologases VI remained a rival Arsacid king.

The evidence for Vologases's authority after 224 is principally numismatic — a single reported coin dated 227/228, whose historical implications have been challenged.

20 November 284, before the eastern army

On the accepted chronology, the eastern army proclaimed its household-guard commander Diocles emperor near Nicomedia on 20 November 284. The sources describe him as domesticos regens — leader of the imperial household guard.

Eutropius reports that at the first assembly Diocles swore he had not plotted the death of Numerian, his predecessor. He then blamed the praetorian prefect Aper and killed him with his own sword in sight of the troops.

The accused left no recorded defense

Eutropius and the Historia Augusta both preserve the killing. Neither proves that Aper murdered Numerian — the accusation reaches us through narratives favorable to Diocles's accession story.

Aper was Numerian's father-in-law, and he died before he could offer a defense anyone wrote down. Modern scholars explicitly leave open the possibility that Diocletian benefited from, or took part in, an earlier plot.

The ancient narratives also do not establish that the acclamation was spontaneous, or that it was unanimous.

Two Augusti, not one

The acclamation gave the East an emperor and left the empire with two. Carinus — Numerian's brother and Carus's surviving son — was already a reigning Augustus in the West; Diocles was the challenger.

That contest ran until Carinus was killed near the Margus in 285, and only then was Diocletian sole ruler.

Even the location of the assembly is less settled than its date: the sources variously give Nicomedia, near Nicomedia, or Chalcedon.

28 October 312, north of Rome

Constantine's army defeated Maxentius's forces near the Milvian Bridge north of Rome on 28 October 312. Maxentius had come down from the security of the city walls to deploy near the Tiber, on the anniversary of his own accession.

The retreat became trapped against the river and Maxentius drowned. Ancient accounts disagree about whether he fell from the permanent bridge, from a boat bridge, or into the water while trying to get away.

Two visions, two different authors

Lactantius, writing within a few years, says Constantine was instructed in a dream to mark a heavenly sign denoting Christ on his soldiers' shields. He reports no daylight cross and no in hoc signo vinces.

Eusebius's Life of Constantine, published after the emperor's death, tells a different story: a midday cross of light above the sun bearing the Greek instruction "Conquer by this," then a dream, then a military standard.

Eusebius does not explicitly place his daylight vision on the eve of this battle. The familiar single narrative is a splice of the two accounts.

The morning after

Constantine entered Rome formally on 29 October. Maxentius's body was recovered and decapitated, and his head was displayed.

The victory left Constantine uncontested in the western half of the empire — not ruler of all of it. Licinius went on holding the East.

Constantine's own religious position is harder to date than the battle is: he was baptized only in 337.

Weeks after taking Rome

In the immediate aftermath of Constantine’s October 312 victory at Rome, his allegiance to the Christian God became public, and work may have begun as early as November on the imperially sponsored Lateran basilica.

The project occupied barracks formerly used by Maxentius’s imperial horse guard, making Christian construction physically visible on property associated with the defeated regime.

Money, property, exemptions

During the winter of 312/313, Constantine ordered an imperial payment of 3,000 folles to Caecilian of Carthage for Catholic clergy across Roman Africa, with authorization for additional funds if necessary.

He also ordered church property restored and exempted clergy loyal to Caecilian from compulsory public duties, turning toleration into material and legal preference. His exemption letter argued that freeing clergy from civic labour benefited the Roman state, because their worship secured divine favour.

Patronage, not establishment

The resulting policy made the church a publicly recognized and imperially patronized institution. It did not make Christianity the empire’s official religion, and Constantine went on governing a religiously plural empire.

It is a policy transition rather than a securely dated proclamation. The first visible measures fall between late 312 and 313, the Lateran groundbreaking day is unknown, and several of the surviving administrative letters belong to the winter of 312/313 or to 313.

A summit under pressure

Constantine and Licinius met at Mediolanum in February 313 and negotiated political arrangements while Maximinus Daia threatened Licinius’s position in the east. The month is well supported; no exact day is securely recoverable.

Licinius married Constantine’s half-sister Constantia, formally sealing their dynastic alliance. Maximinus’s impending invasion is what made the settlement urgent for Licinius.

What Licinius agreed to carry east

The emperors agreed on a policy permitting Christians and others to choose their religion freely, and providing for the restoration of Christian corporate property. For Licinius the practical commitment was to extend into his own territories the freedom of worship and restitution already in force in Constantine’s West.

Nothing signed at the February meeting survives. The policy known retrospectively as the Edict of Milan is preserved through later implementing texts, and normal Roman practice could require each emperor to promulgate it separately in his own jurisdiction.

Where each emperor went next

The emperors separated after the marriage. Constantine returned toward his western territories; Licinius moved east to fight Maximinus, who still controlled eastern territory while the conference was taking place.

Only after that victory did Licinius publish the surviving religious-policy letter, at Nicomedia on 13 June 313. The alliance sealed at Milan later collapsed into civil war between the two men.

18 September 324, in Bithynia

Constantine landed troops in Bithynia and met Licinius's army between Chalcedon and the Sacred Promontory on 18 September 324. Licinius had already been beaten near Adrianople and at sea in the Hellespont; the landing forced him to fight before his position could recover.

