Year 72 BC was a year of the pre-Julian Roman calendar. At the time it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Publicola and Lentulus. The denomination 72 BC for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the prevalent method in Europe for naming years
The First, Second, and Third Samnite Wars were fought between the Roman Republic and the Samnites, who lived on a stretch of the Apennine Mountains south of Rome and north of the Lucanian tribe.
The Third Macedonian War was a war fought between the Roman Republic and King Perseus of Macedon. In 179 BC, King Philip V of Macedon died and was succeeded by his ambitious son Perseus. He was anti-Roman and stirred anti-Roman feelings around Macedonia. Tensions escalated and Rome declared war on Macedon.
Nabis was the last king of independent Sparta. He was probably a member of the Heracleidae, and he ruled from 207 BC to 192 BC, during the years of the First and Second Macedonian Wars and the eponymous "War against Nabis", i.e. against him. After taking the throne by executing two claimants, he began rebuilding Sparta's power. During the Second Macedonian War, Nabis sided with King Philip V of Macedon and in return he received the city of Argos. However, when the war began to turn against the Macedonians, he defected to Rome. After the war, the Romans, urged by the Achaean League, attacked Nabis and defeated him. He then was assassinated in 192 BC by the Aetolian League. He represented the last phase of Sparta's reformist period.
The Third Servile War, also called the Gladiator War and the War of Spartacus by Plutarch, was the last in a series of slave rebellions against the Roman Republic known as the Servile Wars. This third rebellion was the only one that directly threatened the Roman heartland of Italy. It was particularly alarming to Rome because its military seemed powerless to suppress it.
The Battle of Mutina took place on 21 April 43 BC between the forces loyal to the Senate under Consuls Gaius Vibius Pansa and Aulus Hirtius, supported by the forces of Caesar Octavian, and the forces of Mark Antony which were besieging the troops of Decimus Brutus. The latter, one of Caesar's assassins, held the city of Mutina in Cisalpine Gaul.
The Battle of Placentia was fought in 194 BC, near Placentia, between the Roman Republic and the Boii. The Roman army won the battle. The following year, another battle with the Boii would take place in the same region; known as the Battle of Mutina, it would end the Boii threat.
Gaius Claudius Pulcher, consul in 177 BC, was the son of Appius Claudius Pulcher, consul in 212 BC, and he was the father of Appius Claudius Pulcher, consul in 143 BC.
The Roman conquest of the Iberian Peninsula was a process by which the Roman Republic occupied territories in the Iberian Peninsula that were previously under the control of native Celtic, Iberian, Celtiberian and Aquitanian tribes and the Carthaginian Empire. The Carthaginian territories in the south and east of the peninsula were conquered in 206 BC during the Second Punic War. Control was gradually extended over most of the Iberian Peninsula without annexations. It was completed after the end of the Roman Republic, by Augustus, the first Roman emperor, who annexed the whole of the peninsula to the Roman Empire in 19 BC.
The Insubres or Insubri were an ancient Celtic population settled in Insubria, in what is now the Italian region of Lombardy. They were the founders of Mediolanum (Milan). Though completely Gaulish at the time of Roman conquest, they were the result of the fusion of pre-existing Ligurian and Celtic population with Gaulish tribes.
Lucius Cornelius L. f. Merula was consul of the Roman Republic, along with Quintus Minucius Thermus, in 193 BC. His province was Gallia Cisalpina. Merula closed an active predatory campaign by a total defeat of the Boian Gauls in the neighbourhood of Mutina. Since his staff officer Marcus Claudius Marcellus accused him of a delay in sending forward a reserve unit, resulting in several thousand unnecessary casualties and the escape of many enemy soldiers, the senate refused him a triumph.
The siege of Utica was a siege during the Second Punic War between the Roman Republic and Carthage in 204 BC. Roman general Scipio Africanus besieged Utica, intending to use it as a supply base for his campaign against Carthage in North Africa. He launched repeated and coordinated army-navy assaults on the city, all of which failed. The arrival of a large Carthaginian and Numidian relief army under Carthaginian general Hasdrubal Gisco and Numidian king Syphax in late autumn forced Scipio to break off the siege after 40 days and retreat to the coast.
Pontius Aquila was a Roman politician, military commander, and one of the assassins of Julius Caesar. In 45 BC, as tribune of the plebs, he annoyed Caesar by refusing to stand during his triumphal procession, and, in the following year, joined the conspiracy to kill the dictator. Aquila died fighting at the Battle of Mutina against Marc Antony in April 43 BC, before the formation of the Second Triumvirate later that year.
The Galatian War was a war between the Galatian Gauls and the Roman Republic supported by their allies Pergamum in 189 BC. The war was fought in Galatia in central Asia Minor, in present-day Turkey.
The Battle of Canusium also known as the Battle of Asculum was a three-day engagement between the forces of Rome and Carthage. It took place in Apulia during the spring of 209 BC, the tenth year of the Second Punic War. A larger Roman offensive, of which it was a part, aimed to subjugate and to punish cities and tribes that had abandoned the alliance with Rome after the Battle of Cannae, and to narrow the base of the Carthaginian leader, Hannibal, in southern Italy.
The gens Decia was a plebeian family of high antiquity, which became illustrious in Roman history by the example of its members sacrificing themselves for the preservation of their country. The first of the family known to history was Marcus Decius, chosen as a representative of the plebeians during the secession of 495 BC.
Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus was a Roman general and statesman, most notable as one of the main architects of Rome's victory against Carthage in the Second Punic War. Often regarded as one of the greatest military commanders and strategists of all time, his greatest military achievement was the defeat of Hannibal at the Battle of Zama in 202 BC. This victory in Africa earned him the honorific epithet Africanus, literally meaning "the African," but meant to be understood as a conqueror of Africa.
Over the course of nearly four centuries, the Roman Republic fought a series of wars against various Celtic tribes, whom they collectively described as Galli, or Gauls. Among the principal Gallic peoples described as antagonists by Greek and Roman writers were the Senones, Insubres, Boii, and Gaesatae.
The Roman-Aequian wars were a series of wars during the early expansion of ancient Rome in central Italy against their eastern neighbours, the Aequi.
The Battle of Silva Litana was an ambush that took place in a forest 75 miles northwest of the Roman city of Ariminum during the Second Punic War in 216 BC. The Gallic Boii surprised and destroyed a Roman army of 25,000 men under the consul-elect Lucius Postumius Albinus and destroyed the Roman army, with only ten men surviving the ambush, a few prisoners were taken by the Gauls and Postumius was killed, his corpse was decapitated and his skull was covered with gold and used as a ceremonial cup by the Boii. News of this military disaster, reaching Rome probably after the election of consuls for 215 BC in Spring 215 BC or after the defeat at Cannae in the fall of 216 BC, triggered a renewed panic in Rome and forced the Romans to postpone military operations against the Gauls until the conclusion of the Second Punic War. Rome decided to focus on defeating Hannibal and sent only two legions to guard against any possible Gallic attack, however, the Boii and Insubres did not attack the Romans to exploit their victory. Cisalpine Gaul remained in relative peace until 207 BC, when Hasdrubal Barca arrived in Cisapline Gaul with his army from Spain.
Roman Republic 