Constantine's army won decisively. The Anonymus Valesianus reports 25,000 Licinian soldiers killed and the remainder put to flight — a claim in a later transmitted narrative, not a modern casualty count.

The famous numbers are two incompatible numbers

Zosimus, writing in the early sixth century, claims Licinius fielded 130,000 men and that scarcely 30,000 escaped. The often-repeated "25,000 to 30,000 dead" fuses those escapees with the Anonymus's death figure.

Zosimus also says Licinius reached Nicomedia with his remaining cavalry and only a few thousand infantry — not with 30,000 survivors regrouping there.

The sources give little secure tactical detail; the stories of opposed pagan standards and Licinius's fear of the labarum come from strongly partisan Constantinian Christian tradition.

Surrender, clemency, and a delay

When news of the defeat arrived, Byzantium and Chalcedon opened their gates to Constantine.

The next day Constantia — Constantine's half-sister and Licinius's wife — entered the camp and obtained clemency for her husband. Licinius relinquished imperial rank, and his recently appointed co-ruler Martinianus was initially spared as well.

The surrender left Constantine the empire's sole reigning Augustus. He had Licinius killed later, probably in the spring of 325.

The opening session at Nicaea

On the traditional — but disputed — opening date of 20 May 325, bishops assembled in an imperial palace hall at Nicaea in Bithynia. Eusebius of Caesarea, a participant, counted more than 250 bishops, besides presbyters, deacons, acolytes and attendants he said were beyond counting.

Constantine entered ceremonially, waited for the bishops to invite him to sit, and took a low golden seat among them. He then delivered an appeal for ecclesiastical peace in Latin, through an interpreter, to an overwhelmingly Greek-speaking assembly, and left the presiding bishops to begin the debate.

What 20 May is, and is not

The year is secure; the day is not. Ancient evidence does not establish an uncontested opening date — 20 May is the traditional reconstruction, and dates in June have also been proposed.

Eusebius describes an appointed imperial session but does not attach 20 May to it, so preliminary meetings may have preceded Constantine’s ceremonial appearance. The summons had gone out earlier; it was not issued that day.

Everything famous came later in the council

This date marks the opening, not the same-day adoption of the creed, the Easter settlement, the disciplinary canons or the penalties against Arius. Those came during the council that followed.

The council’s detailed acts have not survived. The principal surviving conciliar documents are the creed, twenty canons and a synodal letter — and that 325 creed, dense with clauses about the Son, disposes of the Holy Spirit in a single short phrase.

Monday, 11 May 330

Constantine formally dedicated the rebuilt and greatly expanded city of Byzantium as Constantinople on Monday, 11 May 330.

A late-antique chronicle says he endowed the city with a senate, gave it his own name, and proclaimed it a "second Rome."

Major construction had begun in November 324, about five and a half years earlier — an interval conventionally rounded up to six years.

The column in the new forum

The opening ritual centered on the new Forum of Constantine, where the porphyry column and its colossal imperial statue dominated the space: Constantine represented as Helios.

The column was already standing by about 328. It commemorated the foundation and gave it a focal point, but a separately documented dedication of the monument on 11 May is not secure.

Seven porphyry drums survive in the shaft, which now rises about 35.8 metres above the pavement; the original column, without its statue, is estimated at 37 to 40 metres.

What the ceremony did not do

It did not create a separate Eastern Roman Empire. The Roman state remained one, and the conventional eastern/western division belongs to later history; Constantinople's growth into the regular imperial capital continued over subsequent decades.

It also did not make "Nova Roma" the city's official name. A scholarly study finds no evidence that was ever the official Constantinian name — "New Rome" and "Second Rome" were rhetorical descriptions, with official ecclesiastical use developing after 381.

The detailed descriptions of the rites come from sources written centuries afterward and contain legendary material. Claims about relics within or beneath the column are late traditions, and twentieth-century investigation found no such repository.

22 May 337, a villa outside Nicomedia

Constantine fell seriously ill in 337 after visiting the baths at Helenopolis. He traveled to a suburban imperial villa near Nicomedia, summoned bishops, and asked to receive baptism without further delay.

He had hoped to be baptized in the Jordan. The illness, which came while he was preparing a campaign against Sasanian Persia, left him accepting the rite in a suburb instead.

After the baptism he put aside the imperial purple, wore white, and received officers and generals from a white-covered couch. He died around noon on Pentecost, 22 May, at the estate usually identified from another ancient source as Achyrona.

Who performed the rite

Eusebius of Caesarea, who supplies the narrative, places the baptism near Nicomedia but never names its minister. Jerome is the earliest surviving author to name Eusebius of Nicomedia, and modern scholars generally accept the identification.

Calling that bishop simply "an Arian" flattens him: he had supported Arius, but he had also signed the Nicene creed and returned to communion.

Deferring baptism to the end of life was not unusual among fourth-century Christians, who associated the rite with the remission of prior sins.

Three months with no emperor

Soldiers placed the body in a golden coffin and carried it to the imperial palace at Constantinople, where officials went on bending the knee before the dead emperor.

His intended heirs were elsewhere. Constantine II, Constantius II and Constans were not jointly proclaimed Augusti until 9 September — an interregnum of roughly three months.

Even his age resists precision: the death date is secure, but the disputed birth year makes "about 64 or 65" the most that can be said.